It came from Mars… It came from the Black Lagoon…It came from beyond the darkness…
Actually…
"IT CAME FROM HUNGER!"
LARRY BUCHANAN
In the realm of low-budget cinema, few filmmakers have staked any seriously legitimate claim to being “King of the ‘B’s” quite like Larry Buchanan. For those indoctrinated to the world of schlock—stripes earned in the coveted insomnia of late-night viewings—one would be hard-pressed to have not encountered this Texan auteur of guerilla cinema. Buchanan single-handedly invented the “good/bad film,” movies that were so incomprehensibly and unashamedly awful they rose to their own sense of grandeur with a kind of twisted genius.
If all of this comes across as some misappropriated, over zealous honor, it may be because Larry Buchanan was my father.
Larry Buchanan created a catalog of 30 low-budget feature films over his 50-year career. Without question the most infamous being “Mars Needs Women,” which was made in 1967 for A.I.P. (American International Pictures). More than 50 years on, the movie—which has been translated into 34 languages, including Yiddish—still plays somewhere in the world every week. Not a bad legacy for a film made on the fly in six days for $25,000.
To fully appreciate what spawned the ultra-low-budget film genre of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and my father’s place in it, one need to understand the nature of the film business at the time.
Long before DVDs and on-demand TV, long before VHS and cable, there were basically two venues for filmed content: movie theaters and network television (of which there were three; ABC, CBS, NBC). Within the realm of movie theaters, there were traditional movie houses (known in the industry as “hardtops”) and drive-ins (known as “ozoners”)—which is where the first-run, A-list movies went after they had played themselves out in the hardtops of major cities.
Drive-ins, a wholly American phenomenon, had blossomed across the U.S. as result of the country’s new-found love affair with the automobile. It was from these “ozoners” that an entire sub-genre of film evolved.
Drive-ins provided cheap entertainment, often charging a single price per carload. Double-features added to the value, making it a perfect, affordable outing for American families that were burgeoning following the end of Word War II.
In equal measure the number of teenagers was exploding. Drive-ins quickly eclipsed the soda shop as the place to be on Friday and Saturday night, granting teenagers escape from overbearing parents, becoming gathering places for budding youth to enjoy new-found freedoms in a rapidly evolving world. The movies playing on-screen were often simply an adjunct to “hanging out.”
Drive-ins became legendary meccas for date night, with lusty unions of hard petting behind fogged windows, passions unfolding amidst the crackling, distorted movie soundtrack coming through the battered speaker hanging on the window.
How many babies were conceived at drive-ins over the years?
However, from a practical business perspective, the bargain prices that made drive-ins popular meant that rental fees for movies were low as well. This resulted in the ozoners being relegated to the back of the line to receive the latest films. Drive-in theater owners, tired of having to wait for new movies to play themselves out in the major cities, wanted first-run pictures.
ENTER SAM Z. ARKOFF AND AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL PICTURES (A.I.P.)
Sam Arkoff was a savvy, tough lawyer who was bored with practicing law and felt that making movies might be a lot more fun than defending criminals and collecting delinquent child support from deadbeat dads. Sam co-founded A.I.P. (the name invented to sound global) and began cranking out low-budget fare, which primarily ran at drive-in theaters. With drive-ins peaking in numbers in 1958 at just over 5,000, Sam saw that the “ozoners” were capable of making respectable bank. Arkoff cleverly seized on the opportunity and signed a contract with the Independent Drive-In Theater Owners Association to deliver “first-run” motion pictures exclusively to drive-ins.
It probably looked pretty good on paper, but in reality, although they may have been “first-run” pictures, they left a lot to be desired. It didn’t seem to matter. Audiences drank up the campy monster, horror, and “titty” movies that spilled blood and skin across movie screens to the delighted screams (muffled inside cars) of movie-goers. At its peak, A.I.P. was cranking out 52 new films per year, one a week, feeding the insatiable appetite of the American public.
THE LARRY BUCHANAN/A.I.P. CONNECTION
My father was among the many hopefuls who arrived in Hollywood from small towns all across America chasing dreams of fame and fortune in the shimmering lights of movies. However, after assessing the seemingly insurmountable odds of getting a break, young Buchanan decided to take matters into his own hands and strike out on his own, determined to create his own luck.
Having cut his teeth in the Signal Corps making training films for the U.S. Army, he managed to scrape together $7,000 and in 1952 made his first feature, “Grubstake.” Ironically, this led to an offer that had Buchanan moving back to his home state of Texas to make commercials. Now married, with two kids, he settled in to make a living. For the next nine years he cranked out a steady stream of TV spots, but his heart was in making feature films.
In 1961 an angel investor offered Larry $8,000 to make a film… provided it was sensational. Out of that mandate my father created “The Naked Witch.” The title alone was provocative enough to raise eyebrows, an essential ingredient in generating awareness, and as a result the film did well. The respectable returns caught the attention of Sam Arkoff, and one of the great collaborations in the annals of “B” films was launched.
The contractual demand from drive-ins for A.I.P. product resulted in a frenetic atmosphere of production. Buchanan fearlessly stepped into the fray and began banging out a series of cheap “B” pictures. These projects were usually seeded with one vaguely recognizable actor who was, more often than naught, on the slippery downhill slope of their fleeting stardom.
