We're still a bit tired from our long month of covering all things Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so enjoy this guest review from The Uranium Cafe's Bill Dan Courtney.
By
the mid-1960s, American-International Pictures, once a struggling
outfit that churned out low-budget but profitable movies for drive-in
movie theaters, had become perhaps the most successful and powerful
of the independent film companies in Hollywood. A logical step it
seemed was to move into the now lucrative syndicated television
market and so AIP-TV was formed. One of the projects AIP-TV took on
was to remake a handful of AIP's earlier film and release them in
color to a new generation of movie viewers. They hired legendary
Z-movie shlockmeister Larry Buchanan, who made movies with a bare
minimum of money and talent, yet still managed to at least break even
if not turn a small profit. Buchanan produced eight films for AIP-TV
with his Azalea Pictures company based out of Dallas, Texas. Zontar: The Thing from Venus, a remake of Roger Corman's It Conquered the
World, is considered by many to be the best of his AIP-TV productions
and even has B-movie icon John Agar in the role played by Peter
Graves in the original film. Of course one can hardly say that the
best Larry Buchanan film is anything that is going to excite the
masses; they are films for the cognoscenti of camp and cheese only
and rise to the quality of an Al Adamson movie at best.(read more...)
