| American International Pictures |
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Information AboutAmerican International Pictures |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL PICTURES | |
| defunct american movie studios | |
| film distributors | |
| metro-goldwyn-mayer subsidiaries | |
| companies established in 1956 | |
| 1979 disestablishments | |
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The earlier films of AIP often included Vincent Price , often in roles based upon the stories of Edgar Allan Poe , whose works had a high recognition value and also were in the Public Domain and therefore Royalty -free—a real bonus for a low budget company. The films on Poe themes starring Price made AIP an American counterpart to the British studio Hammer Films and its famous Hammer Horror line featuring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee . AIP was the first company to use Focus Group s, polling actual American teenagers about what they would like to see and using their responses to determine titles, stars, and story content. A typical sequence of production involved coming up with a great title, getting an artist to create a dynamic, eye-catching poster, then raising the cash, and finally actually writing and casting the film. In the 1960s , AIP produced a series of '' Beach Party '' films, starring Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon . In the 1970s , AIP began to produce big budget films such as '' The Amityville Horror '', '' Love At First Bite '', '' Meteor '' and '' The Island Of Dr. Moreau ''. The massive spending on these projects, though they did make some money, contributed to the company's downfall. In 1979 , AIP was merged into Filmways, Inc. , which was later bought by Orion Pictures Corporation . Today, a majority of the AIP library is at the hands of Orion's successor company MGM , which was purchased by a consortium led by Sony Pictures , but continues to operate as a separate company. TRIVIA Along with its original productions, AIP also released many Foreign Films ( Dubbed into English) in the US that other, larger studios were afraid to handle; these included Federico Fellini 's '' La Dolce Vita '' and Roger Vadim 's '' And God Created Woman '', starring then-wife Brigitte Bardot . 1963 's '' The Terror '' was largely improvised by the cast, during a weekend left over from another movie shoot, and on the same sets before they were taken down. Roger Corman continues his work as the head of New World Pictures , which also has a long history of independent production and distribution of foreign-made movies. The widow of Nicholson, Susan Hart , acquired all rights in 1994 to a number of the most successful 1950's AIP titles, including "I Was a Teenage Werewolf," and "Invasion of the Saucermen." The son and daughter of Arkoff attempted a short-lived revival of AIP as a producer of TV Movie remakes of some other 50s titles as well as original films, such as Ralph Bakshi 's '' Cool And The Crazy '' for showing on Showtime . |
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