How a theater owner and a lawyer made movies for teenagers

American International Pictures was a film company founded in 1954 by a former movie theater owner and an entertainment lawyer, and it made its pictures for teenagers, an audience the big Hollywood studios served poorly. While adults stayed home with television, AIP sold horror, hot rods and monsters to young people at the drive-in. TCM calls it the largest and most financially successful independent production and distribution company of the 1950s and 1960s.

Relay has at least 8 AIP releases made between 1954 and 1960. Five of them are below.

How did it start?

James H. Nicholson, a former movie theater owner, and Samuel Z. Arkoff, an entertainment lawyer, formed American Releasing Corporation in 1954. It was renamed American International Pictures two years later. The story usually told is that the two met over a dispute about a film title. Nicholson was the creative partner who dreamed up titles; Arkoff ran the business.

Arkoff later said of the early 1950s, "Thousands of theaters went under... That's when we moved in." Television had drawn adults away from the movies, so AIP aimed at the young.

How did AIP make a film?

Backwards, by Hollywood standards. AIP often began with a title and a poster, tested the idea on audiences, and only then had a script written. It packaged its films as double features of two new pictures, aimed especially at drive-ins, and it bought foreign films and reworked or dubbed them for American audiences.

The method also trained talent. AIP gave early work to Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Peter Fonda, Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma and Francis Ford Coppola before they were famous. In the 1970s the major studios moved into its market, AIP turned to costlier films such as The Amityville Horror, and in 1979 the company was sold to Filmways.

Which AIP films are on Relay?

The Fast and the Furious (1954)

Its producer, Roger Corman, the low-budget filmmaker, turned down other distributors and took it to Nicholson and Arkoff, who gave him a three-picture deal. TCM calls that deal pivotal in launching the company. The actor John Ireland stars as a trucker wrongly accused of murder who kidnaps a racing driver, played by the actor Dorothy Malone, and heads for Mexico in her Jaguar. Ireland also co-directed. The 2001 hit of the same name licensed only the title.

Action/Adventure

Hot Rod Girl (1956)

AIP released it in 1956. A police detective played by the actor Chuck Connors backs a new drag strip so teenagers will stop racing on city streets, until a bully goads them back onto the roads. Frank Gorshin, later the Riddler on the 1960s Batman TV series, has an early role as a racer called Flat Top.

Romance

The Screaming Skull (1958)

AIP sent it out in August 1958 on a double bill with Terror from the Year 5000. It opens with a narrator over a slowly opening coffin, warning that the film may kill you and promising a burial service to anyone who dies of fright. A card inside reads "Reserved for You." The story follows a newlywed who comes to her husband's house, where his first wife died, and starts hearing screams and finding skulls. The actor Alex Nicol directed it.

Horror

Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959)

Giant leeches in a cave under a Florida swamp drag people underwater and drain their blood, and a game warden goes after them. It was produced by Gene Corman, Roger's brother, and AIP paired it with A Bucket of Blood, a horror comedy that is also on Relay.

Horror

Circus of Horrors (1960)

A British film that AIP brought to American screens in 1960. The actor Anton Diffring plays a plastic surgeon on the run who takes over a circus, turns disfigured women into its stars and kills any who try to leave. The actor Donald Pleasence plays the circus owner. TCM groups it with Horrors of the Black Museum and Peeping Tom in a "Sadian Trilogy" of British films that pushed horror toward stronger sex and violence. It was shot in color by Douglas Slocombe, later Oscar-nominated for Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Horror

Where to go next

• For an older studio that lived on cheap series pictures, see Monogram Pictures.
• For what a double bill was and why cheap films filled it, see What is a B movie?.