Enter Amicus...
Amicus Films, in one guise or another, between 1960 and 1975, produced over thirty movies before its final dissolution. One of England’s leading independent producers, it was best known for its horror anthologies, making it Hammer Film’s biggest rival.
Among their titles were Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, the Skull, the Beast Must Die, The House That Dripped Blood, the Deadly Bees, the Terrornauts, Asylum, Tales from the Crypt, The Land That Time Forgot, At The Earth’s Core, the People that Time Forgot and so forth.
Oddly enough, this quintessential British institution was actually the work of two New York jews, Max Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky.
Subotsky in the 1950's was an earnest young scriptwriter. In 1956, he submitted a script to Hammer studios titled Frankenstein and the Monster, and never quite forgave them for turning him down.
Rosenberg was the son of a furrier. After graduating law school, Rosenberg got into the film business in 1939, distributing foreign films in America. In 1954, he hooked up with Milton Subotsky and the two of them became producers.
Together they produced a handful of forgettable teen flicks, such as ‘Rock, Rock, Rock’ and ‘Jamboree.’ This was the era of the baby boom, and the American teenager, as a phenomen, was a recent invention.
For the first time, you had a large population of mostly urban teens, who were not getting put straight into adulthood. Instead, they drove cars, went to dances, suffered through high school, and partied. It was the golden age of rock and roll. And that meant that teenager oriented rock movies were the natural target of a pair of want to be producers, trying to bite off a piece of the youth market.
But the real money proved to be importing British horror films. These were movies that were accessible, or could be accessible to an American audience, particularly to the audience of youth and teenagers who were the primary consumers of horror movies. British movies were shot in English, their locations and situations were recognizeable to Americans, and most importantly, they could be made cheaply. The cost of production in England was a fraction of what it was in America.
In 1954, Rosenberg obtained the rights to Hammer’s Curse of Frankenstein, for half a million dollars and made seven million in tickets. That was the breakthrough moment. For Subotsky it was a sort of personal insult, Hammer had turned down his Frankenstein script... and then made their own.
In 1960, Milton Subotsky moved to England. Still working with Rosenberg, under the name of Vulcan productions, they made City of Death, a fairly traditional gothic horror starring Christopher Lee. A few years later, they formalized their relationship under the banner of Amicus Productions.
Their first real production as Amicus was ‘Doctor Terror’s House of Horrors’, the film which would put them on the map, and set the model for many of their future productions.
Doctor Terror’s House of Horrors - There’s no house involved. Instead, five men enter a train car where they encounter Peter Cushing as the titular Doctor Terror, aka Shreck. To while away the time, he produces a tarot deck and tells each of them the story of their fate...
In the first story, we hear of an ancestral curse, a gothic house in the Scottish highlands, and a werewolf bent on revenge. The next story is a sci fi tale of a vine that grows in a garden and turns out to be bent on homicide. In Voodoo, Roy Castle, a Jazz musician, gets into trouble when he steals a west indies tune. Christopher Lee stars with Michael Gough in a story about a severed hand. Finally, Donald Sutherland gets mixed up with Vampires.
At the end, Doctor Terror tells the men that the only way to avoid these fates is to die first. It turns out to be unnecessary advice, as there has been a train wreck, and they’re all already dead. Doctor Terror turns out to be death.
There’s a corny quality to these stories, a very EC Comics vibe, each story ends with an ironic twist. The stories hit all the traditional bases - there’s a vampire, a werewolf, voodoo sorcery, a vengeful disembodied hand, and even a sci fi.
Consider the marquee - you had Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Donald Sutherland, Michael Gough and a host of recognizable names.
Behind the scenes, Milton Subotsky wrote the script, Rosenberg produced, and Freddie Frances directed. Joe Vegoda took an uncredited role helping the production along as an uncredited Executive Producer.
This was very much Milton Subotsky, for all his desire to be a screenwriter, Subotsky’s sensibility had formed on the pulp sci fi and EC comics of the 1940's and 1950's. He liked Frankenstein and Dracula and all that, he liked family friendly horror, and he had little taste for the harder edged, sex, gore and shock that would come to define the genre as the years wore on. His writing style and choice of subjects was already old fashioned in his heyday, and as the 70's wore on, he drifted further out of touch.
Made for the paltry sum of 105,000 pounds, it was shot in May through July, 1964, and released in February, 1965. It would go on to make its money back several times over, inspiring Subotsky and Rosenberg to visit that well again and again.
More importantly, it established Amicus, and the Subotsky/Rosenberg team as people who could put a serious project together, who could find the money, book the talent, and get the production going. Peter Cushing and Roy Castle, would, of course, transition directly into Doctor Who.
Doctor Terror was a portmanteau film - essentially an anthology of short films, loosely based around an idea or character. The big advantage of the portmanteau was that it was cheap. You could get big stars like Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee, without having to pay the full rate. Donald Sutherland, for instance, an internationally respected actor, was paid a mere thousand pounds. Instead, you hired them on for a couple of days shooting for one of the stories, and then plastered their names on the Marquee.
