Larry Buchanan was born on 31 January 1923.
I always mix up Buchanan with Larry Cohen. They both wrote and directed a film called It’s Alive. Cohen made the one with the iconic TV commercial. It’s also far better. Buchanan made a pretty standard “I have a monster that must be fed” film. It’s okay. The monster is ridiculous, though!
I’m not much of a fan of Buchanan. Like Andy Milligan, I admire him. But it’s hard to get through most of his films. I’m not alone! Michael Weldon had a few choice words. I thought it might be fun to grab them from his reviews:
- The Eye Creatures (1965): “If you’ve seen Invasion of the Saucermen and happen to catch this awful uncredited remake on TV while you’re falling asleep, you’ll probably doubt your sanity. The story is the same, but instead of scary little aliens, there are full-sized men in ill-fitting lumpy costumes with a lot of eyes, and John Ashley is the hero! Headlights make the creatures blow up real good. Add some voyeur army personnel and you’re got the worst of the worst.”
- Curse of the Swamp Creature (1966): “An all-time favorite of American insomniacs.”
- In the Year 2889 (1966): An “uncredited remake of Corman’s The Day the World Ended. The people hiding out from postnuclear mutants have a nicer house in this version, but wait’ll you see the monsters. Wow!”
- Mars Needs Women (1966): “You’ll love [Tommy Kirk] in this made-for-television travesty.”
- Zontar: The Thing From Venus (1966): “This inept hit is so popular that SCTV did a takeoff and there’s a Boston-based magazine named after it.”
- Creature of Destruction (1967): “Buchanan made four uncredited remakes of AIP ’50s science-fiction movies. They all belong on anybody’s top ten worst list. This isn’t the worst of them, but it’s still rotten to the core.”
- It’s Alive (1968): “One of Buchanan’s legendary awful quickie television movies.”
- Sex and the Animals (1969): “It opens with turkeys mating to Ravi Shankar music. This ‘adult’ documentary is nothing but footage of wild animals mating.”
- Mistress of the Apes (1981): “Important social statements from the director of Zontar: The Thing From Venus.” [Weldon is being sarcastic but Buchanan really was socially conscious. You see it especially in many of the films I did not list here.]
- The Loch Ness Horror (1982): “Characters spend a lot of time talking, and when the Loch Ness monster shows up it’s really unconvincing.”
- Beyond the Doors (1983): “A lot of time is spent showing actor clones of the rock stars live in concert. Each one of them performs three whole songs that sound sort of like songs made famous by the originals. You might recognize bits of familiar lyrics but not enough for Larry to have to pay any copyright fees.”
Weldon didn’t hate Larry Buchanan. He said of High Yellow, “This Dallas production shows how good Buchanan was before those AIP-TV movies.” But of more interest to psychotronic fans is his first film, The Naked Witch. So let’s watch that!
Larry Buchanan via Fort Worth Magazine under Fair Use.