American International Pictures: The House That Arkoff Built

Many years ago, I was home sick on a Sunday afternoon and, for whatever reason, lying wrapped up in a blanket on my parents' bed watching their TV seemed like a better idea than the couch.  It was on this nauseously napping afternoon that I first discovered what would become one of my favorite films as well as one of my favorite film studios; the film was Scream Blacula, Scream and the studio was, of course, American International Pictures!


That opening studio logo completely set my expectations for the film I was about to see!  And, little did I know then, AIP had a virtual vault of stuff that I'd dig! 


AIP was cool because they did all kindsa pictures:  Action, Blaxploitation, Comedies, Biker movies, Beach movies, Sci-Fi, and of course, Horror movies.  In the 50s, they even had their hand in Teenage pictures like High School Hellcats and Female Jungle!  While I can't say that I'm too well versed on their Biker and Beach movies (or the Teenage variety) so much, I can definitely kick my feet up with any of their Blaxploitation, Sci-Fi, or Horror titles though!


For me, I first encountered some of the their earlier Horror/Sci-Fi titles when I was 6 or 7yrs old...thank to Elvira:  Mistress of the Dark, I first caught a glimpse of It Conquered The World and the titular Venusian monster (aka: Beulah) at the start of that film!  Around the same time, as Tim Burton's Batman was blowing up the box office, I remember grabbing a copy of Model & Toy Collector magazine that had Batman & Robin on its cover; within its pages, I recall seeing a model kit of the titular monster from War of the Colossal Beast.  Also worth noting, in that same issue of Model & Toy Collector, I came across a photo of a certain heavy metal guitar player holding up his own copy of Detective Comics #1 . . . Metallica's Kirk Hammett.  Funny how there are always elements of the person you'll eventually become criss-crossing throughout life, eh?

AIP, the brainchild of James H. Nicholson and entertainment lawyer Samuel Z. Arkoff, released its first picture The Fast & The Furious in 1955.  The studio later teamed up with Roger Corman throughout the 1960s to mine a series films based on the works of Edgar Alan Poe!  Over the course of eight films, this series cast Horror greats like Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, and Peter Lorre in lurid Poe adaptations!  I'll admit, in my younger days, I kinda turned my nose to these films (and the others with Vincent Price), but I've grown to quite fond of them and learned to appreciate them . . . and their trailers were always awesome!


My main AIP love, though, goes to their work throughout the 1970s -- the early 70s to be exact -- with so many awesome, schlocky titles filling up my DVD shelves!  Everything from Count Yorga:  Vampire (and its awesome sequel) to The Vampire Lovers to the two Dr. Phibes films to "crap" like Frogs and Empire of the Ants -- I love it all!  The two Count Yorga films being some of the earliest 70s entries in the AIP roster, have some genuinely creepy moments and both pack endings that are definite shockers!  The Vincent Price-starring Dr. Phibes films are also all sorts of fun with their proto-Saw murder traps...plus, of course, their main star, who headlined a number of fantastic films for AIP.  Hell, I could write an entire blog entry based on just Vincent Price's AIP films!

 MGM may have had John Shaft and Warners had Super Fly, but AIP had Hammer, Slaughter, Black Caesar, Coffy, Foxy Brown, and even Truck Turner (all with some of the wittiest dialogue/insults ever committed to film)!  Speaking of Pam Grier, who doesn't want to cheer when, in Coffy, as she levels a shotgun at a drug kingpin's face, point-blank, she declares "This is the end of your rotten life, you muthafuckin' dope pusher!" Come ON!  So awesome!  I'd be a fool to not also mention Blacula in the same breath here; as that original film (its sequel, too) has some awesomely creepy moments and make-up effects - along with a fine script and solid acting from William Marshall and Thalmus Rasulala, which make it easily rank high above in the subgenre!  Let's also not forget about their other Blaxploitation/Horror hybrids like Abby, JD's Revenge, and of course Sugar Hill! 

Straight up Horror-wise though, AIP did it all . . . they imported the Italian trio of Mario Bava titles:  Black Sunday, Black Sabbath, and Baron Blood (again, those trailers!!!) . . . released their share of giant monster movies like Tentacles and, of course, Food of the Gods.  They even had a hand in pseudo-Slasher films as well like the criminally underrated Blood & Lace (for my money, it predates both Black Christmas and Halloween while laying out the basics for the subgenre) and a personal favorite in Deranged -- a film, I've already covered here on Constriction Pictures!








