Honoring Those ‘Amazing Colossal’ Films : American International Knew How to Please the Crowds at the Drive-Ins

Anybody who thinks all movies should be deep-think masterpieces by visionary auteurs probably won’t be camping out at the Nuart Theatre for its ongoing American International Pictures festival. Max von Sydow won’t be playing chess with Death there.

But other games--less taxing perhaps--are being played. Beach blanket bingo, for example. And Death is certainly not being overlooked. In “The Amazing Colossal Man,” a dyspeptic bald guy with a major attitude problem--he’s having a no hair day--skewers a pint-sized medic with a syringe. In the trailer for “The Amazing Colossal Beast”-- colossal was always big at AIP--a rubberized, vegetabilized serpentoid thingie shorts out on a string of high-tension wires.

Death, in fact, will be a staple on the Nuart’s screen, often accompanied by the high-pitched yowls of nubile dainties or the aarghs of manly men. So will incredible two-headed transplants, saucer men, psycho beatniks, vampires and, most terrible of all, tripped-out hippies!

The Nuart’s AIP series, which opened Sunday with a lineup of beach party and Edgar Allan Poe films, extends through Saturday with 26 more titles and then, beginning July 15, with double-feature Friday late shows through Aug. 19.

AIP was started by Samuel Z. Arkoff and the late James Nicholson in 1954. The company went on to produce, co-finance or distribute more than 500 movies, right up to its last one, Brian DePalma’s 1980 thriller “Dressed to Kill.” Nicholson, who, in the early years came up with many of the company’s classic titles, such as “I Was a Teenage Werewolf,” left the company in 1972 to become an independent producer and died the same year; Arkoff remained until near the end, when a merger with Filmways accelerated the company down the unadvisable path to major studio statehood and prompted his resignation. AIP--as a Filmways subsidiary--became a steroid-pumped David with a Goliath-sized headache and almost two years later was gulped down by Orion.

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Still, Arkoff’s reign was one of the longest and, one of the most comparatively profitable in the annals of American film production. His No. 1 commandment, as reported in his 1991 autobiography “Flying Through Hollywood on the Seat of my Pants,” sums it all up for him: “Thou shalt not put too much money into any one picture.” (Arkoff, most likely preceded by one of his jumbo-sized cigars, will appear in person at the Nuart with surprise AIP alumni on Friday, Saturday and July 27.)

Arkoff and Nicholson recognized an opening in the post-war movie scene when the major studios were forced by a 1948 Supreme Court antitrust decision to divest themselves of the theaters they owned. This opened the way for independent companies to supply pictures for the bottom half of double bills. At the same time, television increasingly was keeping audiences at home. Working-class moviegoers who might ordinarily have flocked to the B-movie programmers were moving into the middle class--and middle age. Arkoff and Nicholson realized that their movies could zero in on the youth audience that the major studios had either ignored or pooh-poohed. Beginning with movies costing $50,000 to $150,000, AIP was soon turning out about 20 a year.

Pretty soon it was offering up its own combinations both at the hard tops and the passion pits. An entire generation fogged the windows of their parents’ cars at drive-ins that were playing pictures like “The Brain Eaters” and “Dragstrip Girl.”

AIP wasn’t the only company targeting youth, but it was the best at what it did because Arkoff and Nicholson kept pace with the kids. Their youth movies virtually eliminated adults from the landscape and, with them, the fuddy-duddy moralizing that clammed up the youth pix of their competitors. And yet, despite what the bluenoses claimed, AIP pictures were, beneath all the lurid ballyhoo, essentially wholesome . That was another one of Arkoff and Nicholson’s trade secrets: Their movies coaxed the rebellions of kids and then made them comfy.

Arkoff and Nicholson pretested movie titles and ad campaigns before making their early films. It’s the kind of business practice that nowadays has helped hammerlock Hollywood into a take-no-chances mediocrity, but for the perpetually undercapitalized AIP, it was a sink-or-swim tactic.

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As the decades rolled, AIP moved lickety-split in and out of fast-buck genres: Rock ‘n’ roll pictures gave way or merged with youth-in-trouble pictures, which then swerved without missing a beat from teen revolt to the more bubble-headed beach party bashes.

The Poe adaptations, almost always starring a hyperfervid Vincent Price (“Garrote them!) and nearly all directed by Roger Corman (practically AIP’s house director), featured plenty of piped-in mist. They were giggly-scary affairs--head-trip movies for the preteens and teens who, five or six years later, would be lurching into the counterculture and primed for AIP hippie-dippie rebellion movies such as “The Trip” and “Psych-Out” and “The Wild Angels” and “Wild in the Streets,” a fantasia where everyone over 35 is shipped to internment camps and pickled with LSD.

AIP was able to jump quickly in and out of these genres because, unlike the major studios, its filmmakers could move right into production before the Zeitgeist trail grew cold.

Something else worked in AIP’s favor as the ‘60s moved into the ‘70s--something that Arkoff and Nicholson probably couldn’t have anticipated: The generation that grew up with AIP movies now wanted to make movies. Unlike the ‘50s film generation in France that became the New Wave, the ‘60s Hollywood film generation embraced the pop commercial mainstream with a vengeance. And because the studios were generally closed to newcomers, a company like AIP was able to siphon an extraordinary talent pool of young filmmakers thirsting to be exploited in exchange for a shot at directing, writing, acting in a real movie.

Picking through the credits of ‘60s AIP movies is like doing an archeological dig for the origins of what Hollywood became a decade later. Francis Coppola directed “Dementia 13.” Robert Towne wrote “Tomb of Ligeia.” Martin Scorsese directed “Boxcar Bertha.” In “What’s Up, Tiger Lily?,” Woody Allen took a Japanese spy movie and dubbed the dialogue so that the film turned into a thriller about the search for the perfect egg-salad recipe. Jack Nicholson starred in “Psych-Out,” which was directed by Richard Rush. Nicholson appeared in other AIP movies as well, and he wrote “The Trip.” Dennis Hopper and Bruce Dern cropped up. Richard Pryor made his first film appearance in “Wild in the Streets.” A very young Robert De Niro was in “Bloody Mama.” An even younger Richard Dreyfuss was the maniacally motormouthed Baby Face Nelson in John Milius’ “Dillinger.”

The success of AIP in its heyday was the success that comes from knowing your limitations. Even the frills in AIP movies were of the no-frills variety. The spirited, corny, wacky hucksterism of the pictures didn’t have much to do with the art of film, but it did have a lot to do with why we’re first attracted to movies as kids. Why bother with the lumbering big-top circus attractions when you can check out the carnival sideshow with the two-headed snake and the bearded lady?

Besides, AIP, despite its huckster rep, was essentially all-of-a-piece with the major studios that looked down on it--the piece was just smaller. When AIP made a horror or youth picture, it was “exploitation.” But when the major studios added on the bucks to their own exploitation fare, the flicks suddenly became inexplicably classy. Even today, there’s nothing much separating a wan film like “Wolf”--starring that AIP vet Jack Nicholson--from “I Was a Teenage Werewolf.” Except moola.

AIP was a triumph of showmanship and shamelessness. The rooming house that Arkoff and Nicholson built may have been single-room occupancy, but, compared to the mansions of Hollywood’s major studios, the graffiti on its walls was a whole lot grabbier.

* The Nuart Theatre is at 11272 Santa Monica Blvd. Complete program information for the AIP festival can be obtained by calling (310) 478-6379 or (310) 473-8530.