What are Your Favorite films Made by American International Pictures?

[BAYLOR]

They competed with Hammer pictures and they too made some noteworthy Science Fiction and Horror films

Which ones are your favorites ?

 

[dask]

Not sure I have one. Whenever I went to the movies and saw it was American International I got a sick feeling in my gut. To my memory they were universally disappointing. Unless The St. Valentine's Day Massacre back in the sixties was AI. That one I liked.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

This is a big topic.

I enjoy the Roger Corman/Vincent Price*/Edgar Allan Poe** films very much.

I also think that the cycle of films including I Was a Teenage Werewolf, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, Blood of Dracula***, and How to Make a Monster is enjoyable, despite its evident limitations.

I have fun with the rock 'n' roll/drag racing movies of the 1950's, as well as the monster movies of the same time period.

I can get some laughs out of the beach movie series, too.

Some of the non-Poe films from Roger Corman are fun to watch. The Undead, Teenage Cave Man, and The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent**** are odd enough to hold my interest. X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes isn't bad at all.

Then there are all those hippies/motorcycle gang flicks of the 1960's, as well as oddities like Gas-s-s-s and Wild in the Streets.

I can't ignore the foreign films that AIP edited and dubbed, even if they did mess up the originals to some extent, winding up with things like Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet***** and Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women***** (both from the Soviet film Planeta Bur), Battle Beyond the Sun (from the Soviet film Nebo Zovyot), Queen of Blood (from the Soviet film Mechte Navstrechu) and Voyage to the End of the Universe (from the Czech film Ikarie XB-1.) If nothing else, these gave me a look at the very interesting SF films made behind the Iron Curtain.

(In another category completely is What's Up, Tiger Lily?, Woody Allen's new soundtrack transforming a Japanese spy movie into an outrageous comedy.)

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*Who starred in all of them except The Premature Burial, with Ray Milland.

**The Haunted Palace, despite a title taken from Poe, is actually an adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

***Which, if there were any justice in the world, should have been called I Was a Teenage Vampire.

****Greatest title ever.

*****Two different movies, although they share a very large amount of the same footage.

 

[dask]

I forgot about the Corman Poe films. Liked those quite a bit. But around the late sixties/early seventies I could pretty much do without them. Might feel differently if I rewatched some of them today.
Didn't know or had forgotten the Woody Allen film was AI. Laughed my head off, as I recall.

 

[BAYLOR]

Masque of the Red Death 1964 With Vincent Price The man who wrote the screenplay for this one was Charles Beaumont who had written some of the moppet memorable Twilight Zone episodes.

 

[BAYLOR]

I forgot about the Corman Poe films. Liked those quite a bit. But around the late sixties/early seventies I could pretty much do without them. Might feel differently if I rewatched some of them today.

Those were wonderful films

The Fall of the House of Usher 1960 with Vincent Price . The screenplay for that film written by Richard Matheson.

 

[Nozzle Velocity]

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) probably tops my list.

They made tons of movies, mostly bad, all fun to watch. Some things you can't unsee, like Corman's Last Woman on Earth (1960) where two grown men in a boat attack each other using fish as hand weapons. His Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957) has possibly the best monster of all time. Check the stats. He's a giant mutated crab, gang leader of other giant mutated crabs. He uses mind control on humans. He uses telepathy for nothing but pure trash talk. He's proficient in the strategic placement of dynamite. Deal with that, Ridley Scott!

 

[Nozzle Velocity]

...Queen of Blood (from the Soviet film Mechte Navstrechu)...

Remember Dennis Hopper in that one?

 

[Vince W]

I had to look this up. They had a long list of films, but I've seen hardly any of them, but I did enjoy C.H.O.M.P.S. and Mad Max. Force 10 from Navarone is massively disappointing.

 

[BAYLOR]

I had to look this up. They had a long list of films, but I've seen hardly any of them, but I did enjoy C.H.O.M.P.S. and Mad Max. Force 10 from Navarone is massively disappointing.

I kind of liked Force 10 From Navarone.

 

[BAYLOR]

Invasion of the Saucer Men 1957 This movie is hilariously funny .

