Larry Buchanan Movies
After making documentaries for evangelist Oral Roberts in the early 1950s, Buchanan assisted George Cukor on The Marrying Kind; he also appeared in several '50s films in small roles, including Henry King's The Gunfinghter. In the 1960s he began helming a series of low-budget films, exploiting race (Free, White And 21, High Yellow), sex (Under Age) and the Kennedy assassination (Naughty Dallas, a striptease-fest filmed in Jack Ruby's Carousel Club; The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald). He also made a series of even-cheaper remakes of 1950s AIP science-fictioners: The Eye Creatures, In The Year 2889, Creature of Destruction, and Zontar, the Thing from Venus. His other efforts include the crime film A Bullet for Pretty Boy; the Marilyn Monroe biopics Goodbye, Norma Jean and Good Night, Sweet Marilyn; and the tale of interplanetary sexual frustration, Mars Needs Women. ~ All Movie Guide- 1989
- R
The sequel to Goodbye, Norma Jean, this film introduces the theory that Marilyn Monroe's death was the result of a calculated mercy killing. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Misty Rowe, Paula Lane, (more)
- 1989
According to this film by no-budget auteur (and conspiracy buff) Larry Buchanan, singers Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and the Doors' Jim Morrison didn't die of drug overdoses; in fact, Morrison didn't die at all! The government sent an assassin (who got the job because he didn't like his son listening to rock 'n' roll records) to kill them because they were trying to influence young people to protest against the Vietnam war. Hendrix and Joplin were killed by the assassin, but Morrison faked his death and hid out in a monastery in Spain. Oh well, stranger things have happened . . . ~ Brian Gusse, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gregory Allen Chatman, Riba Meryl, (more)
- 1982
- PG
The mythological Scottish creature goes on the offensive in this tale of horror. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- 1979
- R
This came from Larry Buchanan, the director of Mars Needs Women. Jenny Neumann takes a group of men into the jungles of Kenya to look for her husband, and instead finds a tribe of caveman-looking "Near-Men" who all seem terribly attracted to her beautiful blond hair. Needless to say, after a tedious and lengthy set-up which seems to be reenacting various scenes from Il Dio di Montagna Cannibale, Clan of the Cave Bear, and the same year's Tarzan, the Ape Man, they manage to have their way with the unsuspecting white woman. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- 1977
- R
Everybody knows that Howard Hughes ordered most of his 1930 aviation epic Hell's Angels refilmed to accommodate his latest discovery, platinum blonde Jean Harlow. Everybody also knows that Hughes and Harlow had an affair. These "givens"are used as springboard for exploitation filmmaker Larry Buchanan's Hughes and Harlow: Angels in Hell. Neither Lindsay Bloom nor Victor Holchak are half as fascinating as the real-life characters they portray, and this coupled with a stretched-to-the-limit budget results in a film that never quite reaches its potential. Still, we can't resist that supporting cast: Royal Dano, Adam Roarke and Linda Cristal. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Goodbye Norma Jean purports to be a biography of the early years of Norma Jean Baker (Misty Rowe), who would later attain fame in Hollywood as the blonde sex goddess Marilyn Monroe. The film begins in 1941 as Norma Jean is brutally raped by a highway patrolman who stopped her for speeding. After winning a local beauty pageant, Norma Jean continues to experience a succession of low-life sexual encounters that pave the way to Hollywood stardom. The ironic take of the film is that Norma Jean's series of degrading sexual experiences caused her to dislike sex throughout her life while, ironically, attesting to her sensual allure in Hollywood films. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Misty Rowe, Terrence Locke, (more)
- 1970
This is low-budget filmmaker Larry Buchanan's "tribute" to Ingmar Bergman. The plot has to do with a poor girl named Erica (Monica Gayle), who engages in various sexual encounters until Death (Les Tremayne) takes her away -- but not before we manage to see her in various (and frequent) stages of nudity. Buchanan claims that this film played in Texas as a Bergman film, and nobody knew the difference -- which could explain why actual Bergman films have never been very popular in Texas. ~ Brian Gusse, All Movie Guide
- 1970
- R
This plodding crime drama concerns the life of Depression-era gangster Pretty Boy Floyd. Imprisoned for the manslaughter of a jealous rival for his affections, Floyd escapes from jail a hardened criminal with ties to the mob in Kansas City. After meeting up with a whorehouse madam, he goes on a series of bank robberies that makes him public enemy number one on the FBI most wanted list. Soon G-man Hossler (Robert Glenn) is assigned to end the crime spree spawned by Floyd and his gang. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Fabian Forte, Jocelyn Lane, (more)
- 1968
The legend of the bloody duo is presented from a different perspective in this offbeat outing that features actual footage of the criminal pair, fascinating interviews with former mobster Floyd Hamilton and Sheriff Frank Hammer. It also contains some reenactments. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1968