Towards the end of the 1970s, AIP started to branch out from Horror (although, they still released drive-in fare like The Town That Dreaded Sundown, Squirm, The Incredible Melting Man, and even an early entry in the Italian Cannibal sub-genre like Lost Cannibal World), shifting their attention to more "mainstream" and serious releases such as the two sequels to Walking Tall, the excellent revenge thriller Rolling Thunder, and of course, Force 10 From Navarone (yet another AIP title I'd seen as a kid and didn't know it!).  In fact, one of their last, notable Horror releases was The Amityville Horror in 1979.

Before the studio closed its doors in 1980 (after being bought up by Filmways, Inc. in '79 -- itself later renamed Orion Pictures Corporation in '82), it introduced US audiences to a little Australian film called Mad Max, which it picked up for distribution and redubbed with "American" accents.  Personally, I think that's a great final note for a studio like AIP; they made their mark in decades of drive-in schlock, dabbled in other genres and then, with one last push, released a film that is still widely discussed today even by mainstream audiences -- no thanks to the Academy Award-winning Mad Max:  Fury Road!  Seriously, it's pretty impressive for a company that churned out with drive-in trash and schlocky camp material throughout the 50s, 60s, and 70s! 

One of the benefits of AIP being bought out and falling under the Orion Pictures banner was its eventual relationship with MGM.  Today the AIP library (save for a few titles that remain unavailable due to copious amounts of legal red tape -- It Conquered The World, I Was A Teenage Werewolf, The Amazing Colossal Man, and War of the Colossal Beast in particular) is owned by Orion Pictures, which is a subsidiary of MGM.  A good deal of the catalog was released in the late 90s/early 00s under MGM's Midnite Movies banner on VHS and DVD (both in single formats and even, cool double feature sets) . . . most of these titles are technically OOP, but they still pop up on the secondary market at affordable prices.  Also, Kino Lorber and Shout! Factory (thanks for The Incredible Melting Man on Blu-ray, yo!) have been steadily releasing several of these titles to Blu-ray, which has worked in driving down the asking prices of some of the old Midnite Movie sets.


In the early 00s, man . . . it was a glorious time to be a Horror fan and one of the best reasons was because of MGM's Midnite Movies series!  I remember anxiously waiting for annual "Halloween Movies" lists at the video store I worked at and immediately getting excited for impending Midnite Movies titles that would be listed usually for release either late Summer or early September.  Naturally, a good deal of these titles were of the AIP library and fairly easy to track down, though I didn't grab 'em all if I wasn't familiar with the films themselves.  Today, I keep a list in my phone of the entire collection (deleting ones I already have) just in case I come across any while I'm and about! 

Sugar Hill (1974)

In 1997, I obtained a very crucial book for my collection called Clive Barker's A-Z of Horror.  Compiled by Stephen Jones as a companion piece to a BBC-TV series, the book is an alphabetical treasure trove of information for Horror fans young and old.  Of course, I immediately skipped right to the "Z" section to see what was said about zombie movies and whether or not George Romero was represented with gusto (he is -- I recall photos of both Night of the Living Dead and Day of the Dead).  However, there were also two hidden gems introduced to me via that chapter:  Ken Wiederhorn's 1977 underwater Nazi zombie classic Shock Waves and American International's Sugar Hill.


Although it took me quite a few years (nearly 10 at least, if I remember correctly) to finally see Sugar Hill in all its Blaxploitation Horror hybrid glory -- the film is currently available on blu-ray from Kino/Lorber and on MOD DVD-R from MGM -- it definitely didn't disappoint from those early images in Barker's book!


Sugar Hill tells the story of Diana "Sugar" Hill who, mourning the murder of her club-owner boyfriend, uses Voodoo and zombies to exact her revenge on those responsible.  Payback unfolds almost in the vein of something like Kill Bill as Sugar and her "zombie hit men" pick off the bad guys one by one until their boss, Morgan, gets his own comeuppance.  All the while, one of Sugar's ex-flames, a detective, is hot on the trail of the mysterious voodoo killings, with all signs pointing to her.

