By RON WAITE

In a recent article, the author stated, "few have heard of Sam Arkoff." I disagree.

Ask any monster movie fan or any true horror or sci-fi or beach movie or motorcycle or blaxploitation film aficionado and they know! Samuel Zachary Arkoff was born in the unlikely place of Ft. Dodge, Iowa. Today this tiny town is home to 24,755 people. It lies just 98 miles north of Des Moines and Rt. 80. When Sam left for California, it was an even smaller town.

He became a lawyer and from all accounts a very good one. Winning cases, settling feuds and contract disputes, he was a maestro with business dealings and finance. Had it not been for a meeting in 1954 we may never have heard of him and his legacy for it was then that he met James H. Nicholson, a promo-man for Realart Pictures. They were both searching for new ventures, something to stimulate their lives.

The prospect of making movies appealed to both of them and they formed American Releasing Corporation with the idea of distributing and possibly making pictures. Enter Roger Corman, the third progenitor in this scenario. Although the stories vary widely as to what exactly transpired, it is generally accepted that the following is close to the truth.

Corman, an ex-engineering student from Detroit, had come to Hollywood to pursue another career, namely filmmaking. He did what any enterprising young man would do: he procured a job at Fox doing anything and everything to learn his way around the studio and its workings.

Soon he was producer and screenwriter and working with actor, John Ireland made a film called The Fast And the Furious. Ireland was also co-director with Edwards Sampson. The film was a blend of hot cars and hot dames, cops and robbers and car chases. Sam Arkoff and Jim Nicholson approached the young Corman and said they would distribute his movie.

Problem was, neither of them had a real business base and no money. But that didn’t stop the enterprising duo. They arranged to take Corman’s film, hold it for 30 days, and in return promised him a three-picture deal. He agreed. Just like a fairy tale, it came to be. Sam’s finance skills and Jim’s promo expertise did get the film released and by 1955, American International Pictures was born.

Roger Corman quickly became known as The King of the B’s, meaning maker of low-budget cheapo movies that were shown at drive-ins or as second features. Critics of the day said his movies were so bad they weren’t released--they escaped! It didn’t matter to Roger or two the Abbott and Costello of movie producers (Jim was tall and thin while Sam was rotund, ever chomping on his beloved cigar. Before long, they were turning out movies at a frantic pace, taking the proceeds from one pic, and dumping them into the next one. And while critics blasted them and major studios wrote them off, Sam and Jim were laughing all the way to the bank.

Jim was brilliant when it came to advertising and promotion. Sam once said he could come into work and make up movie titles out of thin air, and many times a picture was sold based on a title alone, like Day The World Ended! They were that confident in what they could do.

Both had an eye for talent and they scoured film schools from coast to coast, looking for the best, offering them a chance to work at their craft--whether it be acting, directing, set design or make up – giving them a break, if they’d work for scale, and letting them go.

What they lacked in money they made up for in creativity. Sam was able to raise money for projects where anyone else would have been turned down flat. "Work fast, work cheap," he would say. No fancy motor homes, no outlandish salaries for stars. Put the money into the movie was first and foremost. I had the pleasure of having lunch with Sam on two occasions and as we both enjoyed a good cigar we talked about Hollywood (of course) and he’d often say that throwing big money at stars and feeding their egos was "bull****."

One time when I talked with A.I.P. regular Dick Miller, he told me, "Sam don’t take no crap from nobody!" I could believe that. As innocent as those films appear today, at the time (Fifties and Sixties) they were highly controversial. Sam had everyone from the Catholic Church to FBI head honcho J. Edgar Hoover on A.I.P’s back. "Ruining the youth of America!" they would say.

While the studio system was crumbing in the Fifties with thousands of theaters closing, A.I.P. forged ahead. With their frantic work pace, no real studio (most films were shot outdoors with little use of sets or props), they produced more films than Warners, MGM, Paramount, and Columbia combined, and made money on each and every one of them. The studios began to take notice. Maybe these boys were on to something. Well, maybe, but it was inconceivable to think that Warner Brothers could shoot a movie in two days and a night like Little Shop of Horrors.

