"On one of my European trips, I
flew to Denmark to look at a rough cut
of Reptillicus.
By that point, AIP had already given
Sidney Pink $100,000 to help him make
the picture. But after seeing not much
more than a reel of the rough cut, I
shut off the projector, I leaned back in
my seat with a horrified expression on
my face -- and not because the
prehistoric reptile was so frightening.
"My
God, Sidney, what have you done?!"
That
excerpt is taken from Samuel Z. Arkoff's
legendary dust-up with producer Sidney
Pink over his Danish actors trying to
speak English phonetically with disastrous
-- albeit hilarious, results in Reptillicus;
the only Danish giant monster movie ever
made.
And
that's just the tip of the iceberg:
When
AIP slipped Annette Funicello into a
two-piece bathing suit and had Frankie
Avalon chase her around the lifeguard
stations in Beach
Party, the
major studios snickered. But amid all the
reactions, no one seemed more
"puzzled, irritated -- and, at times,
absolutely furious" over the beach
movies" than Walt Disney over the
"dirtying" up of his favorite
Mouseketeer. True to his word, Sam never
did put Annette in a bikini. And
then there was the heated dust-up with
star Bette Davis over the use of an F-Bomb
at the end of Bunny
O'Hare. And
his falling out with actress Shelly
Winters after she went on an anti-violence
crusade after filming Bloody
Mama. Or when
the local teamsters held director Martin
Scorsese hostage at gunpoint during the
filming of Boxcar
Bertha over a
wage dispute. And his prickly relationship
with genre producers like Herman Cohen,
Bert I. Gordon and Roger Corman who
probably trusted him about as far as they
could throw him.
Arkoff's
book chronicles his beginnings in showbiz
to his chance meeting with Jim Nicholson,
which led to the formation of American
International Pictures, and the rest
is gonzo filmmaking history. Capitalizing
on the largely ignored youth market, each
picture was a gamble as the box-office
results were the only thing guaranteeing
the next film's production. Following
whatever trend that presented itself, and
then milking it dry, Arkoff admits to
being right about "51% of the
time." The formula worked though, and
worked well for almost four decades.
Covering
AIP's growth in the '50s and the flak it
took for allegedly promoting juvenile
delinquency, to the golden age of the
'60s, with their moderate critical
success, and all the great future
filmmakers and actors that got their big
break with AIP. It continues with the
unraveling of the company after Nicholson
left and it's unfortunate decline in the
'70s, up to Arkoff leaving in the early
'80s, where after it slowly died, and then
finishes up with what he's been doing
since.
The
book gets more into the guts and financing
of the production company than you might
expect. Fear not, though, the majority of
it is spent on goofy stories like those
listed above about the insanity that was
filmmaking AIP style.
Highlighted
with several sections of photos and
promotional materials, the book also has a
nifty guide to all the films AIP ever had
a hand in making or distributing that goes
on for almost twelve pages: I
Was a Teenage Werewolf,
Daddy-O,
Black
Sunday,
Beach
Blanket Bingo,
The
Born Losers,
Coffy
and The
Amityville Horror
to name but a few. And they were
invaluable on the international front,
too, bringing in Japanese monster movies,
Italian sword and sandal epics and Swedish
"art films." They were all over
the map in scale, shape and quality: the
same year they were importing Fellini's La
Dolce Vita,
they were financing Larry Buchanan's Attack
of the the Eye-Creatures.
Go figure.
Arkoff
is frank with the memoir and makes no
bones. He was making crap. He was well
aware it was crap. But as long as it was
profitable crap and kept the business
going, then that crap was good enough for
him.
"I
love movies, and I think I've made some
good ones and nourished some some talent
over the years. I'm very proud of what
Jim Nicholson and I accomplished. We
started with almost no money. We weren't
subsidized by popes, princes or
governments. We built a company in order
to build a future for ourselves. And we
gave a lot of people a lot of enjoyable
Saturday nights in the process."
--
Sam
Arkoff
For
more on Sam Arkoff and the history of AIP,
click on over to 3B
Theater's
tribute to American
International Pictures.
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