Amicus Productions
Encyclopedia
Amicus Productions is a British film production company
Cinema of the United Kingdom
The United Kingdom has had a major influence on modern cinema. The first moving pictures developed on celluloid film were made in Hyde Park, London in 1889 by William Friese Greene, a British inventor, who patented the process in 1890. It is generally regarded that the British film industry...

, based at Shepperton Studios
Shepperton Studios
Shepperton Studios is a film studio in Shepperton, Surrey, England with a history dating back to 1931 since when many notable films have been made there...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. It was founded by American producer and screenwriter Milton Subotsky
Milton Subotsky
Milton Subotsky was an American TV and film writer/producer. In 1964, in England, he formed Amicus Productions with Max J Rosenberg.Together they produced a number of low budget science fiction and horror films....

 and Max Rosenberg
Max Rosenberg
Max J. Rosenberg was an American film producer, whose film career stretched across six decades. He was particularly noted for his horror or supernatural films, and found much of his success while working in England....

.

Horror

Amicus is perhaps best known for Subotsky's own trademark portmanteau horror anthologies, inspired by the Ealing Studios
Ealing Studios
Ealing Studios is a television and film production company and facilities provider at Ealing Green in West London. Will Barker bought the White Lodge on Ealing Green in 1902 as a base for film making, and films have been made on the site ever since...

 film Dead of Night
Dead of Night
Dead of Night is a British portmanteau horror film made by Ealing Studios, its various episodes directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden and Robert Hamer. The film stars Mervyn Johns, Googie Withers and Michael Redgrave...

, though their first two films were musicals for the teenage market; *It's Trad, Dad!
It's Trad, Dad!
It's Trad, Dad! , known in the U.S. as Ring-A-Ding Rhythm, is a musical comedy. The film was one of the first films put out by predominantly horror company Amicus Productions, and one of director Richard Lester's first films.-Plot:...

(1962) and Just for Fun (1963). However, prior to Amicus being created the two producers collaborated on the 1960 horror film The City of the Dead.

Amicus' portmanteau films included Dr. Terror's House of Horrors
Dr. Terror's House of Horrors
Dr. Terror's House of Horrors is a 1965 British horror film from Amicus Productions, directed by veteran horror director Freddie Francis, written by Milton Subotsky, and starred Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee....

(1964), directed by genre stalwart Freddie Francis
Freddie Francis
Frederick William Francis BSC was an English cinematographer and film director.He achieved his greatest successes as a cinematographer, including winning two Academy Awards, for Sons and Lovers and Glory...

, Torture Garden
Torture Garden (film)
Torture Garden is a 1967 British horror film made by Amicus Productions. It was directed by Freddie Francis and scripted by Robert Bloch. It stars Burgess Meredith, Jack Palance, Michael Ripper, Beverly Adams, Peter Cushing, Maurice Denham, Ursula Howells, Michael Bryant and Barbara Ewing...

(1967), The House That Dripped Blood
The House That Dripped Blood
The House That Dripped Blood is a 1970 British horror anthology film directed by Peter Duffell and distributed by Amicus Productions. It stars Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Nyree Dawn Porter, Denholm Elliott, and Jon Pertwee...

(1970), Tales from the Crypt
Tales from the Crypt (film)
Tales from the Crypt is a British horror movie, made in 1972 by Amicus Productions. It is an anthology film consisting of five separate segments, based on stories from EC Comics. Only two of the stories, however, are actually from EC's Tales from the Crypt...

and Vault of Horror
The Vault of Horror (film)
The Vault of Horror is a British portmanteau horror film made in 1973 by Amicus Productions. Like its predecessor, Tales from the Crypt, it is based on stories from the EC Comics series written by Al Feldstein and Bill Gaines...

. The last two were based on stories from EC horror comics from the 1950s. These films, typically feature four or sometimes five short horror stories, linked by an overarching plot featuring a narrator and those listening to his story. The casts of these films are invariably composed of name actors, each of whom play small parts in the various stories. Along with the expected genre stars, such as Peter Cushing
Peter Cushing
Peter Wilton Cushing, OBE was an English actor, known for his many appearances in Hammer Films, in which he played the handsome but sinister scientist Baron Frankenstein and the vampire hunter Dr. Van Helsing, amongst many other roles, often appearing opposite Christopher Lee, and occasionally...

