Fast and Furious: The Story of American International Pictures

by Mark Thomas McGee

HISTORY OF THIS FILM STUDIO.

264 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1984

Reviews

[Aussiescribbler Aussiescribbler · Rating 5 out of 5]

American International Pictures made some of the wildest of all movies - from the black and white juvenile delinquent and monster movies they churned out in the fifties through the grimy biker flicks, stylish Edgar Allen Poe adaptions and goofy beach party movies of the sixties and on through a myriad of genres in the seventies, eighties and beyond. With titles like I Was a Teenage Werewolf, Invasion of the Saucer Men, X - The Man With the X-Ray Eyes, The Thing With Two Heads, The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, The Mini-Skirt Mob and Blacula, these are films that show you don't need a lot of money to entertain an audience as long as you have imagination and a sense of humour.

Mark Thomas McGee provides an entertaining and informative account of how the magic happened. And the book also contains a useful filmography to aid you when you start obsessively hunting these films down.

I just wish I hadn't lent my copy to a friend. I never got it back, so this review is perhaps tinged with the love we have for that we have lost. McGee did an updated and expanded version Faster and Furiouser: The Revised and Fattened Fable of American International Pictures but that also is out-of-print and very expensive second-hand. Second hand copies of this original version are not so expensive so maybe I'll pick one of those up sometime.

[Mason Oberle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A look at the history of AIP. Not the best text for a complete historical or academic of the studio's history, but it contains a lot of direct quotes and personal accounts from people involved in the studio. Good for people casually interested in the studio and want a general idea of how it evolved through the years.

[Bill Camp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great account of the story of American International Pictures with tons of stories of the people who were there.

[Steve Wiggins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of us appreciate AIP (American International Pictures) because of the role it played in our childhoods. Their early, cheap monster movies often played on television on Saturday afternoons in the sixties, making them just right for some of us. Mark Thomas McGee is a real fan. He knows the AIP story and tells it like only an AIP fan can. It covers the start of the company down to its buying out.

Many of the chapters focus on individuals associated with AIP. Some chapters follow various “series” the company produced: Edgar Allan Poe movies, beach party films, and juvenile delinquent flicks. Much of the information is anecdotal, but that’s part of the charm. Most writers on cinema ignore the obviously low budget production companies like AIP, so it is great to have a resource here.

This is a fun book. Apart from learning about some of my favorites, such as Roger Corman, I was interested particularly in the monster movies. I always associated AIP with those, but they did so much more. A lot of famous people got their start with them. The most moving part of the book is the biographies where McGee states that some of the forgotten belong in film encyclopedias. So true. As I note in my blog post on the book (Sects and Violence in the Ancient World), it has come out in a second edition. This is an early McFarland book and I thought it was worth having in hardcover.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some fairly good information, but not enough of it and not very well written. I really wanted to like it more, but alas.