American International Pictures
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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. 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, 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 Fifties science fiction films.
The earlier films of AIP often included Vincent Price, often in roles based upon the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, whose works had a high recognition value and also were in the public domain and therefore royalty-free. The films on Poe themes starring Price made AIP an American counterpart to the British studio Hammer Films and its famous Hammer Horror line featuring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.
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 to create a dynamic, eye-catching poster, then raising the cash, and finally actually writing and casting the film.
In the 1960s, AIP produced a series of Beach Party films, starring Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon.
In the 1970s, AIP began to produce big budget films such as The Amityville Horror, Love at First Bite, Meteor and The Island of Dr. Moreau. The increased spending on these projects, though they did make some money, contributed to the company's downfall. AIP also produced a fraction of the 1970s blaxploitation films until the company's demise. In 1979, 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, which was purchased by a consortium led by Sony Pictures, but continues to operate as a separate company.
[edit] Reference
- Mark Thomas McGee, Fast and Furious: The Story of American International Pictures (McFarland & Company, 1995) ISBN: 0-786-401370.
[edit] Trivia
- Along with its original productions, AIP also released many foreign films (dubbed into English) in the US that other, larger studios were afraid to handle; these included Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita and Roger Vadim's And God Created Woman, starring then-wife Brigitte Bardot.
- 1963's The Terror was largely improvised by the cast, during a weekend left over from another movie shoot, and on the same sets before they were taken down.
- Roger Corman continues his work as the head of New World Pictures, which also has a long history of independent production and distribution of foreign-made movies.
- The widow of Nicholson, Susan Hart, acquired all rights in 1994 to a number of the most successful 1950s AIP titles, including I Was a Teenage Werewolf and Invasion of the Saucermen.
- The son and daughter of Arkoff attempted a short-lived revival of AIP as a producer of TV movies using the titles of some 1950s-era films produced by the studio, but different storylines from the earlier films. Examples of this include Cool and the Crazy (directed by Ralph Bakshi) and Shake, Rattle and Rock!
