Mr. Yellow wrote:Semi-related, I wonder if this could allow Scorpion to release some of those AIP MGM movies.
Having The Amazing Colossol Man and War of the Colossol Beast as well Earth vs. The Spider would be tops!
Well, MGM has no claim on those films. AIP was founded by Samuel Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson, and the short version of the story is that some of those types of films are now in the control of those men's estates.
Nicholson got out in the early '70s (right before his death in fact), and at some point several of AIP's films transferred to his control. They're now controlled by his estate, which is overseen by his widow, Susan Nicholson Hofheinz (Susan Hart, one of AIP's actresses in the early '60s). Arkoff on the other hand didn't sell his stake in the company until around the Filmways takeover in 1979-80, and like Nicholson, he was able to retain control of some of those early AIP titles.
The release history of those films, especially in the '80s-2000s, is confusing to me: films from both Arkoff and Nicholson estates were released on VHS by TriStar in the early '90s. These VHS releases are to this day the only official North American releases of some of these films (more on that below). Lionsgate would later releases four DVD double features of Arkoff titles in the very early 2000s. Those films were
Day the World Ended &
The She-Creature,
War of the Colossal Beast &
Earth vs. The Spider,
Saga of the Viking Women &
Teenage Caveman, and
How to Make a Monster &
Blood of Dracula. The Arkoff estate also authorized new movies under some of these titles, although I think all of these "remakes" are just direct-to-video fodder with only tenuous connections to the original films. Also, some of these films are still played on the AMC networks (notably IFC) around Halloween. So while they're still in circulation, new DVD and Blu-Ray versions of these titles would be great. Shout! worked out a deal with the Arkoff estate so that the MST3K versions of those movies could be released to DVD. I'm uncertain if there are plans for more standard releases, but as the MST3K deal was in ~2015-16, it seems unlikely.
The Nicholson estate has been almost deadly silent since the late '90s. As I mentioned before, the estate is controlled by lawyers acting on behalf of Susan Nicholson Hofheinz. The films in her control are reportedly:
Apache Woman (1955), It Conquered the World (1956), The Oklahoma Woman (1956), The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957), I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957), Naked Paradise (1957), and Terror from the Year 5000 (1958)
She also has the rights to
The Eye Creatures and
Zontar, the Thing from Venus, two dismal "films" made by Larry Buchanan for AI-TV. These are remakes of
Invasion of the Saucer Men and
It Conquered the World, which is how these are part of the Nicholson estate.
Fans of these movies seem to consider her something of a witch because of her unwillingness to do anything with these films. I don't know all the details, and they are her films anyway, but allegedly her lawyers have sued filmmakers for using clips from the trailers of these films in documentaries. She has been approached by Shout! but nothing doing. I imagine other distributors have tried too. Unlike the Arkoff films, these are not even shown on television anymore.
Colossal Man, ICTW, and
Saucer Men (maybe more) used to get decent play on AMC at least through 1999. MST3K used several of these films;
Terror from the Year 5000 and
Teenage Werewolf were 1997 episodes that were among the first to fall out of Sci-Fi's re-run rotation. In fact, regarding MST3K, five of the eleven unreleased episodes are in Hofheinz's control. It seems very unlikely we'll see any of these films on home video for a long time, if ever.
Edit:
Here is a good piece about Susan Hart (with cooperation from her) which touches on her control of her late husband's films.