If need be, Sam or Jim or one of the actors would use their own car, own home, their own clothes to make that film, and more often than not actors also served as crew members doing whatever was called for. Instead of catered lunches, they would eat at a local burger shop, use the gas station bathrooms to wash up, and many times Jim’s wife would bring sandwiches.

In 1957, there was a film in the works that was simply called Teenage Werewolf. One day Jim said to Sam, "I was a title that sounds better" and I Was A Teenage Werewolf was born, starring Michael Landon in the lead role. This movie was successful of many levels.

Once again, Sam and Jim had tapped into America’s youth. Sure, there was James Dean’s Rebel Without A Cause but films aimed at teens largely did not exist. They made up maybe five percent of the total film output in America. A.I.P. leaped into the market full throttle. Teenage Werewolf, made for $150,000 in seven days, reaped a return of $2 million in two weeks! The industry took notice. Even big stars like Jack Benny and Bob Hope were doing "teenage" jokes on their shows.

Sam was not afraid to try new things, to go where no studio dared go, and producing up to 50 films in a single year (a feat not even MGM could top). The know-it-alls proclaimed they were doomed to failure. Nothing was farther from the truth. Because of their knack for keeping up with the times, the little studio went with the flow and gave the audience what it wanted. Sam said "We don’t make pictures for the critics. We make ‘em for the public."

Hiring people like Paul Blaisdell and Bob Burns, they turned out creatures for many a film (like the amazing female sea monster of The She Creature) on literally a budget one might use to buy a week’s groceries. Rather than use rubber latex body suits and plastic form machines and all the high tech paraphernalia the big studios used, Paul could create a monster using Styrofoam balls and coat hangers. And when a movie wrapped they didn’t dine at an expensive Beverly Hills eatery. Sam’s wife Hilda was there, handing out sandwiches and soda. It was truly a family business, a family in the sense that they all worked together, were good friends, and had a hell of a time doing it.

While Sam hustled, Jim promoted and so began the "must see" campaigns. The posters promised much and often delivered little, but we fell for it and went to see their pictures. "SEE: Amazon Women Devour Naked Men! SEE: A Fifty Foot Gopher Trample El Segundo!" It was generally accepted that if the posted had four SEES! It was a must-see movie. And even all the fancy names like SuperScope and Super-Rama or Hypno-Vista brought us in even though they were merely names and had no bearing whatever on any special film process.

In the Sixties, they re-invented themselves yet again with new markets. A.I.P. created a whole new movie genre—the beach movie—and made millions with Beach Party and How To Stuff A Wild Bikini, while the major studios just scratched their heads and then made very poor copies that lost money. Another A.I.P-created genre was the biker film. Hated by law enforcement officials and parents alike, films like The Wild Angels were pure profit and gave meaty roles to newcomers like Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. A.I.P. was thinking outside the box while the big studios were stuck in a box.

The A.I.P. subculture films like The Trip and Wild In The Streets appealed to the young hippie generation and taking a clue for Clint Eastwood’s spaghetti westerns, Sam began buying foreign films, dubbing the dialog in English, and releasing them as major productions. While Hollywood was spending millions to make a Bible epic or gladiator movie, Sam bought two films for $20,000, dubbed them, added sound effects and even had the plot rewritten and released them to a hungry public. Even Woody Allen was given a chance when he took an inept Japanese movie and wrote a hysterical new script, dubbed in (purposely) awful dialog and called it What’s Up, Tiger Lily?

Voyage To The Planet of Prehistoric Women, Voyage To The Prehistoric Planet, and Queen Of Blood were examples of skillful re-editing. Importing sci-fi films from Russia, many of which were stunning in their content with special effects way ahead of their time, Sam hired directors and actors and turned them into decent films. And they looked like they had million dollar budgets when in fact they were done for next to nothing.

There is a rumor still going around that Yoko Ono broke up the Beatles. We know now it was a combination of many factors. Back in the Sixties, trouble was brewing for A.I.P. and co-founders Sam Arkoff and Jim Nicholson.