, Christopher Lee
Christopher Lee
Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee, CBE, CStJ is an English actor and musician. Lee initially portrayed villains and became famous for his role as Count Dracula in a string of Hammer Horror films...

 and Herbert Lom
Herbert Lom
Herbert Lom is a Czech film actor, best known for his role as former Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus in the Pink Panther movie series.-Life and career:...

, Amicus also drew its actors from the classical British stage (Patrick Magee
Patrick Magee (actor)
Patrick Magee was a Northern Irish actor best known for his collaborations with Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, as well as his appearances in horror films and in Stanley Kubrick's films A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon.-Early life:He was born Patrick McGee in Armagh, County Armagh, Northern...

, Margaret Leighton and even Sir Ralph Richardson), up-and-comers (Donald Sutherland
Donald Sutherland
Donald McNichol Sutherland, OC is a Canadian actor with a film career spanning nearly 50 years. Some of Sutherland's more notable movie roles included offbeat warriors in such war movies as The Dirty Dozen, , MASH , and Kelly's Heroes , as well as in such popular films as Klute, Invasion of the...

, Robert Powell
Robert Powell
Robert Powell is an English television and film actor, probably most famous for his title role in Jesus of Nazareth and as the fictional secret agent Richard Hannay...

 and Tom Baker
Tom Baker
Thomas Stewart "Tom" Baker is a British actor. He is best known for playing the fourth incarnation of the Doctor in the science fiction television series Doctor Who, a role he played from 1974 to 1981.-Early life:...

), or former stars on the way down (Richard Greene
Richard Greene
Richard Marius Joseph Greene was a noted English film and television actor. A matinee idol who appeared in more than 40 films, he was perhaps best known for the lead role in the long-running British TV series The Adventures of Robin Hood, which ran for 143 episodes from 1955 to 1960.It has been...

, Robert Hutton
Robert Hutton (actor)
-Early life:Robert Hutton was the son of a hardware merchant and was a cousin of the Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton. He attended Blair Academy, a small, exclusive boarding school in Blairstown, New Jersey...

, and Terry-Thomas
Terry-Thomas
Thomas Terry Hoar Stevens was a distinctive English comic actor, known as Terry-Thomas. He was famous for his portrayal of disreputable members of the upper classes, especially cads and toffs, with the trademark gap in his front teeth, cigarette holder, smoking jacket, and catch-phrases such as...

). Some, such as Joan Collins
Joan Collins
Joan Henrietta Collins, OBE , is an English actress, author, and columnist. Born in Paddington and raised in Maida Vale, Collins grew up during the Second World War. At the age of nine, she made her stage debut in A Doll's House and after attending school, she was classically trained as an actress...

, were in their mid-career doldrums when they signed on with Amicus.

Torture Garden and The House That Dripped Blood were written by Robert Bloch
Robert Bloch
Robert Albert Bloch was a prolific American writer, primarily of crime, horror and science fiction. He is best known as the writer of Psycho, the basis for the film of the same name by Alfred Hitchcock...

, based upon his own stories (with the exception that the Waxworks segment of The House That Dripped Blood was scripted (uncredited) by Russ Jones, based on the Bloch story. The earlier The Skull was also based on a Bloch story (though scripted by Milton Subotsky), and Bloch was also the screenwriter of The Psychopath and the adaptation of The Deadly Bees (based upon H.F.Heard's A Taste of Honey).

Hammer Films

Amicus films are often mistaken for the output of the better-known Hammer Films, to which they are similar in visual style, and with which they share many stars, including Peter Cushing
Peter Cushing
Peter Wilton Cushing, OBE was an English actor, known for his many appearances in Hammer Films, in which he played the handsome but sinister scientist Baron Frankenstein and the vampire hunter Dr. Van Helsing, amongst many other roles, often appearing opposite Christopher Lee, and occasionally...

 and Christopher Lee
Christopher Lee
Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee, CBE, CStJ is an English actor and musician. Lee initially portrayed villains and became famous for his role as Count Dracula in a string of Hammer Horror films...

. Unlike the period gothic Hammer films Amicus productions were usually set in the present day (as Vincent Price's character says in The Monster Club, this means a "lower budget!"). They now enjoy a considerable cult following of their own.

