The art of horror movies, from a king of the genre

“WHAT, are you gonna stop me?” That was Max Rosenberg’s retort after being asked if the management of the building had given him permission to smoke mini-cigars in his cluttered fourth-floor office during broad daylight. “They don’t say anything. They’re afraid of me,” he explains.

You better believe it. After 60 years in the movie game, first as an art-movie distributor, then as a producer of such B-movie horror classics as “Tales From the Crypt” and “Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors,” Rosenberg long ago stopped being afraid of anyone. The feisty 88-year-old producer (“I’m not 88, I’m almost 89,” he boasts) may walk with a cane these days, but he isn’t afraid to speak his mind on any number of subjects. Those would include today’s movies (“ ‘franchise’ is such a disgusting word, don’t you think?”), his onetime partner, the late Joseph E. Levine (“I was fascinated by him, but not for too long”) and producer Joel Silver, who revived “Tales From the Crypt” but earned Rosenberg’s enmity by making him cool his heels on a set and then giving him the brushoff -- or as Rosenberg put it: “The meeting was over so fast I’m still waiting for him to finish his first sentence.”

Rosenberg has been back in action in recent days, thanks to the American debut of “Langrishe, Go Down,” a Harold Pinter drama starring Judi Dench and Jeremy Irons initially broadcast on the BBC in 1978. Another art-house effort, “The Wannsee Conference,” a German-made reenactment of the 1942 Berlin meeting at which the Nazis approved plans for what became the Final Solution, will play Aug. 2 and 3 at 11 a.m. at the Laemmle Fairfax. Rosenberg will be on stage Aug. 12 at the Egyptian Theater when the American Cinematheque presents “The House That Dripped Blood” and “Horror Hotel,” both products of his Amicus Films horror-film factory.

It would be folly to imagine Rosenberg resting on his laurels. Even though his output has trailed off in recent years, his desk is stacked with scripts and outlines for projects, which include an Alan Plater adaptation of Al Alvarez’s novel “Day of Atonement” and an original script called “The Black Madonna.” But even if he never gets another project off the ground, his reputation as a resourceful producer with a keen eye for talent is safe, at least among B-movie fanatics.

“Max is a real gentleman who’s incredibly erudite and funny, and who managed to make some very good movies,” says director Joe Dante, a fan of Rosenberg’s films since he was in high school. “His horror films were never tied to a formula.... They felt classy without giving the impression that anyone was slumming.”

Born in 1914, Rosenberg grew up in the Bronx, where his father, as he likes to tell it, was a particularly unsuccessful furrier. “He’d cut five suits and one had three arms and another was only fit for a midget. Everyone who worked in his shop had the same nickname -- meshugeneh,” he recalls over lunch at Canter’s Deli, a favorite haunt that’s on the site of the old Esquire Theater, where Rosenberg saw the first Los Angeles run of David Lean’s “Brief Encounter.”

Wearing a racing cap, tie and black glasses with frames as big as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s biceps, Rosenberg looks like one of those dapper track habitues at the $2 betting windows at Del Mar, except he’s more likely to be reading Proust or Eliot than the Daily Racing Form. A widower, Rosenberg arrives at lunch with his “dearest companion,” Arlene, a vivacious woman who doubles as his designated driver. They behave like kids with a schoolyard crush, as Max whispers various witticisms to Arlene that are clearly not meant for public consumption.

As a filmmaker, Rosenberg did his business at Hollywood’s $2 window as well, making movies on budgets that wouldn’t cover “The Matrix’s” catering bills. In 1943, Rosenberg had his first success, spending $1,500 on unwanted newsreel footage and fashioning it into a compilation hit called “The Good Old Days.” In the course of selling the film to exhibitors, Rosenberg met Levine, a fabled hustler who was involved with every type of movie from muscle-man epics like “Hercules” to “The Graduate.” The two men formed a distribution company that handled such art-house imports as “The Blue Angel” and “Open City.”