Like all of AIP's output in the early 1970s, Sugar Hill is truly a product of its time; there's minimal production values, creepy (if not "cheesy") make-up effects, casual racism, dated costumes and hairstyles, topped off with a funky soundtrack...in short, it's just so cool!  While it may not be quite on par with say, Blacula (or its sequel) or Foxy Brown, it's definitely head and shoulders above Blackenstein and Penitentiary . . . it hovers in its own sort of space which, ultimately, makes it stand out and shine.

Marki Bey (of Starsky & Hutch fame) stars as Sugar and she's great throughout; she goes from mournful lover to cool and collected business woman to puppet master dishing out punishment with ease.  One of the cooler aspects of Bey's performance is whenever she's dealing with her zombies or setting up a trap for the bad guys, her long, straight hair is replaced by a crucial Afro hairstyle.  Early scenes where Sugar contacts Voodoo priestess Mama Maitresse (Zara Cully from The Jeffersons) and conjures up ruler of the dead Baron Samedi (played by The Dukes of Hazzard's Don Pedro Colley) show Bey's dramatic range and she yearns for nothing but violent revenge.

Marki Bey owns the titular role of Sugar Hill

Don Pedro Colly as Baron Samedi

As Sugar's nemesis Morgan, Count Yorga himself, Robert Quarry is as excellent as he ever was in an AIP film.  Quarry plays Morgan like a typical gangster bad guy seen on countless TV shows in the 70s and 80s; he knows what he wants and will stop at nothing to get it, all the while bossing around his henchmen and dumb as bricks trophy girlfriend. While it's never really made clear exactly why Morgan wants the Club Haiti (this is why Sugar's boyfriend, Langston, is murdered), Quarry still plays him straight.  Since the film is set in Louisiana, Quarry affects Morgan with a bit of a Southern twang that makes him somewhat charming.  

Robert Quarry, as Morgan, tries to intimidate "Sugar".

Valentine, Sugar's former beau turned police detective, is played by Scream Blacula, Scream's Richard Lawson (in one of his early roles).  As the bodies start piling up, Valentine digs deeper and deeper to uncover the truth behind all the voodoo murders.  Lawson plays Valentine as a man with a job to do, but also with the hope of rekindling with Sugar, as he dishes "friendly" advice/banter with her about the murders and seems to implicate her role in them. 

Richard Lawson as Valentine

At the helm as director is Paul Maslansky (notable producer of the Police Academy franchise), who does a serviceable job here in is sole Director credit. One of the film's weaknesses is that the revenge scenes feel a little out of place with the rest of the film; again, the change in Sugar's hairstyle for these sequences is puzzling, too.  Each murder set-up feels like a vignette of sorts with Baron Samedi appearing in a sort of disguise and Sugar revealing herself in some ghoulish manner that would be right at home in an AIP-era Vincent Price picture.  There's also no real ending to the film as, once all of the bad guys are dead, Baron Samedi takes his part of the brokered deal and Sugar is left all by herself in the swamp . . . with only the slightest indication that she and Valentine might get back together.  There's no real wrap-up with the Club Haiti either or any resolution to the murders on the police side. 

Zara Cully as Mama Matriesse

The real reason to check out this movie though is, of course, the zombies themselves.  They look cool all covered in cobwebs and white/gray blue paint that accentuates their muscular structure.  The only odd thing is their silver, ping pong ball eyes . . . hey, two out of three ain't bad, right?  Since these aren't the Romero type of zombie, these hit men uses tools and don't eat their victims -- but they do quite a few numbers on Morgan's hapless henchmen including decapitation, stabbing, strangling, and window-smashing!  Granted, on blu-ray and DVD, I'm sure the cleaned up picture quality probably isn't doing the zombie special make-up effects any favors, but this is an easy pothole to overlook.  There are also some cool makeups on the dead bad guys when they show up in the last real as re-animated corpses themselves!


They're coming to get you, Morgan!

Morgan's dead henchmen return!

In the end though, Sugar Hill is an enjoyable -- if not underrated -- entry in the early 1970s Blaxploitation subgenre.  It's got everything where it counts and deserves to be seen by more people!