Science fiction

Amicus Productions also produced small number of science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 films, with adaptations of several of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Rice Burroughs was an American author, best known for his creation of the jungle hero Tarzan and the heroic Mars adventurer John Carter, although he produced works in many genres.-Biography:...

 and, in the mid-1960s, two films based on the then-relatively-new television series Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...

. Dr. Who and the Daleks
Dr. Who and the Daleks
Dr. Who and the Daleks was the first of two Doctor Who films made in the 1960s. It was followed by Daleks' Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D....

and Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD
Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD
Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. is the second of two films based on the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who. It was the sequel to Dr. Who and the Daleks , and starred Peter Cushing in his return to the role of the eccentric inventor and time traveller "Dr. Who". It also...

, the first (and still the only) big-screen adaptations of the long-running series, were filmed in Technicolor
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...

 at a time when the series itself was still filmed in black-and-white, giving Dr. Who and the Daleks the additional distinction of being the first time Doctor Who had appeared in colour. In these films, Peter Cushing played Doctor Who (a human scientist, rather than an alien, with Who as his actual surname), and the backstory and continuity established for the TV series were completely ignored. Although on TV it had been established in the very first story that the Doctor was an alien, the Amicus films ignored this. The films were also made without knowledge of the BBC policy that a Dalek's lights only flashed when they were speaking, making it difficult to know which was saying what.

Other films

Amicus funded and produced Danger Route
Danger Route
Danger Route is a 1967 British spy film directed by Seth Holt for Amicus Productions and starring Richard Johnson as Jonas Wilde, Carol Lynley and Barbara Bouchet. It was based on Andrew York's 1966 novel The Eliminator that was the working title of the film...

, a film version of Christopher Nicole
Christopher Nicole
Christopher Robin Nicole is a prolific British writer of over 200 novels and non-fiction books since 1957. He wrote as Christopher Nicole under several pseudonyms including Peter Grange, Andrew York, Robin Cade, Mark Logan, Christina Nicholson, Alison York, Leslie Arlen, Robin Nicholson, C.R...

's (writing as Andrew York) 1966 spy novel The Eliminator that was directed by Seth Holt
Seth Holt
Seth Holt was a British film director, producer and editor.Originally a film editor, he worked on a number of Ealing comedies before directing a number of features for Hammer Studios...

. Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...

's The Birthday Party
The Birthday Party (play)
The Birthday Party is the first full-length play by Harold Pinter and one of Pinter's best-known and most-frequently performed plays...

, directed by William Friedkin
William Friedkin
William Friedkin is an American film director, producer and screenwriter best known for directing The French Connection in 1971 and The Exorcist in 1973; for the former, he won the Academy Award for Best Director...

, who later found fame with The Exorcist
The Exorcist (film)
The Exorcist is a 1973 American horror film directed by William Friedkin, adapted from the 1971 novel of the same name by William Peter Blatty and based on the exorcism case of Robbie Mannheim, dealing with the demonic possession of a young girl and her mother’s desperate attempts to win back her...

,
directed the film adaptation of The Birthday Party
The Birthday Party (film)
The Birthday Party is a 1968 British drama film directed by William Friedkin, based on an unpublished screenplay by 2005 Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter, which he adapted from his own play The Birthday Party, considered an example of Pinter's "comedy of menace".-Plot:The protagonist is a lodger in his...

(1968). Margaret Drabble' adaptation of her 1965 novel The Millstone (1965) was filmed as A Touch of Love
A Touch of Love (1969 film)
A Touch of Love is a 1969 British drama film directed by Waris Hussein, adapted by Margaret Drabble from her novel The Millstone . It was entered into the 19th Berlin International Film Festival.-Plot:...

(1969) and Laurence Moody
Laurence Moody
Laurence Moody is an English television director who, after reading English at Cambridge University, worked as a trainee at Granada Television, at this time directing a number of episodes of their top rated ITV1 soap opera, Coronation Street.Subsequently, he has originated and worked such...

's 1969 novel The Ruthless Ones was filmed as What Became of Jack and Jill?.

