AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL PICTURES DOES TELEVISION!

For the next ten weeks on the American International Podcast, we are going to look at some of the original movies that were made for AIP’s syndication subsidiary, American International Television.

AITV was formed in 1964 and served mainly as the TV distributor for movies that were either produced by AIP, or those which were acquired by the AIP from foreign studios and dubbed into English for domestic distribution. Those included numerous Italian “sword and sandal” genre films, the Mexican film output of K.Gordon Murray, several dubbed Japanese kaiju films featuring Godzilla and Gamera, and films for young children, including German imports of Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and more.

Major studios like Universal had been offering their films via syndication for years, and had a much larger library than American International Pictures, who had around 370 movies to sell, compared to Warner Brothers who had over 3000.. However, the titles AIP offered proved very popular among buyers of syndicated content. 

There was a downside to offering AIP films to TV stations, though: the reaction of theater owners. In order to calm the fears of these movie house execs who feared audiences would skip seeing movies in theaters, knowing they would soon be able to catch them on television, AIP issued a statement retroactive to 1963 that the company would not release any of their films to television until five years after cinema release, (with the caveat that this would not apply if the film had not made back its original negative costs.) 

Rob Craig, author of The American International Filmography, says in his book that AITV was born not from their movie catalog, but from an idea AIP co-head James H. Nicholson and special effects wizard Paul Blaisdell had to create two different sci-fi television series.

The first, was tentatively titled Out of this World, and was a one-hour anthology series in the mold of The Outer Limits and Thriller. The second was titled Beyond the Barriers of Space and would be a dramatic adventure series that was very much like the soon-to-be-made Star Trek. Blaisdell would have handled the effects for both shows. They also conceived a comedy about teens spending an endless summer on the beach that was the genesis of the Beach Party movie series. 

Unfortunately, AIP co-chief Sam Arkoff was unwilling to risk the capital it would have taken to develop original television programs, and according to Craig, AITV was a “half-hearted” venture on AIP’s part, as their “grandiose pronouncements never matched their stingy expenditure of available capital.”

But AIP did make what Nicholson called “advantageous arrangements” for a whole slew of Italian films, as Italy had, like many other foreign countries, been suffering from what the Hollywood Reporter called a “crisis” due to overproduction, rising costs, and a low percentage of films suitable to foreign markets. This made for a golden opportunity for companies like AIP with foreign distribution facilities.

Mere weeks after Nicholson made that purchase of Italian films, in March of 1964, AITV announced the upcoming release of their “Epicolor ‘64” package, which contained 40 titles. That same month, Stanley E. Dudelson was appointed Vice-President in charge of American International Television.

AITV set up offices in LA, Chicago and New York, and thanks to Arkoff and Nicholson’s talent for marketing – creating eye-catching promotional material, cleverly renaming their newly-acquired foreign films, and their ability to sell, “Epicolor ‘64” and other early packages proved very popular.

In addition to foreign films, AIP repurposed their own library – chiefly their sci-fi and horror output – and included films that had never been released theatrically in the United States, Like Dagora the Space Monster, Attack of the Mushroom People, and Cry of the Bewitched.

The company made several color sci-fi/horror television films by Larry Buchanan that were remakes of black-and-white AIP films. Invasion of the Saucer Men became The Eye Creatures, for example. The first of these were offered in AITV’s “Amazing Adventures ‘67” package. Around this time Dudelson told Film Daily that all future television projects “will be shot in English,” because AIP thought the market for badly-dubbed foreign films was dwindling.

That didn’t stop them from distributing dubbed products though: as just one example, in 1969, AITV announced their “Fantastic Science Fiction Theater” package, which contained notable kaiju films like Destroy all Monsters, Gamera vs. Monster X, and Yongary, Monster from the Deep.

AITV also released a package, called “Cinema 20,” that included much more high-brow fare, like Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, with Catherine Deneuve, and Long Day’s Journey into Night, starring Katharine Hepburn, among others. Other similar film packages brought James Cagney, Gregory Peck and Natalie Wood under the AITV tent.

Though they didn’t produce their own television product, AITV served as the distributor for several imported TV series, including The Avengers, Japanese imports Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot and Prince Planet, and the Hanna-Barbera-produced Sinbad Jr. and his Magic Belt. AITV was also the original distributor for The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet before Ozzie Nelson, the show’s creator, executive producer and star, began distributing the show himself in the late 1960s.

AITV also filmed specials for promotion of AIP films, such as The Wild Weird World of Dr. Goldfoot (1965, ABC) and An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe (1972, syndication), both with Vincent Price.

AITV distributed the pop music series Twiggy’s Jukebox, a weekly rock music series that aired from 1978 to 1980, hosted by Twiggy and then Britt Eklund. The last show they distributed was called Comeback, where host James Whitmore would feature actors whose best years were behind them to tell the audience how they managed to stay positive throughout the years.

AITV stayed in the television business for ten years, releasing film syndication packages from 1964 through 1974. They distributed television programs up until the company was absorbed into Filmways, which assumed control of AIP and their extensive catalog of movies and programs.