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] Vincent Price and Poe
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. Some of Price's most famous films were AIP productions like The House of Usher , The Pit and the Pendulum , The Masque of the Red Death , and The Tomb of Ligeia.
The films based 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.
[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 to create a dynamic, eye-catching poster, then raising the cash, and finally actually writing and casting the film.
[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 the Vincent Price "Poe Series" and such films as Tales of Terror ,The Raven and The Terror.
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. The psychedelic and hippie scenes of the late Sixties were also exploited with films like The Trip, 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 Rodan, Mothra, Frankenstein Conquers the World, War of the Gargantuas, Monster From a Prehistoric Planet, King Kong Escapes, and Yongary, Monster from the Deep.
[edit] Later years
In the 1970s, AIP began to produce big budget films such as The Amityville Horror, Love at First Bite, Meteor, Force 10 From Navarone, 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 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.
[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 shoot after completing The Raven, which reused 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!
