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!
When I was a kid, I had an issue of 'Cracked' magazine and there were a bunch of silly photos in it; most notably one of an old guy holding a femur bone above his head as if he was preparing to whack someone with it. I had no idea where this pic was from or what it was really of, but the crazed expression on that man's face never left.
Years later, as I fell deeper into the Horror genre, I discovered the classics like Texas Chain Saw Massacre and, from there of course, read up on the true story that inspired Tobe Hooper to tell the tale of Leatherface . . .
Ed Gein.
For those of you who aren't familiar with the true story, Gein was a farmer cum handyman in Plainfield, WI. On the surface, he was a loveable neighbor and good friend, if not just a little "off", but no one around him seemed to think much of it. Gein was your basic mama's boy, holding a deep devotion to his fanatical mother and caring for her as she grew ill, right up until the time of her death. What Gein's friends and neighbors didn't know was that he later dug up his mother's corpse and kept it in a sealed off, preserved, area of his farmhouse. This, of course, is only the beginning of Ed Gein's story...
He was the first true American Psycho, if you will. In fact, Robert Bloch based his original novel, Psycho, on the events that unfolded surrounding Gein's 1957 arrest for grave-robbery and murder.
When Psycho was released in 1960, it became a huge hit, yet there were still elements that glossed over some of the more grizzly facts of the Gein case. In 1974, that all changed when co-directors Jeff Gillen and Alan Ormsby (both of Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things fame) unleashed Deranged from American International.
Deranged is the story of Ezra Cobb, a farmer cum handyman in an unnamed area of the North American midwest (think Wisconsin). Cobb lives with his invalid mother who has a very twisted sense of life, offering advice to her well-meaning and bedside caring only son. Upon finally losing his mother, Ezra Cobb goes from loveable neighbor and good friend who might seem a little "off" to a pure monster.
Following the Gein story very closely, Ezra eventually digs up his mother's corpse, bringing it back to her bed, where he continues every day life with it as if she never died. Eventually, he realizes she's decomposing and in need of repairs, which sets him off on grave-robbing and, soon in need of something a little more fresh, murder.
In the role of Ezra Cobb, character actor Roberts Blossom (he's probably most famously known as "Old Man Marley" in the first Home Alone movie) IS his character. Everything about him feels real, if not not slightly comic bookish. He perfectly plays up the friendly simpleton angle of the character in the first half of the film before slipping into the more monstrous places the character goes by the film's end.
The other standout from the film is the early special effects work by the legendary Tom Savini; this was his second collaboration with Alan Ormsby (Deathdream being the first in 1972, with Savini as Ormsby’s assistant). Savini handles the various blood-spilling with an expertise that paved the way for his success and stature in the 80s. Whether it’s buckets of blood, recently exhumed corpses, a drum made from a belly button, or even a dead skin mask, Savini delivers the goods here!
I first saw Deranged via a bootleg VHS tape I purchased at a Chiller Theatre show in the late 90s and, despite the shady quality, the film delivered. In fact, as with most of these types of films, the quality added to its charm. Finally getting it in a digital format some years later only strengthened the film’s impact, as it’s plain to see that more people need to discover this film!
Deranged is pure drive-in pulp at heart; it would have been right at home in the pages of EC Comics; disturbing, darkly humorous at times, and all manners of gory. Directors Gillen and Ormsby handle the gruesome material with that same comic book sense of humor, but still things are ultimately played straight. Right at the beginning, the film introduces a narrator who appears in person in the form of an investigative reporter, recounting the tale in a pseudo-documentary style as the events unfold. Though Deranged has a few shocking standout moments, it’s obvious that its main overall goal is to entertain the viewer.
MGM finally released Deranged on DVD in 2002 as part of their Midnight Movies series. Here, the film looks the best it ever has and probably ever will, with the only downside being that it’s not the fully uncut version; it’s missing a brief scene of Ezra removing a brain from a skull with an ice cream scooper. Packaged as a double feature along with Motel Hell, this set is unfortunately now out of print, though I still see it from time to time at Barnes & Noble and FYE. If you can find it, get it! Check it out!