 

[KGeo777]

It Conquered the World/Invasion of the Saucer Men/The Pit and the Pendulum and other Price Corman Poe films/X-The Man With the X-ray Eyes/Die, Monster Die! (I think they were only distributor of it)/Wargods of the Deep/Panic in Year Zero!/Scream and Scream Again (Amicus co-production)/Frogs!/Blacula/Count Yorga...

I liked Force 10 From Navarone. Harrison Ford wasn't playing a goofball hero type, interesting contrast to his more famous characters. Also has Edward "the Jackal" Fox as the explosives expert.

The People That Time Forgot was the weaker of the Forgot series. The first was all Amicus.

I'd like to consider the Legend of Hell House an honorary AIP since it is a James Nicholson film.

 

[Al Jackson]

In another category completely is What's Up, Tiger Lily?, Woody Allen's new soundtrack transforming a Japanese spy movie into an outrageous comedy.)

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/QUOTE]

I never knew that! Well then What's Up, Tiger Lily? could be the best thing AI ever distributed!

 

[Al Jackson]

I always thought It Conquered the World was one of the most goofy. With Peter Graves, Lee van Cleef and Beverly Garland two actors who become well known later and Garland who was a very good actress who never got a good break in the movies but did well in TV later.
Every major and minor character , except for Graves, dies!
And ..... It did not conquer the world!
Title should have been It Conquered a Small Cave in Southern California and Showed Stock Footage of Things Stopping and Stuff.
That would have fit in a marquee right smart!!

 

[BAYLOR]

I always thought It Conquered the World was one of the most goofy. With Peter Graves, Lee van Cleef and Beverly Garland two actors who become well known later and Garland who was a very good actress who never got a good break in the movies but did well in TV later.
Every major and minor character , except for Graves, dies!
And ..... It did not conquer the world!
Title should have been It Conquered a Small Cave in Southern California and Showed Stock Footage of Things Stopping and Stuff.
That would have fit in a marquee right smart!!

And in 1966 it was remade into the even goofier Zontar the Thing From Venus.

 

[Al Jackson]

And in 1966 it was remade into the even goofier Zontar the Thing From Venus.

O man one that made by Larry (Mars Needs Women) Buchanan who was only 2nd to Ed Wood in the cheaper than cheap worse-than-a-Z-movie Z movie maker!!
AI was failing in the mid 1960's and decided that it would make TV movies to survive. Alas the picked Buchanan to do some of the films. Zontar was a shot-for-shot remake of It Conquered the World ! Except on a cheaper budget with a more wooden cast of actors. In fact, John Agar , who could have stared in It Conquered the World now finally got the Peter Graves role! It is not only goofy but it is also awful!

 

[KGeo777]

and Beverly Garland two actors who become well known later and Garland who was a very good actress who never got a good break in the movies but did well in TV later.

Yeah she is one of my favorites. Telling the alien she is coming to kill him was one of the best moments.
The "carrot" alien itself has a slight resemblance in the face to the Predator....

 

[KGeo777]

The one tv AIP film that always got shown in my area was In the Year 2889.
Goofy film but I like it.

 

[BAYLOR]

O man one that made by Larry (Mars Needs Women) Buchanan who was only 2nd to Ed Wood in the cheaper than cheap worse-than-a-Z-movie Z movie maker!!
AI was failing in the mid 1960's and decided that it would make TV movies to survive. Alas the picked Buchanan to do some of the films. Zontar was a shot-for-shot remake of It Conquered the World ! Except on a cheaper budget with a more wooden cast of actors. In fact, John Agar , who could have stared in It Conquered the World now finally got the Peter Graves role! It is not only goofy but it is also awful!

I didn't see one hint of acting in Zontar.

 

[Al Jackson]

I didn't see one hint of acting in Zontar.

John Agar's only claim to fame was that he was Shirley Temple's first husband.
He was not actually bad in small supporting roles , as long as they were small! He was in 3 John Ford movies ,Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Sands of Iwo Jima.
He took acting lessons but they never took!
He found his groove Revenge of the Creature (1955)…. after that is became the king of the Z film.

Funny thing was that Shirley Temple , who divorced him in 1950, never could shake the childhood movies. She was a good enough actress but quit film in 1950 , did do TV work for some years but was never given much in the way of roles.