Eventually they went their separate ways. “Our partnership ended with a whimper, not a bang, largely because Joe owed me $30,000,” Rosenberg recalls. “Joe’s biggest contribution to the film industry was the 28-course meal.” But the alliance left a mark. When Rosenberg moved to London in the mid-1950s and teamed up with writer-producer Milton Subotsky, the team took a similar high-low road approach, mixing their low-budget horror films with classier fare.

Early on they made a string of music films that included “Rock, Rock, Rock!,” one of the first great rock movies, and “It’s Trad, Dad!,” a rock ‘n’ jazz performance film directed by the young Richard Lester. Their first horror hit, “The Curse of Frankenstein,” cost $500,000 and made $7 million. In 1964, their new company, Amicus Film Productions, debuted with “Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors,” which spawned a decade of low-budget horror successes.

Amicus’ best horror films used an anthology form of storytelling. Unlike the horror films that went out under the British Hammer label in the same era, they were set in the present, not the past, giving them a more modern sensibility. “They all open with someone prowling through a cemetery with a swirl of fog and an ominous score,” explains Dennis Bartok, programmer at the American Cinematheque. “Then four guys climb onto a train and you go, ‘Uh-oh, this doesn’t look good.’ They were terrifying in a way that the Hammer films, safely set in the 19th century, weren’t. As a kid, I watched a lot of them on TV, standing in a doorway because I was so scared.”

Rosenberg never spent a dime when he could get by on a nickel, gave a host of young actors their first breaks and had a carny barker’s knack for marketing gimmickry. Amicus’ “City of Dead” was renamed “Horror Hotel” for American audiences after Rosenberg dreamed up the poster’s tag line: “Just Ring for Doom Service.” When I naively asked about the underlying meaning of another title, “Scream and Scream Again,” Rosenberg -- who polished off two double espressos during lunch -- almost dropped his cup. “It doesn’t mean anything,” he barked. “I just made it up. Untruth in advertising is always very helpful.” Likewise another Amicus hit, “Terrornauts.” “It was a terrible picture but a good title,” he says. “The only ‘terrornauts’ were the unions, who’d only give us overtime if we kissed their backsides.”

Rosenberg also had his ups and downs with Jack Warner, whose studio released many of his early films. When Rosenberg pitched the mogul a film about call girls, Warner loudly proclaimed that Warner Bros. would never soil its reputation by making a film about pimps and whores. “Two years later I came back with the same exact story, except I told Jack it was a picture about mental health,” Rosenberg recalls. “Jack said go ahead and make it. He had an enthusiasm for filmmaking, but I don’t know if that’s a virtue or not. I mean, Hitler had an enthusiasm for architecture, didn’t he?”

Many young actors and directors got their breaks in Amicus films. “Dr. Terror” has a baby-faced Donald Sutherland, who got $5,400 for the job and a free ride to work every morning with Rosenberg. “The Mind of Mr. Soames” has the young Terence Stamp, while Ian McKellen makes his film debut in the 1968 film, “Thank You All Very Much.”

Not all the films have held up over the years, but “The Mind of Mr. Soames,” a cerebral sci-fi thriller, has many critical admirers, as does “Tales From the Crypt.” Rosenberg was delighted to have it revived on HBO, even though he’s still steaming about his dealings with Silver, who he says -- insult of all insults -- “acted more indecently than even Joe Levine.” Silver, vacationing in Europe, responded through his publicist: “Who is Max Rosenberg? I never met him.”

It’s no small accomplishment getting 50 films released, nearly all of them made on minuscule budgets. “It was a very frugal operation,” says Rosenberg. “I always had to measure what I was getting versus what I was paying. The only perks I ever got were two suits that didn’t fit Terence Stamp.”

When you’re 88, everyone asks for the secrets of your longevity. Rosenberg’s answer: “Cowardice, what else? There’s only one way to avoid the slings and arrows of fate -- by ducking. I like working. Come back in 10 years and I’ll still be here.”

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“The Big Picture” runs every Tuesday in Calendar. If you have questions, ideas or criticism, e-mail them to patrick.goldstein@latimes.com.