Today

In 2003, Anchor Bay Entertainment
Anchor Bay Entertainment
Anchor Bay Entertainment is a U.S. based home entertainment and production company and is a division of Starz Media, which is a unit of Starz, LLC. It was previously owned by IDT Entertainment until 2006 when IDT was purchased by Starz Media. Anchor Bay markets and sells feature films, series,...

 released a five disc DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

 box-set of Amicus films in a coffin-shaped container in the U.K. In 2005, Amicus was revived to produce homages to the old titles as well as original horror fare. Their first production was Stuart Gordon
Stuart Gordon
After the University of Wisconsin demanded future theatrical productions by Screw Theater be overseen by a University Professor, Gordon cut his University ties to form Broom Street Theater. Its first production, the new translation of the risque Lysistrata, premiered in May 1969. Gordon is...

's Stuck
Stuck (2007 film)
Stuck is a 2007 thriller directed by Stuart Gordon and starring Mena Suvari and Stephen Rea. The film premiered on May 21, 2007 at the Cannes Film Market...

(2007
2007 in film
This is a list of major films released in 2007.-Top grossing films:Please note that following the tradition of the English-language film industry, these are the top grossing films that were first released in the USA in 2007...

).

Amicus Films

  • It's Trad, Dad!
    It's Trad, Dad!
    It's Trad, Dad! , known in the U.S. as Ring-A-Ding Rhythm, is a musical comedy. The film was one of the first films put out by predominantly horror company Amicus Productions, and one of director Richard Lester's first films.-Plot:...

    (1962)
  • Just for Fun (1963)
  • Dr. Terror's House of Horrors
    Dr. Terror's House of Horrors
    Dr. Terror's House of Horrors is a 1965 British horror film from Amicus Productions, directed by veteran horror director Freddie Francis, written by Milton Subotsky, and starred Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee....

    (1964)
  • Dr. Who and the Daleks
    Dr. Who and the Daleks
    Dr. Who and the Daleks was the first of two Doctor Who films made in the 1960s. It was followed by Daleks' Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D....

    (1965)
  • The Skull (1965)
  • Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD
    Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD
    Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. is the second of two films based on the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who. It was the sequel to Dr. Who and the Daleks , and starred Peter Cushing in his return to the role of the eccentric inventor and time traveller "Dr. Who". It also...

    (1966)
  • The Psychopath
    The Psychopath
    The Psychopath is a 1966 film directed by Freddie Francis and written by Robert Bloch. It stars Patrick Wymark and Margaret Johnston.It deals with a police inspector who investigates a string of murders where the victims have dolls attached to their bodies. The trail soon leads to one Mrs...

    (1966)
  • The Deadly Bees
    The Deadly Bees
    The Deadly Bees is a 1966 British horror–thriller film based on H.F. Heard's 1941 novel A Taste for Honey. It was directed by Freddie Francis, and stars Suzanna Leigh, Guy Doleman, and Frank Finlay. It was released theatrically in the United States in 1967...

    (1966)
  • Torture Garden
    Torture Garden (film)
    Torture Garden is a 1967 British horror film made by Amicus Productions. It was directed by Freddie Francis and scripted by Robert Bloch. It stars Burgess Meredith, Jack Palance, Michael Ripper, Beverly Adams, Peter Cushing, Maurice Denham, Ursula Howells, Michael Bryant and Barbara Ewing...

    (1967)
  • Danger Route
    Danger Route
    Danger Route is a 1967 British spy film directed by Seth Holt for Amicus Productions and starring Richard Johnson as Jonas Wilde, Carol Lynley and Barbara Bouchet. It was based on Andrew York's 1966 novel The Eliminator that was the working title of the film...

    (1967)
  • They Came from Beyond Space
    They Came From Beyond Space
    They Came From Beyond Space is a 1967 British science fiction film directed by Freddie Francis, written by Milton Subotsky and based on the book The Gods Hate Kansas by Joseph Millard. It was produced by Amicus Productions.- Plot summary :...

    (1967)
  • The Terrornauts
    The Terrornauts
    -Synopsis:Project Star Talk is based at a UK radio telescope site, its mission is to listen for radio signals from other intelligences. Dr Joe Burke is the head of the project assisted by his small team consisting of electronics expert Ben Keller and office manager Sandy Lund . Due to the lack of...

