Larry Buchanan, 81, ‘Schlockmeister’ Cult Filmmaker

Larry Buchanan, who died December 2 in Tucson,was the self-proclaimed “Schlockmeister” responsible for such low-brow drive-in fare as “Mars Needs Women,” “Curse of the Swamp Creature,” and “Down on Us,” a 1984 “biodrama” that contended that Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin were eliminated by an American government plot.Memorialized by cult-film enthusiasts for being “so bad they’re good,” Buchanan’s productions may have been among the most derided in the history of American cinema. Such attention “kind of stung at first,” he told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 1997.”But then you’ve got to realize the only bad recognition is no recognition.”In fact, Buchanan’s films rarely strove for anything beyond shock value, and he recalled his deal with his backers at American International Pictures in the 1960s: “They said, ‘Name your ticket. We need pictures. We want some cheap, fast, color pictures. We want half-ass names in them, and we want them now.'” On only a handful of Buchanan’s two-dozen films did he spend more than two weeks shooting.Born Marcus Larry Seale in rural Lost Prairie, Texas, Buchanan was made an orphan when his mother died soon after he was born; shortly thereafter his father, a Texas Ranger, was killed during a bank robbery. Buchanan was raised in a Dallas orphanage, where he was infatuated by films and decided to become a director.He was signed on as a studio player by 20th Century Fox, who changed his name for film credits. Buchanan appeared as an extra in a few films of the 1940s and worked as a technician before moving to New York, where he made training films with the Army Signal Corps and also worked in theater. He moved back to Dallas and shot his first film in 1952, the Western “Grubstake,” starring a very young Jack Klugman.Buchanan had his first real success with “Free, White & 21” (1963), a courtroom drama that Buchanan boasted was “the first of the blaxsploitation pictures.” “Free, White & 21” brought him to the attention of American International Pictures, which bankrolled Buchanan to make a string of low-budget films. American International was in the business of importing Japanese monster films and the like, but began funding Buchanan because he charged about the same as the international licensing fee in return for home-grown productions like “Naughty Dallas,” (1964), “Zontar From Venus” (1966), and “It’s Alive” (1969), in which a crazed farmer kidnaps tourists to feed to his pet dinosaur. (Connoisseurs have noted that the dinosaur costume in “It’s Alive” is the same as the dinosaur costume in “Curse of the Swamp Creature” (1966). “We couldn’t afford anything else,” Buchanan toldBijouflix.com, an online fanzine. “We put new ping-pong balls in the eyes. We could afford that.”)Starting in the 1970s, Buchanan turned increasingly to biography and documentary, although his subject matter remained as sensationalist as ever. He made two films about Marilyn Monroe, “Goodbye, Norma Jean” (1976), dismissed by Vincent Canby as “terrible, witless, schlocky,” and “Goodnight, Sweet Marilyn” (1989), in which Buchanan posited that Monroe’s death was a mercy killing by a friend bearing lethal suppositories.Others of this ilk included “A Bullet For Pretty Boy” (1968), as in Pretty Boy Floyd, played by the teen idol Fabian. “I’m very proud of the machine gun scenes in it,” Buchanan said.He followed this with “Hughes and Harlow: Angels in Hell” (1977), and “The Loch Ness Horror” (1981), which Buchanan criticized as “just not bloody enough. I am not a bloodmaker.”Buchanan was feted as “a quintessential survivor in American cinema” by no less than Roger Corman, who added: “He is a maverick filmmaker who uses any guerrilla tactic in his arsenal to get his pictures to the screen.”Buchanan had recently been putting the finishing touches on “The Copper Scroll of Mary Magdalene,” a Biblical epic that presents historical theories about Jesus’s membership in the shadowy Essene religious movement. It features a score by the Oscar winning composer Alex North, and Buchanan’s production company said it hoped to have the film in theaters some time later this year.Larry BuchananBorn Marcus Larry Seale on January 31, 1923, in Lost Prairie, Texas; died in Tucson on December 2 of complications of a collapsed lung; survived by his wife, Jane, and four children.

Larry Buchanan, 81, ‘Schlockmeister’ Cult Filmmaker

Larry Buchanan, 81, ‘Schlockmeister’ Cult Filmmaker

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