American International Pictures is founded in Los Angeles in 1954. The movie company begins as American Releasing Corp. by sales manager James H. Nicolson and entertainment lawyer Samuel Z. Arkoff. Over the next three decades, the company specializes in B-movie double features for mostly teenage audiences that include dozens of horror, sci-fi and western films. It becomes a home for filmmaker Roger Corman, the Beach Party movies of Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon, Italian giallo movies and Japanese kaiju movies, as well as psychedelic exploitation movies. The company is bought by Filmways in 1980 and eventually relaunched in 2020.
This Day in Halloween: B-movie film company American International Pictures is founded in Los Angeles in 1954. / Illustration by Cheyenne Knehans