American International Pictures
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American International Pictures was a film production company formed in 1956 from American Releasing Corporation by James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff, dedicated to releasing independently produced, low-budget films, primarily of interest to the teenagers of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.
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[edit] Producers and directors
Nicholson and Arkoff served as executive producers while Roger Corman and Alex Gordon were the principal film producers and, sometimes, directors. Writer Charles B. Griffith wrote many of the early films, along with Arkoff's brother-in-law, Lou Rusoff. Later writers included Ray Russell, Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont. Floyd Crosby, A.S.C. famous for his camera work on a number of exotic documentaries and the Oscar winner, High Noon, was chief cinematographer. His innovative use of surreal color and odd lenses and angles gave AIP films a signature look. The early rubber monster suits and miniatures of Paul Blaisdell embodied the best of 1950s science fiction films.
[edit] Focus groups
AIP was the first company to use focus groups, polling American teenagers about what they would like to see and using their responses to determine titles, stars, and story content. A typical sequence of production involved coming up with a great title, getting an artist such as Albert Kallis who supervised all AIP artwork from 1955-1973 to create a dynamic, eye-catching poster, then raising the cash, and finally actually writing and casting the film.
[edit] The ARKOFF Formula
Samuel Z. Arkoff related his tried-and-true "ARKOFF Formula" for producing a successful low-budget movie years later, during a 1980s talk show appearance. His ideals for a movie included:
- Action (exciting, entertaining drama)
- Revolution (novel or controversial themes and ideas)
- Killing (a modicum of violence)
- Oratory (notable dialogue and speeches)
- Fantasy (acted-out fantasies common to the audience)
- Fornication (sex appeal, for young adults)
[edit] 1960s
In the 1960s, AIP produced a series of "beach party" films, starring Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon. During this time AIP also produced or distributed most of Roger Corman's famous horror B movies, including such films as X: The Man with X-Ray Eyes ,The Raven, and The Terror. Composer Les Baxter was hired by AIP to do a variety of original film scores as well as rescoring European made releases such as Goliath and the Barbarians.
In 1966, the studio released The Wild Angels, based loosely on the real-life exploits of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang. This film kicked off a subgenre of motorcycle gang films that lasted almost ten years and included Devil's Angels and The Born Losers. The psychedelic and hippie scenes of the late Sixties were also exploited with films like The Trip, Riot on Sunset Strip, Wild in the Streets, Gas-s-s-s and Psych-Out.
AIP is well known for being the major U.S. distributor for Kadokawa Pictures and Toho Studio's Godzilla and Gamera (kaiju) movies of the 1960s and 1970s. AIP also distributed other Japanese sci-fi movies like Frankenstein Conquers the World, Monster From a Prehistoric Planet, and Yonggary, Monster from the Deep.
[edit] The Corman Poe Cycle
In the early 1960s, AIP struck gold by combining Roger Corman, Vincent Price and the stories of Edgar Allan Poe into a series of visually impressive horror films. This series of movies made AIP an American counterpart to the British studio Hammer Films and its famous Hammer Horror line featuring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.
The original idea, usually credited to Corman, was to take Poe's story "The Fall of the House of Usher", which had both a high name-recognition value and the merit of being royalty-free due to being in the public domain, and expand it into a feature film. Corman convinced the studio to give him a larger budget than the typical AIP film so he could film in color and create lavish sets.
The success of The House of Usher led AIP to finance further films also based on Poe's stories. The sets and special effects were often reused in subsequent movies (for example, the burning roof the Usher mansion reappears in most of the other films) making the series quite cost-effective. All the films in the series were directed by Roger Corman, and they all starred Price except The Premature Burial which featured Ray Milland in the lead (it was originally produced for another studio, but AIP acquired the rights to it).
As the series progressed, Corman made attempts to change things up. Later films added more humor to the stories, especially The Raven which takes Poe's poem as an inspiration and develops it into an all-out farce starring Price, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre. Corman also adapted H. P. Lovecraft's story The Case of Charles Dexter Ward in an attempt to get away from Poe, but AIP changed the title to that of an obscure Poe poem, The Haunted Palace, and marketed it as yet another movie in the series. The penultimate film in the series, The Masque of the Red Death, was filmed in England with an unusually long schedule for Corman and AIP. The film, inspired by Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, looks much more opulent than the rest of the series.
Although Corman is generally credited with coming up with the idea for the Poe series, in an interview on the Anchor Bay DVD of Mario Bava's Black Sabbath, Mark Damon claims that he first suggested the idea to Corman. Damon also says that Corman let him direct The Pit and the Pendulum uncredited. Corman's commentary for Pit mentions nothing of this.
[edit] List of the Corman Poe Films
- House of Usher (1960)
- The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)
- The Premature Burial (1962)
- Tales of Terror (1962)
- The Raven (1963)
- The Haunted Palace (1963)
- The Masque of the Red Death (1964)
- The Tomb of Ligeia (1964)
[edit] Later years
In the 1970s, AIP began to produce more mainstream films such as Bunny O'Hare, The Amityville Horror, Love at First Bite, Meteor, Force 10 from Navarone, Shout at the Devil, The Island of Dr. Moreau, and Mad Max. The increased spending on these projects, though they did make some money, contributed to the company's downfall. AIP also produced some of the 1970s blaxploitation films like Blacula, and Foxy Brown.
In 1978, AIP was merged into Filmways, Inc., which was later bought by Orion Pictures Corporation. Today, a majority of the AIP library is at the hands of Orion's successor company MGM.
[edit] References
- Mark Thomas McGee, Fast and Furious: The Story of American International Pictures (McFarland & Company, 1995) ISBN 0-786-401370.
[edit] External links
- American International Pictures at the Internet Movie Database
- Deep Dark Thoughts: American International Pictures
- Partial Horror and Sci-Fi filmography
- Article on AIP
- It Conquered Hollywood! The Story of American International Pictures
- Albert Kallis poster artist http://www.learnaboutmovieposters.com/NewSite/INDEX/ARTISTS/artists-kallis.aspde:American International Pictures
fr:American International Pictures nl:American International Pictures ja:アメリカン・インターナショナル・ピクチャーズ
