Tag Archives: AIP

Welcome to the low-rent universe

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It’s news to no one that shared universes are the big thing in movies right now

Marvel began building its shared cinematic universe in 2008 with “Iron Man” and has announced plans to continue it through at least 2020. Not to mention Marvel’s TV entries in that shared universe, like “Agents of SHIELD,” “Agent Carter” and “Daredevil,” the latter debuting on Netflix in April as the first in a series of “street-level” hero shows that will culminate in a “Defenders” series.

Of course, DC/Warner Bros. are trying to get their superhero universe going; Sony wants a “Spider-Man” universe but I’ll believe it when I see it.

And Universal has announced a shared universe of remakes of its 1930s and 1940s monster films featuring Frankenstein, Dracula and other creatures. I’m still pondering that one for another entry here.

So the other day, a movie company that I’ve never heard of, Cinedigm, announced plans to create, of all things, a shared movie universe. But using what classic cinematic tales?

The 1950s and 1960s exploitation movies of American International Pictures.

Specifically, 10 films: “Girls in Prison,” “Viking Women and The Sea Serpent,” “The Brain Eaters,” “She-Creature,” “Teenage Caveman,” “Reform School Girl,” “The Undead,” “War of the Colossal Beast,” “The Cool and the Crazy” and “The Day the World Ended.”

Strangely enough, I like this idea.

Marvel has this kind of thing perfected, down to an art and a science. I’m not sure DC’s superheroes will ever really come together on the big screen because of, I believe, a wrong-headed approach that seems more like Warner Bros. is ashamed of comic books.

But the AIP films, some of which were originally directed by low-budget auteur Roger Corman?

That’s genius.

Not because the company says it intends to shoot all 10 movies back-to-back from recently-completed scripts. Not because remaking these old AIP classics for cable TV a while back worked so well.

Because these dimly-remembered movies are perfect fodder for the remake machine.

Somebody once said that if you were going to remake a movie, don’t remake a classic. How could a remake of “Psycho” possibly work? (It didn’t.)

But with the AIP flicks, most people won’t be comparing them and, unless the remakes are horrible, they won’t be comparing them unfavorably.

And the idea of a universe shared by the monstrous, mutated “Colossal Beast” and the juvenile delinquents of “The Cool and the Crazy?” How can that possibly work?

The producers say the movies will share “a recurring cast of antiheroes, monsters and bad girls.” I can’t say that’s a bad idea and I base that on what Marvel has done with its movies.

Really, consider how improbable it might have looked, 10 years ago, to propose a shared universe that would include a bone-crunching political thriller, a good-natured space opera, a Nordic fantasy world and a rampaging monster movie. Yet “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” “Guardians of the Galaxy,” the “Thor” movies and the Hulk’s appearances all worked.

Who’s to say those juvenile delinquents won’t end up fighting alien invaders to big box-office returns?

Stranger things have happened.

Classic schlock: ‘Attack of the Giant Leeches’

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“Attack of the Giant Leeches” sounds like the quintessential low-budget drive-in horror movie, and with good reason:

It’s a Roger Corman production at American International Pictures.

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It’s set in Florida but there’s a southern “swamp trash” – to use a phrase uttered in the movie – feel to the movie, right down to the corn pone accents and moonshine-swilling hillbillies.

It’s a Roger Corman production (did I mention that already?).

Its title alone sounds like every bad imaginary movie that ever played out on a drive-in movie screen in some other movie or TV show.

“Attack of the Giant Leeches,” all 62 minutes of it, is great fun, a mix of southern fried domestic drama right out of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and low-rent monster movie.

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Legendarily made in eight days, “Attack” has a low-rent feel but doesn’t stint on action. Except for a couple of scenes that feel like people are standing around talking for the sake of filling up a few minutes of screen time, “Attack” brings the drive-in thrills early. One of the titular characters shows up even before the credits, and there’s two or three attacks in the first 20 minutes of the movie.