    (1967)
  • The Birthday Party
    The Birthday Party (film)
    The Birthday Party is a 1968 British drama film directed by William Friedkin, based on an unpublished screenplay by 2005 Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter, which he adapted from his own play The Birthday Party, considered an example of Pinter's "comedy of menace".-Plot:The protagonist is a lodger in his...

    (1968)
  • A Touch of Love
    A Touch of Love (1969 film)
    A Touch of Love is a 1969 British drama film directed by Waris Hussein, adapted by Margaret Drabble from her novel The Millstone . It was entered into the 19th Berlin International Film Festival.-Plot:...

    (1969)
  • The Mind of Mr. Soames
    The Mind of Mr. Soames
    The Mind of Mr. Soames is a 1970 British film directed by Alan Cooke and starring Terence Stamp, Robert Vaughn and Nigel Davenport. Based on Charles Eric Maine's 1961 novel of the same name, The Mind of Mr...

    (1969)
  • The House That Dripped Blood
    The House That Dripped Blood
    The House That Dripped Blood is a 1970 British horror anthology film directed by Peter Duffell and distributed by Amicus Productions. It stars Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Nyree Dawn Porter, Denholm Elliott, and Jon Pertwee...

    (1970)
  • I, Monster
    I, Monster
    I, Monster is a 1971 British horror film directed by Stephen Weeks for Amicus Productions. It is an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, with the main characters' names changed to Dr. Charles Marlowe and Mr...

    (1971)
  • What Became of Jack and Jill? (1971)
  • Asylum
    Asylum (1972 film)
    Asylum is a 1972 British horror film made by Amicus Productions. The film was directed by Roy Ward Baker, produced by Milton Subotsky, and scripted by Robert Bloch .It is a horror portmanteau film, one of several produced by Amicus during the 1960s to...

    (1972)
  • Tales from the Crypt
    Tales from the Crypt (film)
    Tales from the Crypt is a British horror movie, made in 1972 by Amicus Productions. It is an anthology film consisting of five separate segments, based on stories from EC Comics. Only two of the stories, however, are actually from EC's Tales from the Crypt...

    (1972)
  • The Vault of Horror
    The Vault of Horror (film)
    The Vault of Horror is a British portmanteau horror film made in 1973 by Amicus Productions. Like its predecessor, Tales from the Crypt, it is based on stories from the EC Comics series written by Al Feldstein and Bill Gaines...

    (1973)
  • From Beyond the Grave
    From Beyond the Grave
    From Beyond the Grave is a 1974 British anthology horror film from Amicus Productions, directed by horror director Kevin Connor, produced by Milton Subotsky and based on stories by R. Chetwynd-Hayes...

    (1973)
  • And Now the Screaming Starts!
    And Now the Screaming Starts!
    And Now the Screaming Starts! is a 1973 British gothic horror film. It is one of the few feature-length horror stories by Amicus, a company best-known for anthology or "portmanteau" films....

    (1973)
  • The Beast Must Die
    The Beast Must Die (film)
    The Beast Must Die is a 1974 horror film directed by Paul Annett. The screenplay was written by Michael Winder, based on the short story "There Shall Be No Darkness" by James Blish...

    (1974)
  • Madhouse
    Madhouse (1974 film)
    Madhouse is a 1973 British horror film directed by Jim Clark for Amicus Productions. It stars Vincent Price, Natasha Pyne, Peter Cushing, Robert Quarry, Adrienne Corri and Linda Hayden.-Plot:...

    (1974)
  • The Land That Time Forgot (1974)
  • At the Earth's Core
    At the Earth's Core (film)
    At the Earth's Core is a 1976 science fiction film produced by Britain's Amicus Productions. It was directed by Kevin Connor and starred Peter Cushing, Caroline Munro, Philippa Herring and Doug McClure. It was filmed in Technicolor...

    (1976)
  • The People That Time Forgot
    The People That Time Forgot (film)
    The People That Time Forgot is a 1977 fantasy/adventure film based on the novel The People That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It was produced by Britain's Amicus Productions, all directed by Kevin Connor...

    (1977)
  • The Monster Club
    The Monster Club
    The Monster Club is a 1980 British horror film directed by Roy Ward Baker and starring Vincent Price and John Carradine. An anthology film, it is based on the works of the British horror author R. Chetwynd-Hayes...

    (1980)

External links

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