IT CAME FROM HUNGER!  TALES OF A SCHLOCKMEISTER
By Larry Buchanan
Published by McFarland & Co, 1996.  215 pages.

For those out there that think that Roger Corman made movies with incredibly low budgets, then you need to learn who Larry Buchanan was.  Station out of Texas, Buchanan churn out film after film with embarrassing low budgets, some of them making some decent money.  This is one of my favorite quotes from the book:

“Roger Corman had been giving three times the budget we had.  His version was in black and white, and he had as his leads Peter Graves, Beverly Garland, and Lee Van Cleef.  And the running time was only 71 minutes.  For $30,000, I was expected to shoot 80 cut minutes of color and bring in three young stars from Hollywood.  Their board, hotel, and air fare alone would be $15,000!”

This book is filled with tons of stories and lessons of “good-bad” filmmaking, as Buchanan liked to call it.  The book starts out at Buchanan’s early childhood and his development of love for movies, to beginnings as an actor and performer.  But once we get to his start at director, the stories get even more interesting.  Like after finishing one of his earliest films, only to have the money backer dump the films into the lake since his wife (the star of the film) left him.

While most of Buchanan’s work may be considered a waste of time and effort, he was not without talent.  For one of his first features, THE NAKED WITCH, was brought to life when someone came up to Buchanan and said:  “I want to make a drive-in picture with lots of nudity and very little dialogue and all I can spend is $8,000”.  And  THE NAKED WITCH was born.  This little picture went on to make $80,000 in less than a month.  Not a bad investment, huh?

This got the attention of A.I.P. who hired Buchanan to remake several of their pictures, such as IT CONQUERED THE WORLD which became ZONTAR, THE THING FROM VENUS, or INVASION OF THE SAUCERMEN became THE EYE CREATURES.  All were made with super low budgets, but still were turned in on time and made money.

On one of his latter pictures, he had a young girl wanting to be the script girl who said she’d work for free.  That was Debra Hill, who along with John Carpenter, would make one of the most successful independent movies of all times…HALLOWEEN, not to mention going on to become a very successful producer in Hollywood.

Buchanan also gave lectures or workshops for upcoming filmmakers later in his career.  In the book, he kind of outlines what he would talk about in these workshops.  This is enough to scare the hell of young filmmakers who have no clue of what to expect out there in the real film world.  But is also very informative for those who still want to follow that dream.

But I do have one small complaint about this book.  When it came time to discuss some of my favorite films, such as THE EYE CREATURES, or CREATURE OF DESTRUCTION, or CURSE OF THE SWAMP CREATURE, there is very little written.  Some times it’s only a page or so, sometimes even less.  On some of them were there are more pages devoted to the film, it’s text that was taken from a fanzine called ZONTAR, THE MAGAZINE FROM VENUS.  While it is interesting to read, I would have rather heard from Buchanan himself.

But with this being the only complaint I could give, I could not recommend this book enough.  If you are a fan of the ‘old-time filmmakers’ like H.G. Lewis, this is a very entertaining, and very informative book.  And even if you’re not a fan of the movies, but are interested in filmmaking, there is a lot you could learn from this.

McFarland published this book back in 1996, and has since gone out of print.  I was able to find mine through a used book store on-line, and it was $40.  For a McFarland book, and one this enjoyable, that was a good price.  So if you’re interested, you might want to to try that route.