A small Florida town is beset by attacks by man-sized leech creatures. As people turn up sucked to death or missing, game warden Steve swings into action. Well, sort of. First of all, he needs to make sure nobody’s going to do anything to hurt indigenous wildlife.

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The creatures are low rent – somebody sewed plastic octopus suckers on the forerunner of the Snuggie – but probably more effective because they are little seen.

There’s one genuinely creepy moment in the movie in which we learn the giant leeches are taking their victims to an underwater cavern. They’re left there to be sucked dry of blood a bit at a time. It’s kind of eerie.

There are some decidedly loony moments:

Game warden Steve runs up to floozie Liz as she screams because she’s been frightened. But Steve, rather than holstering his pistol, points it right at Liz’s face as he comforts her.

Cal, the no-goodnik making time with Liz, is a dead ringer for comic Adam Carrolla.

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Cal and Liz go out to a remote spot in the swamp – despite stories about the leech creatures – to make out … in a decision they make standing in the doorway of a bedroom. Young people these days!

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Steve and pal Mike decide to go diving in the swamp to look for the giant leech creatures with scuba equipment they took from a ship belonging to “the Italian navy.” Huh?

The creatures usually have a fairly effective “rattle” noise they make, but early on one makes a sound like a cougar’s cry.

Check out “Attack of the Giant Leeches.” It’s drive-in schlock fun.

Cushing, Price and ‘Madhouse’

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madhouse price cushing

Today, May 26, was the 100th anniversary of the birth of British actor Peter Cushing – best known in some quarters as Imperial Gov. Tarkin, who holds Darth Vader’s leash rather loosely in the 1977 classic “Star Wars” – so I marked the date by watching one of his later horror films, “Madhouse.”

It isn’t a great role for Cushing, who died in 1994 after a long, distinguished and beloved career. He’s a supporting player to Vincent Price, who stars as Paul Toombes, an aging actor lured out of retirement to reprise his role as Dr. Death, anti-hero of a series of horror thrillers.

Released in 1974, “Madhouse” had the distinction of being the last movie Price made for American International Pictures, home of the classic adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe in which Price starred in the 1960s. The movie business was changing even by then and AIP was looking to replace Price with Robert Quarry, who was the third male lead here. Quarry had made a little splash as Count Yorga, a modern-day vampire, and it’s said AIP and producer Samuel Arkoff thought he, rather than Price, was the future.

But horror movies were about to see a huge change. Long the province of a particular breed of actor, like Price and Cushing, and director, like Roger Corman, and producer, like Arkoff, horror films were proven to be worthy of mainstream attention in 1973 when “The Exorcist” was a huge hit. Low-budget horror movies were still drive-in theater fare and would be for several years to come, but by the time “Madhouse” rolled around, people were looking for the new, the young and the shocking in their horror films.

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“Madhouse” also held the distinction of being able to evoke the nostalgia, perhaps the last of its kind for its type of film, for earlier horror films. It could do this because of Price’s long-running screen presence. At various points, Cushing and Quarry screen some of Toombes’ earlier horror films, and they show scenes from some of Price’s films, particularly the Poe pictures conveniently (and inexpensively) owned by Arkoff and AIP. The presence of those clips led director Jim Clark to acknowledge former Price co-stars Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff in the opening credits. It’s a nice gesture but also makes me wonder: Did Clark and Arkoff think the presence of those old-school names would add to the luster of “Madhouse?”

Cushing, whose role as Toombes’ longtime friend is so obviously an attempt to mislead that the final shot has someone referring to a red herring, might be a familiar face to legions of filmgoers from “Star Wars” but is best known to his many fans for his roles in British horror films made by Hammer studios beginning in the 1950s.

Cushing – whose fan club I belonged to in the 1970s and 1980s – sometimes played Dracula nemesis Van Helsing and sometimes played monster maker Dr. Frankenstein in the Hammer outings. He and cohort Christopher Lee always added a touch of class to every movie in which they appeared.

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Happy birthday, Peter.