On a picture called Dr. Goldfoot And The Bikini Machine, Jim laid eyes on female star Susan Hart and from all indications it was love at first sight. Before long he divorced his wife and the two were married. Not long after that, tensions grew at the studio and on the set. Things had changed; it was no longer a family gig.

Moving into the Seventies with wilder and more controversial films, Jim and Sam parted ways. Sam stayed on as executive producer of A.I.P. but without his good friend and promo man, it just wasn’t the same. More tragedy came when James Nicholson died at age 56 of a brain tumor. Sam gave the only eulogy at the funeral and said it was very sad.

The black exploitation films that appeared in the Seventies did little to win critic’s hearts but the public loved them. Filmmakers largely ignored blacks and once again, Sam saw a void and filled it. Blacula is still a perennial favorite and new talent like Pam Grier flourished, thanks to Sam’s brilliance in finding the right people for the right job. But, by the end of the decade he grew weary of the business and in 1978 sold A.I.P. for $4 million. He walked away from it but never left the business he so dearly loved.

To list all the movies and TV shows he produced would take 12 issues of this Webzine. But we’ll remember films like Pit And The Pendulum, Tales Of Terror, the Dr. Phibes films, and The Raven. The talents of Frankie Avalon and Rick Baker, Paul Bartel, Peter Bogdanovich and Susan Cabot. Of Francis Ford Coppolla, Floyd Crosby (cinematographer) and Bruce Dern, of Lon Chaney Jr. and Larry Cohen. And who could forget unknown actors who became Oscar winners like Jack Nicholson.

Sam was one of a kind. I shall miss him.

Though I only met him a few times his wonderful sense of humor, his wit, his no-nonsense attitude and his love of cigars will stay with me always. He was a kind man, a funny man, and a genius. His films were called trash and garbage; they destroyed young minds and were worthless. Back in the Sixties, an article was published in Famous Monsters Of Filmland saying that all A.I.P. films were boring pieces of crap.

Shocked by this revelation, publisher Jim Warren rushed to Hollywood and in a special presentation awarded a huge FM Award to Sam and Jim in recognition of their work. Warren reasoned, and rightly so, that A.I.P. pics were the bread and butter of FM--though I never quite figured out why he let the article be printed in the first place.

Another time FM ran a make up contest. If you sent in ten bucks, you would get a genuine Dick Smith Make Up Kit, which you would use to create an original make up. If you won you would appear in an A.I.P. movie. A guy named Val Warren won the contest and was featured in a motorcycle comedy with Erik Von Zipper. The winning make up was a werewolf. How apropos.

The Theater Owners of America Award was given to Sam and Jim because "they saved the business". And in 1979, the New York Museum of Modern Art had a retrospective of their films. Today A.I.P. film festivals are commonplace and, on TV, AMC runs many of them year ‘round and during Halloween. In 1993 Sam Arkoff got a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame where Sam in a speech said, "Jim deserves this as much as I do."

In one of his final appearances, Sam Arkoff congratulates a young filmmaker.  True to his roots to the end.

Sam’s wife Hilda died July 26, 2002. Two months later, he passed away, of natural causes, on Sept 16, just 5 days after the infamous 9-11 attacks in New York. Upon hearing the news, horror director Wes Craven said, "Oh, my God, is there no end to the bad news? There goes one of the great old-time promoters and distributors. A man who played his hunches and put his money on the line. I loved him. Sam was generous, warm, down-to-earth and without pretense. He loved film almost as much as he loved his family and was a showman of the first order."

Shortly before his death, he was executive producer on remakes of old A.I.P. titles for a cable TV station. His son and daughter also produced remakes of She Creature, Teenage Caveman, Earth Vs. The Spider and Day The World Ended. Recently, posthumously, Sam was given the George Pal Memorial Award for his work in the movie industry. He leaves behind a legacy that may never be equaled and for all the fans his son and daughter are also avid movie fans and producers and seem to be carrying on their dad’s work.