Naturally, the key was to keep production costs low and output high to ensure profitability. Once my father proved he could actually come in on budget (regardless of what a pittance they were) and on schedule (equally and insanely inadequate) Arkoff and partners pretty much left him alone. The pitifully low dollars and extremely short shooting schedules thwarted any attempt at quality or art, forcing Larry to abandon all aspects of creative cinematic technique. It often came down to merely putting enough light on the scene to get an exposure and capturing what they could in the way of sound to push the story along. Just the bare essentials to qualify as a feature film: a plot (often vague and outlandish), actors (mostly sincere and hard-working, but questionable in terms of talent) and roughly an 80-minute running time. And of course, the movies had to possess the magic ingredients: action and sex. Nothing much really has changed.
Although he was making movies, they were a far cry from what Buchanan wanted to be doing. But, he was happy. He approached this period as merely a stepping stone to the A-leagues, where he would steadily climb the ladder of film production and make some quality films. Unfortunately, as time went on, he found himself pigeonholed as the low-budget guy, and trying to distance himself from that label would prove more difficult than he could imagine.
Strangely enough, in the years since he made those films, the insufferably low budgets that plagued them—rendering inexcusably hokey special effects, unintentionally comical monsters, pathetically bad delivery of corny dialog by inexperienced actors—are the very thing that ended up giving them their charm. The fallout, wholly unintended but warmly received, was the unexpected popularity and longevity of these campy movies that has grown into a sub-culture of cinephiles who embrace them with genuine fanaticism.
The resulting slate of films Buchanan cranked out for A.I.P., as well as his continuing work as an independent filmmaker over the ensuing years, contributed a rich treasure trove to the realm of the “B”s, while attracting an everlasting adoration for his work among a throng of fans worldwide.
The Autobiography
IN HIS OWN WORDS
After tirelessly helming (writing, directing, producing, and editing) roughly 30 feature films over a 50-year career, in 1997, Larry Buchanan (having accepted celebrity as a master of schlock) took a year away from chasing movie projects to concentrate on writing his autobiography.
The resulting work, “IT CAME FROM HUNGER!” (Tales of a Cinema Schlockmeister) is a candid, self-effacing and entertaining account of the world of low-budget filmmaking as told by one of the genre’s chosen sons. Buchanan leads readers through the chronology of his life, from his early life in a Texas orphanage—where he operated the movie projector on Saturday nights, inspiring a dream to “be in pictures”—hitchhiking to Hollywood at 18, working as an actor off-Broadway in New York, and then, after being confronted with the unscalable Hollywood studio walls, undertaking an amazing endeavor to become a filmmaker on his own terms. His story, told by the man himself, unfolds on the pages of:
“IT CAME FROM HUNGER!”
Tales of a Cinema Schlockmeister
Originally published in 1997 by McFarland, “It Came From Hunger!” was only available in a hard cover “library binding.” This made for a price of $40. When the copyright reverted to the Buchanan family we decided to answer the many requests of our late father’s fans by creating a soft cover at a much more affordable price point and, most recently, also making it available as an e-book.
My father often joked that his biggest fan base was comprised of insomniacs and graveyard shift security officers. In truth, my father loved movies, and was happiest when he was making them, regardless of the constraints of inadequate funds and lack of time.
He told me that writing “IT CAME FROM HUNGER!” brought about an unexpected cathartic revelation. He came to appreciate the fact that although he never realized his passion projects, the pursuit of the dream had taken him from the cotton fields of Texas to directing movies and he felt blessed to have enjoyed some notoriety, however dubious.
Larry Buchanan, my father, reveals in the pages of his autobiography, an engaging, charming recall of a life lived chasing quixotic dreams. It is a revealing, warning, and encouraging read for those aspiring to a career in film, as well as an entertaining romp through the wacky world of low-budget, campy films the likes of which we are unlikely to see again.
“It Came From Hunger!” Tales of a Cinema Schlockmeister.
Published by Cinenovel®
234 pages, filled with a generous collection of photos.
Soft cover $12.95 E-Version $9.95
We'd love to hear from you. Write us at:
"It came from hunger!"
Larry Buchanan’s Filmography
The Cowboy (Short)(1951)
Grubstake (1952)
Common Law Wife (1961)
The Naked Witch (1961)
Free, White and 21 (1963)
Naughty Dallas (1964)
Under Age (1964)
The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald (1964)
High Yellow (1965)
Attack of the Eye Creatures (TV movie)(1967)
Zontar; the Thing from Venus (TV movie)(1967)
Sam (1967)
Curse of the Swamp Creature (1968)
The Other Side of Bonnie and Clyde (1968)
Mars Needs Women (1968)
Creature of Destruction (1968)
Comanche Crossing (1968)
In the Year 2889 (TV movie)(1969)
Hell Raiders (TV movie)(1969)
It’s Alive (TV movie)(1969)
A Bullet for Pretty Boy (1970)
Strawberries Need Rain (1971)
The Rebel Jesus (1972)
Goodbye, Norman Jean (1976)
Hughes and Harlow: Angels in Hell (1977)
Mistress of the Apes (1979)
The Loch Ness Horror (1982)
Down On Us (1984)
Goodnight, Sweet Marilyn (1989)
The Copper Scroll of Mary Magdalene (2004)
v
