American International Pictures - Later Years

Later Years

In the 1970s, AIP produced some of that decade's blaxploitation films like Blacula, and Foxy Brown. In a throwback to the old "studio days", the company is credited with making Pam Grier a household name, as the majority of her early '70s films were made under contract to American International.

In the mid to late 1970s, AIP began to produce more mainstream films such as Bunny O'Hare, Cooley High, The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday, The Amityville Horror, Love at First Bite, Meteor, Force 10 from Navarone, Shout at the Devil, The Island of Dr. Moreau and C.H.O.M.P.S. The increased spending on these projects, though they did make some money, contributed to the company's downfall. In the meantime, the studio imported and released its final foreign film, an Australian film, Mad Max, dubbed into American English.

In 1979, with the retirement of Arkoff, AIP was sold to Filmways, Inc. and became a subsidiary production unit thereof renamed Filmways Pictures in 1980. AIP-TV was absorbed as the wholly owned program syndication arm of Filmways Television. Filmways was later bought by Orion Pictures Company in 1982 and Filmways was later renamed as Orion Pictures Corporation, but retained the distribution arm. This allowed Orion to establish its own distribution after utilizing Warner Bros. for distribution which still has distribution rights to Orion films Warner distributed. Today, a majority of the AIP library is owned by Orion's successor company, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The American International name is still a registered trademark owned by MGM's Orion Pictures unit.