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"On one of my European trips, I
flew to Denmark to look at a rough
cut of Reptillicus.
By that point, AIP had already given
Sidney Pink $100,000 to help him
make the picture. But after seeing
not much more than a reel of the
rough cut, I shut off the projector,
and leaned back in my seat with a
horrified expression on my face --
and not because the prehistoric
reptile was so frightening.
"My
God, Sidney, what have you
done?!"
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That
excerpt taken from Samuel Z. Arkoff's
autobiography, Flying Through
Hollywood by the Seat of My Pants,
recounts the author's
legendary dust-up with fellow producer,
Sidney Pink, over his Danish actors
trying to speak English phonetically
with disastrous -- albeit hilarious,
results in Reptillicus;
the only Danish giant-monster movie
ever made.
And
that's just the tip of the iceberg:
When
Annette Funicello slipped into a
two-piece bathing suit and had Frankie
Avalon chase her around the lifeguard
stations in Beach
Party,
the major studios snickered. But amid
all the reactions, no one seemed more "puzzled,
irritated -- and, at times, absolutely
furious" over the beach
movies than Walt Disney, due mostly to
the "dirtying" up of his
favorite Mouseketeer. True to his
word, Arkoff and his partner, Jim
Nicholson, never did put Annette in a
bikini. And
then there was the heated dust-up with
star Bette Davis over the use of an
F-Bomb at the end of Bunny
O'Hare.
Or his falling out with actress Shelly
Winters when she went on an
anti-violence crusade after filming Bloody
Mama.
Or when the local teamsters held
director Martin Scorsese hostage at
gunpoint during the filming of Boxcar
Bertha
over a wage dispute. And his prickly
relationship with genre producers like
Herman Cohen, Bert I. Gordon and Roger
Corman, who all probably trusted the
cigar-chomping and self-aggrandizing mini-movie-mogul about
as far as they could throw him.
Along
with all these anecdotes, Arkoff's
book chronicles his beginnings in
showbiz from his chance meeting with
Nicholson, which led to their formation
of American International Pictures,
and the rest is gonzoidal filmmaking
history. Capitalizing on the largely
ignored youth market, each picture was
a gamble as the resulting box-office receipts
were the only thing guaranteeing the
next film's production. Following
whatever trend that presented itself,
and then milking it dry, Arkoff admits
to being right about "51% of the
time." The formula worked,
though, and worked well enough to keep
the independent company going for
almost four decades.
While
covering AIP's growth in the '50s, and
the flak it took for allegedly
promoting juvenile delinquency, the
book then continues with the golden age of the '60s, with their
moderate critical success and all the
great future filmmakers and actors
that got their big break with AIP, and
then the dark times, with the
unraveling of the company after
Nicholson left, the good cop to
Arkoff's bad cop, and it's unfortunate
decline in the '70s -- up to Arkoff
leaving in the early '80s, where after
it slowly died, and then finishes up
with what he's been doing since.
Though
the book gets more into the guts and
financing of the production company
than you might expect, fear not, the
majority of it is spent on goofy
stories like those listed above, all
concerning the general insanity that
was filmmaking American International style.
Highlighted
with several sections of photos and
promotional materials, the book also
has a nifty guide to all the films
American International had a hand in
making or distributing that goes on
for almost twelve pages: I
Was a Teenage Werewolf, Daddy-O, Black
Sunday,
Beach
Blanket Bingo,
The
Born Losers, Coffy
and The
Amityville Horror
to name but a few. And they were
invaluable on the international front,
too, bringing in Japanese monster
movies, Italian sword and sandal
epics, and several Swedish art
films. All over the map in
scale, shape and quality, the same
year they were importing Fellini's
La
Dolce Vita,
Arkoff and Co. were financing Larry
Buchanan's
Attack
of the the Eye-Creatures.
Go figure.
As
an author, Arkoff is frank with his
memoir and makes no bones. He was
making crap, and he was well aware
that it was crap. But as long as it
was profitable crap and kept the
business going, then that kinda crap was
good enough for him.
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"I love movies, and I think
I've made some good ones and
nourished some some talent over the
years. I'm very proud of what Jim
Nicholson and I accomplished. We
started with almost no money. We
weren't subsidized by popes, princes
or governments. We built a company
in order to build a future for
ourselves. And we gave a lot of
people a lot of enjoyable Saturday
nights in the process."
--
Sam Arkoff
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