Shooting as a series of self contained short films simplified problems every which way and contained costs. You didn’t need to commit to extensive locations, productions. You basically got a small cast and crew together, knocked a short story off, and proceeded to the next. You could make it very cheaply, and with a series of headline names, you could sell it easily. In terms of audience satisfiction, you weren’t putting all your eggs in one basket. For the audience, well, if one of the stories didn’t work, they’d simply go on to the next one. There was something for every taste and inclination.
After a few years delay, more portmanteau horror films followed: Torture Garden (1967), The House That Dripped Blood (1971), Tales From the Crypt (1972), Asylum (1972), The Vault of Horror (1973), From Beyond the Grave (1974).
Oddly enough, Amicus didn’t proceed immediately to the genre - having made Doctor Terror, their next step was to go with Doctor Who and Sci Fi films, and even more conventional single subject horror movies. It was as if, as they went along, they seemed to lose some confidence, their particular style of horror was going slowly out of fashion, and instead of changing, they tried to return to and cling to their earliest success.
Along the way, they produced horror films, from low budget potboilers like the Deadly Bees, to high concept art-horror like I, Madman, there were gothic stories like the Skull and Now the Screaming Starts, and even a new wave horror, Scream and Scream Again. They established Cinerama Releasing in 1966, and were involved in the distribution They dabbled with science fiction in the Terrornauts, had a late swerve into adventure with At the Earth’s Core and Land that Time Forgot, they even went upscale for a time in the early 70's.
For all of its output, and we’re talking over thirty films in a fifteen year span, Amicus was a modest affair. It was literally a small office, rented for Milton Subotsky, on the Shepperton film lot, stacked with paperbacks, comic books, scripts, correspondence, and posters, where Subotsky worked with only a secretary. In New York, Rosenberg helped to arrange business.
It was literally ahead of its time, a virtual film studio that existed as a small office, two partners on opposite sides of the ocean, and as a web of deals, contracts, arrangements and relationships. Physically, Amicus barely existed. But it got movies made.
Although the temptation was to see Subotsky as the creative side, and Rosenberg as the business side, and although that was mostly true, it was a bit more complex. The two men argued and bickered frequently, and their roles sometimes blurred. Subotsky sometimes put together deals, Rosenberg sometimes put together films.
Doctor Terror was fundamental for Doctor Who. Ironically, it hadn't even hit the theatres when Joe Vegoda in 1964 approached the BBC to license Doctor Who.
But what there was, was a fully fledged film, well on its way to the theatres, and it was a project that Joe Vegoda had worked closely with both Subotsky and Rosenberg. So when he needed partners, they were only too happy to oblige.
They chose the name AARU together, as a joint venture of Amicus and Regal. I'm not sure what AARU represents, but I'm assuming it's an acronym of some sort.
Negotiations proceeded and by December of 1964, AARU Productions had negotiated a license with Terry Nation and the BBC for a Doctor Who and the Daleks, movie, with an option for two more films.
Doctor Who was on its way to the theatres.... All they needed was a star, a budget, a studio... and some Daleks.
[Note] The description of Amicus as a virtual production house is essentially accurate. It really did come down to one relatively tiny office, and two partners on opposite sides of the ocean. The history of Amicus, it's career in films, and in particular, Milton Subotsky's sensibilities is accurate. The description of Doctor Terror is also accurate.
[Note #2] Sources seem confused as to the origin of AARU. A couple of sources suggest that this was Joe Vegoda’s production company, but that was clearly Regal International Pictures. My best interpretation is that AARU was an acronym representing the partnership of Vegoda, Subotsky and Rosenberg. AARU was only ever used for the Doctor Who films.
[Note #3] There is some controversy here. Some sources have the AARU deal as allowing for only one option on a second movie, not two more. This makes a certain amount of sense, as at the time of the negotiation, there had only been two Dalek serials. The tendency back then was to negotiate for the stories. However, it should be noted that during the 1960's, a third Dalek movie was actively discussed... at least until the returns on the second came in.
Milton Subotsky appears to have believed that he retained the option for a third movie, or at least that he felt somewhat confident that he could obtain it. In an interview in Kevin Jon Daley's documentary, Dalekmania, Subotsky speaks protectively of the Daleks, as if he still retained some control. As late as 1984 he appears to have approached the BBC for license for a Doctor Who script, 'The Lossiemouth Affair,' and by 1990 he, appeared to be pitching looking for financing for the third film ‘Doctor Who’s Greatest Adventure.'
Not much is known of these later projects. Michael Sheard was attached to one. Apparently Greatest Adventure would involve a giant monster. And apparently he wanted to recruit either Tom Baker or Jon Pertwee. It's mostly rumour.
This is a little peculiar, since Amicus had broken up by the late 70's, and Subotsky on his own didn't have that much of a career. He was involved in a few films that came and went, and that was it. It's unlikely that he would have gotten anywhere. His scripts and proposals are now lost.
For purposes of this Timeline, I am assuming that the arrangement was for one movie, with options for two more, for the Daleks and Doctor Who. Or alternatively, that there was an informal commitment to the third by the BBC, that amounted to a de facto option.
