American International Pictures is an American motion picture production label of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, owned by Amazon MGM Studios. In its original operating period, AIP was an independent film production and distribution company known for producing and releasing films from 1955 until 1980, a year after its acquisition by Filmways in 1979.
Victor Sunico Diaz, popularly known as Vic Diaz, was a Filipino character actor who mostly portrayed villains. He was also the father of Teddy Diaz, the founding guitarist of the Filipino Rock band The Dawn.
Andrés Centenera was a Filipino character actor. He was the grandfather of Filipino singer Rafael Centenera. He appeared in films from 1937 to 1979.
Gerardo de León was a Filipino film director and actor. He was posthumously conferred as a National Artist of the Philippines for Film in 1982.
Black Mama White Mama, also known as Women in Chains, Hot, Hard and Mean and Chained Women, is a 1973 women in prison film directed by Eddie Romero and starring Pam Grier and Margaret Markov. The film has elements of blaxploitation.
The Masque of the Red Death is a 1964 horror film directed by Roger Corman and starring Vincent Price. The story follows a prince who terrorizes a plague-ridden peasantry while merrymaking in a lonely castle with his jaded courtiers. The screenplay, written by Charles Beaumont and R. Wright Campbell, was based upon the 1842 short story of the same name by American author Edgar Allan Poe, and incorporates a subplot based on another Poe tale, "Hop-Frog". Another subplot is drawn from Torture by Hope by Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam.
John Ashley was an American actor, producer and singer. He was best known for his work as an actor in films for American International Pictures, producing and acting in horror films shot in the Philippines, and for producing various television series, including The A-Team.
Edgar Sinco Romero,, commonly known as Eddie Romero, was a Filipino film director, film producer and screenwriter.
The Big Doll House is a 1971 American women-in-prison film starring Pam Grier, Judy Brown, Roberta Collins, Brooke Mills, and Pat Woodell. The film follows six female inmates through daily life in a gritty, unidentified tropical prison. Later the same year, the film Women in Cages featured a similar story and setting and much the same cast, and was shot in the same abandoned prison buildings. A nonsequel follow-up, titled The Big Bird Cage, was released in 1972.
Terror Is a Man is a 1959 black-and-white Filipino/American horror film directed by Gerardo de Leon.
The Woman Hunt is a 1972 film directed by Eddie Romero and starring John Ashley, Pat Woodell, and Sid Haig.
Manila, Open City is a 1968 war film written, produced, and directed by Eddie Romero about the Battle of Manila in World War II. The film was screened upon the launching of the National Film Archive of the Philippines in December 2011.
The Mad Doctor of Blood Island is a 1969 Filipino horror film, co-directed by Eddie Romero and Gerardo de Leon, and starring John Ashley, Angelique Pettyjohn, Eddie Garcia and Ronald Remy.
Brides of Blood is a 1968 Filipino horror film, co-directed by Eddie Romero and Gerardo de Leon, and starring John Ashley, Kent Taylor, Beverly Hills, Eva Darren and Mario Montenegro. It was the first movie that Ashley made in the Philippines, beginning a long association between Ashley and that country. Brides of Blood was the second in a series of four horror films produced by Romero and Kane W. Lynn known as the "Blood Island" series, which also included Terror Is a Man, The Mad Doctor of Blood Island and Beast of Blood. Brides of Blood was later released to television syndication in some areas as Island of Living Horror.
Beast of Blood, released in the UK as Blood Devils, is a 1970 Filipino horror film. A sequel to The Mad Doctor of Blood Island, it was directed by Eddie Romero. It was the fourth in a series of four Filipino horror films, produced by Romero and Kane W. Lynn, known as the "Blood Island" series, which also included Terror Is a Man, Brides of Blood and The Mad Doctor of Blood Island. It was also Romero's last film for Lynn's Hemisphere Pictures, as the two went their separate ways after this film was completed.
Hemisphere Pictures was a film production and distribution company that specialised in movies from the Philippines. More information is available at Kane W. Lynn.
The Twilight People is a 1972 Filipino-American horror film directed by Eddie Romero. It was produced by Romero and John Ashley, and written by Romero and Jerome Small. It stars Ashley and features, in an early film appearance, Pam Grier in a supporting role.
Savage Sisters is a 1974 women in prison film made in the Philippines and directed by Eddie Romero.
Machete Maidens Unleashed! is a 2010 Australian documentary film directed by Mark Hartley.
Kane W. Lynn (1919–1975) was an American film producer who made a number of movies in the Philippines with producer Irwin Pizor and Filipino director Eddie Romero as Hemisphere Pictures, or the House of Horror as they often referred to themselves. Later Pizor quit the company after an argument, and when Romero left to form a production company with actor John Ashley, Lynn tired of making movies and his Hemisphere Pictures became just a movie distributor, mainly handling adult films and low budget B-movies. It was his guidance that kept Hemisphere Pictures solvent and constantly moving forward, releasing a diverse product line of low-budget independent movies from the early 1960s through the mid-1970s.
