Hollywood producer Samuel Z. Arkoff’s cheap shockers lured a new wave of filmgoers
Most movie producers like to start with a story but Samuel Z. Arkoff usually started with just a title and the movie followed later
Today in History
Don't miss out on the headlines from Today in History. Followed categories will be added to My News.
WHEN most Hollywood producers hear a pitch for a film, there is usually a script or a plot outline. But producer Samuel Z. Arkoff operated differently.
“We started with the title” he said. His business partner Jim Nicholson, who Arkoff said was the best “title man” he had ever met, “would come in, in the morning, with a title like “I was a teenage werewolf” and I would be struck with amazement, because that was a million dollar title on a $100,000 picture.”
Arkoff and Nicholson would test out the title on target markets to see if it would bring people to the cinemas. The titles that got the most response were given the green light. A script was written, then the film made.
Arkoff, who was born a century ago today, changed the way Hollywood operated. His B-grade films, had huge titles but tiny budgets. Arkoff knew how to titillate an audience, often making films with monsters or women in swimwear; sometimes women in swimwear menaced by monsters. He exploited whatever trend was going among young audiences or on film. His movies were more about making money than making art, but they were always entertaining.
Born Samuel Zachary Arkoff in Fort Dodge, Iowa on June 12, 1918, his father, Louis Arkoff, was a Russian immigrant who had deserted the Tsar’s army to run away to the US. There Louis saved enough money to open a clothing store with his wife Helen. Arkoff and his siblings helped out in the shop. With his pocket money, Arkoff liked to go to the movies.
He graduated from high school in 1935 and went to the University of Iowa to study law, but he was still a year short of getting his degree when he was asked to leave, because he had failed to turn up to class too often. By then America was involved in World War II and in 1942 he enlisted in the US Army Air Corps, where he served as a cryptographer, stationed in the Azores.
He was still in the military when he married Hilda Rusoff in 1945. When he was released from service the couple went to live in California. In 1948 Arkoff graduated from a law degree at Loyola University, Los Angeles, and drifted toward the entertainment industry.
He specialised in issues relating to distribution and exhibition of films and TV. His expertise helped him become vice president of a TV production company Video Associates, which produced the Hank McCune show in 1950, the first sitcom to use a laugh track. It was cancelled after three months.
In 1954 Arkoff resolved a dispute between Realart Pictures and a screenwriter whose movie title had been stolen by Realart’s boss Jack Broder. Arkoff got Broder to cough up $500. Nicholson, who worked for Broder, left Realart and with Arkoff formed American Releasing Corp, which later became American International Pictures (AIP), a film company to distribute films.
Their first was Monster From The Ocean Floor, about a squid-like monster that menaces a village on the coast of Mexico. Produced by Roger Corman, it was made in just six weeks for between $12,000 and $35,000 (sources vary) but it grossed more than $850,000.
Arkoff and Nicholson soon decided to produce their own films. They realised that most movie tickets were sold to audiences between 16 and 24 years old, so the pair tried to hit on plots, topics and movie gimmicks that would appeal specifically to this market. Some of the early films were westerns, but interest was waning. Instead Arkoff realised horror, rock music, surfing culture, gangsters, science fiction and action films were more popular.
Corman produced or directed many of their early successes such as car chase film The Fast And The Furious (1955), It Conquered The World (1956) and I Was A Teenage Werewolf (1957).
In the ’60s Arkoff seized on a growing obsession with surfing with a series of beach films starting with Beach Party (1963), which snared former Disney Mouseketeer Annette Funicello and rising pop star Frankie Avalon. There were also films exploiting biker culture like Devil’s Angels in 1967, and spy films, like the Dr Goldfoot films. In the ’70s he jumped on the African-American “blacksploitation” bandwagon with his vampire film featuring an African-American bloodsucker. In 1979 he made The Amityville Horror, based on the alleged true story of a haunting; it was the company’s most successful film.
That same year he was forced to merge AIP with Filmways. He stayed with the company initially, but left to form a new production company, Arkoff International Pictures in 1980. While he continued to produce films it was nothing like the ’50s and ’60s when he would make between six and 11 films a year. Arkoff died in 2001.
Originally published as Hollywood producer Samuel Z. Arkoff’s cheap shockers lured a new wave of filmgoers
Gallipoli to D-Day: Aussie’s epic war story
George Dixon went ashore with the original Anzacs at Gallipoli, aged just 15 – and was shot. Three decades later he was fighting again, at history’s other most famous wartime landing.
Love story behind escape tragedy
An Australian murdered in the infamous wartime Great Escape died after swapping places with another man. And his story is still unfolding, 80 years on.