Interview with David Prior of Action International Pictures

“Our whole thing at AIP, like you said earlier, was wrecking things and blowing things up as much as we possibly could. I used to try to purposely try to write scripts that had as little bit of dialogue as possible. I’m serious. I used to call dialogue ‘functional dialogue.’ In other words, just what is necessary for the story.”

During the 80s and 90s Action International Pictures was known as the go-to-company for low-budget schlock. That’s not meant as an insult to the company. The quote above by one of AIP’s three founders, David Prior, demonstrates that the people behind movies like Mankillers, Future Force, and Space Mutiny knew that their perogative was shooting guns, flipping cars, and exploding anything combustible. People didn’t rent AIP movies to see something with meaning. They rented them to see macho heroism and stock footage of missile blasts.

David Prior directed and wrote the majority of the movies that AIP produced. A few months ago he was kind enough to speak to me over the phone. I captured a half hour of our interview and have since transcribed it. Presented here is part one of the interview. Part two will be posted on Friday.

You can check out David Prior’s website and IMDb. You may also be interested in Critical Condition’s excellent collection of boxart for AIP movies.

Okay, I only have the barest of knowledge about AIP. Were you a part of the company from the beginning?

I was a partner — one of three. There were three of us and we had made a film together and we were actually doing the sound mix. And I had known somebody who had been to one of the film markets in Milan back in those days and had done real well doing pre-sells on movies. In other words, selling stuff you hadn’t made, and we’d talked about it and decided to start a company and see what we could do.