In this sci-fi film a loony farmer finds a prehistoric monster hiding in a cavern on his land. To feed his newest critter, the farmer kidnaps three people. The three desperately try to escape and finally, one of them succeeds. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1967
Legendary bad-movie maven Larry Buchanan does a virtual remake of The She Creature (for reasons unknown) with this enjoyably silly outing. The story involves deranged stage mesmerist Dr. Basso (Les Tremayne), whose sessions with his pretty assistant Doreena (Pat Delaney) result in her regression into a hideous (or at least hideously-made) prehistoric sea monster, which he then manipulates into committing a series of gruesome murders at a remote resort -- all of which fulfill his earlier on-stage prophecies. One of Buchanan's many remakes of cheesy American International monster films, all of which made the originals seem positively brilliant by comparison, the film even features one of AIP's stock "heroes" -- the absolutely wooden Aron Kincaid, horrendously miscast as a psychiatrist. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
- 1966
In this campy sci-fi film, the hero and his little band of post nuclear holocaust survivors find themselves stalked by telepathic cannibal mutants. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Texas-based cult director Larry Buchanan made this low-budget horror oddity starring John Agar as Rogers, a geologist who travels through the swamps to see a scientist named Simon (Jeff Alexander). What Rogers doesn't know is that Simon is quite mad and is experimenting on the local voodoo-practicing natives in order to create a mutant being, disposing of the corpses in a pit of alligators. Capturing Rogers' traveling companion, the treacherous Brenda (Shirley McLine), Simon turns her into a hideous monster before his horrible experiments are curtailed. As silly as most of Buchanan's films of the period, this forgettable trifle will be of interest to genre completists only. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
In this sci-fi film, lonely Martians wire Earth in hopes of finding fertile women to repopulate their dying world. They are particularly interested in a voluptuous dancing scientist. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1966
This deliciously campy sci-film has developed a minor cult following. It chronicles the exploits of a Venusian bat-creature who tries to take over the Earth by invading the mind of a hapless victim and forcing the victim to attempt to shut off all the world's power sources. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1965
The Eye Creatures don't really attack anybody, but are attacked by a band of hostile teenagers. It all begins when the creatures, acting out of self-preservation, try to pin the blame for an accidental killing on an innocent Earthling. Star John Ashley sagaciously retreated to the Philippines shortly after appearing in this one. The Eye Creatures was one of a group of cheap color remakes of earlier American-International productions; all were made to pad out AIP's TV package, and all were produced and directed by Larry Buchanan. This one was a remake of 1957's Invasion of the Saucer Men, minus the earlier film's clever monster designs by the resourceful Paul Blaisdell. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1965
Set during the tempestuous mid '60s, this drama seeks to expose the darkest aspects of a contemporary upper class family as it tells the story of a 17-year-old light skinned African American who decides to pass herself off as a white girl. She gets a job working in the home of a powerful movie mogul. Everything seems hunky-dory on the surface, but it doesn't take her long to learn the sordid truth about the man's troubled family. The wife is a sniveling hypochondriac, a promiscuous hellion for a daughter, and a son who was booted out of West Point after he was falsely accused of homosexuality. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1965
John Agar leads an American demolition squad into Italy to destroy a U.S. headquarters recently commandeered by Axis forces. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- 1964
A small-town girl comes to Dallas, Texas, to break into show business and winds up working as a stripper in various clubs around the city. This collection of vintage strip acts was filmed in Dallas, Texas, but -- contrary to the film's publicity claims -- was not shot in Jack Ruby's nightclub. ~ Brian Gusse, All Movie Guide
- 1964
Cult filmmaker Larry Buchanan, who had previously shot footage in Jack Ruby's nightclub for his mondo feature Naughty Dallas, directed this speculative trial drama, released within months of Oswald's death. Making use of actual newsreel footage along with courtroom re-creations, Buchanan's film puts Oswald (Arthur Nations) on trial, represented by cult-favorite George Russell, star of the peculiar The Black Cat (1966). Oddly enough, given that Buchanan's later films would suggest conspiracies in the deaths of Marilyn Monroe (Good Night, Sweet Marilyn), Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix (all in Down on Us), there is no suggestion that anyone but Oswald was responsible for the Kennedy assassination. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
This fact-based drama from the early 1960s takes a documentary approach to the true story of the African-American owner of a Dallas motel who is tried on charges of raping a Swedish woman. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
