I grew up loving monster movies, so naturally, I own and have read both Roger Corman’s book How I Made 100 Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime, and Samuel Arkoff’s book Flying Through Hollywood by the Seat of My Pants, and while they’re great, I still think someone ought to write the definitive history of American International Pictures, and call it: Judge a Movie by its Poster: The American International Pictures Story. I say this because that’s how they used to get their movies made, according to them. Apparently, Jim Nicholson would come up with an exploitation-y-sounding title, like: I Was a Teenage Mummy, or something like that, and then they’d get someone to make a flashy poster for the movie, whereupon they would take this poster out to meetings with financiers to try to get the money to make the movie with, and only after this would they actually go out and hire someone to write the story and a script. And that’s just amazing! So while other people spent years honing their craft, etc., these guys just dove in and got stuff made with good old-fashioned huckstering and snake-oil salesmanship! Hilarious! (Plus, most of the current great luminary directors got their start there, learning how to get stuff done on-time and on-budget {and then instantly forgetting that part once they “made it big”!}.)
And I say that, because the movie was never anywhere near as good as the poster was, but it didn’t even matter, because these guys were smart enough to understand that kids just wanted an excuse to get out of the house and out from under the watchful-eyes of their parents and guardians! And by making silly cheap-o horror movies, they could be pretty sure that no old people would be there to see the movie and spoil the kids’ fun anyway! So it was perfect! And while other studios made enormous big-budget epics and blockbuster-hopefuls, trying to compete with television, these guys made even more profit by making schlock on a shoestring because of their better-understanding of the movie market. And that’s just a great underdog story! Art, schmart: They were smart! (Actually, maybe that should be the book’s title!)
Here’s the Wikipedia page for American International Pictures, so you can “read all about it!”:
