Director Larry Buchanan (MARS NEEDS WOMEN) Dies at 81
Correspondent:: Modemac
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 01:44:50 GMT
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Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.past-films
Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com
Subject: Director Larry Buchanan (MARS NEEDS WOMEN) Dies at 81
Message-ID: <20041213200418.06367.00001173@mb-m26.aol.com>
By Myrna Oliver, Times Staff Writer
Larry Buchanan, the self-declared "schlockmeister" who created such
critically panned but highly successful television movies as "Mars
Needs Women," "Curse of the Swamp Creature" and "Zontar, the Thing
From Venus," has died. He was 81.
Buchanan, who also created conspiracy docudramas and quirky biopics,
died Dec. 2 in Tucson of complications from a collapsed lung.
He made roughly 30 pictures over four decades, horrifying critics,
delighting fans and gratifying financial backers with his one-man,
self-described "guerrilla filmmaking." He wrote, directed, produced
and edited most of his films, and even photographed and acted in a
few.
Many of Buchanan's titles landed on "worst movies" compilations, but
they all recouped their modest production costs and most made a handy
profit. Known more for frugality than for quality, Buchanan completed
one of his earliest films, "Grubstake" (also titled "Apache Gold"), in
1952 for $17,000, and was still making movies for well under $1
million into the late 1980s.
One of the filmmaker's most durable productions was "Mars Needs Women"
in 1967, starring Tommy Kirk and Yvonne Craig. The sci-fi plot calls
for Kirk and a few of his Martian friends to invade Earth in search of
nubile women, with the goal of increasing the birthrate on the red
planet.
"Strangely sincere but extremely silly and distended," Leonard Maltin
described the chestnut in his 2004 Movie and Video Guide. "Most
important revelation: Mars abandoned neckties 50 years ago."
One of the first makers of feature films specifically for television,
Buchanan was philosophical about his reputation, titling his 1996
autobiography: "It Came From Hunger! Tales of a Cinema
Schlockmeister."
"I suspect I might first have been recognized for the wrong reasons,"
he told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 1997. "It kind of stung, at
first, to be singled out as a maker of movies that are considered 'so
bad they're good,' but then you've got to realize the only bad
recognition is no recognition."
Born Marcus Larry Seale Jr. in Mexia, Texas, and orphaned in infancy,
Buchanan grew up in a Dallas orphans' home, where he developed a love
of movies in the facility's theater.
He considered becoming a minister, but during a visit to Hollywood
landed a job in 20th Century Fox's prop department. The studio gave
him a new name along with minor acting roles.
Buchanan joined the Army Signal Corps working on films during World
War II, then worked briefly in East Coast television before returning
to Texas to set himself up as an independent filmmaker.
After he made one of the first blaxploitation films, in 1963, "Free,
White and 21," which proved highly lucrative, Buchanan was asked by
American Internatinal Pictures to deliver more "cheap, fast color
pictures." He complied, providing another dozen and a half for the
company's direct-to-television and overseas distribution.
Along with his horror-tinged sci-fi offerings — "The Eye Creatures,"
"In the Year 2889," "It's Alive!" — Buchanan cooked up his own
conspiracy theory docudramas, such as "The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald"
in 1964 and "Down on Us" in 1984, which claimed the government was
behind the deaths of entertainers Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Janis
Joplin.
He also delved into biopics, displaying his own skewed takes on such
celebrities as "Pretty Boy" Floyd, Howard Hughes and, especially,
Marilyn Monroe. Buchanan cast Fabian as Floyd in his 1970 "A Bullet
for Pretty Boy," and particularly prided himself on the film's
machine-gun scenes. He offered his impression of the aviator in his
1977 "Hughes and Harlow: Angels in Hell."
Clearly fascinated with Monroe, Buchanan claimed to have met her in
1946 and introduced her to a bodyguard nicknamed Mesquite. The
eclectic director eventually made two films about the blond actress:
"Goodbye, Norma Jean" in 1976, describing Monroe's teen years, and
"Goodnight, Sweet Marilyn" in 1989.
The second film spelled out Buchanan's own theory of what happened on
Aug. 5, 1962, when Monroe was found dead in her Bel-Air home of an
apparently suicidal drug-and-alcohol overdose.
"We got an awful lot of lies from the powers-that-be in Los Angeles,
down in City Hall and from the coroner's office," Buchanan told The
Times in 1990. "We got a lot of garbage from all of them, so we came
forward with a very simple truth."
The "truth" was that Mesquite, carrying out an agreement with Monroe,
gave her a lethal dose of drugs to help her "to the other side,"
rescuing the actress from inevitable institutionalization. "She knew
she was going very fast neurologically, and that insanity ran on both
sides of the family," Buchanan told Newsday when the film was
completed, "and she dreaded being put in an institution like her
mother. They made a pact that if her mind went … he would help her to
the other side."
Buchanan, who is survived by his wife, Jane, and four children, had
recently completed post-production work on a film he made about 30
years ago: "The Copper Scroll of Mary Magdalene," about the historical
Jesus.
"I don't know that I bring any great command of the art to my
pictures," Buchanan said in 1997, "but I love what I'm doing, and I
believe that shows through in the least of my pictures. We certainly
weren't trying to make anybody laugh. We meant to entertain, perhaps
to provoke, to enlighten — and certainly to defy the customary
formulas."
copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times
Correspondent:: "Rev. Ivan Stang"
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2004 13:52:52 -0500
--------
In article , Modemac
wrote:
> Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.past-films
> Subject: Director Larry Buchanan (MARS NEEDS WOMEN) Dies at 81
>
>
> Larry Buchanan, the self-declared "schlockmeister" who created such
> critically panned but highly successful television movies as "Mars
> Needs Women," "Curse of the Swamp Creature" and "Zontar, the Thing
> From Venus," has died. He was 81.
>
I wrote a long article about Buchanan, and interviewed him and his
cohorts, for D Magazine a few hundred years ago. Most of the older guys
I worked with in the Dallas film biz had worked on Larry's films. My
main old boss, S. F. "Brownie" Brownrigg, supposedly wore the Zontar
suit himself. Believe it or not, there's a book being finished up about
Brownie's career and the related Buchananistes.
I wrote that article on a computer, but among my jillions of old floppy
disks I have yet to find the one with the Buchanan material on it. I
found a print-out of the uncut article, but have not been impelled to
attempt putting it through OCR yet. (It's not a very good print-out).
Buchanan had a bit of a messiah complex. I was amazed and pleased to
see that he CONTINUED working on The Rebel Jesus. He released that once
in the 70s. Reportedly it's a great low budget occult badfilm,
inadvertently funny shittiness-wise. It was the old Holy Blood Holy
Grail riff made into a Bible epic, using the cameramen and crew on
camelback as Arabs. Parts of it were filmed in the Holy Land -- BUT IN
HOTEL ROOMS. That was the scuttlebutt on it anyway. Buchanan
four-walled it in a few places, but I guess then put it back on the
shelf to work on intermittently and finally "finished" it just before
he went on to meet The Rebel Jesus in person. IF HE WAS NOT THE REBEL
JESUS *HIMSELF*.
--
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