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Mini Biography

Self-described schlockmeister Larry Buchanan was born Marcus Larry Seale, Jr. on January 31, 1923. Orphaned at an early age, he was sent to a Baptist orphanage. After graduating from high school in Dallas, the 18-year-old turned down a scholarship to study the ministry at Baylor University to accept an apprenticeship in the props department with 20th-Century Fox Pictures. Fox eventually signed Marcus Seale to an acting contract, renaming him Larry Buchanan, the name he would keep for his entire professional life, long after he left behind his days as a contract player at the studio.

Buchanan studied filmmaking in the Army Signal Corps, which made him want to become a director. Back at Fox, he played bit parts, most notably in the Gregory Peck vehicle "The Gunfighter" (1950). However, his creative interests lay elsewhere. In the early `50s, Buchanan satisfied his desire to become a director by helming religious documentaries for evangelist Oral Roberts. He also gained experience as an assistant director on "The Marrying Kind" (1952), directed by the legendary George Cukor.

Buchanan left behind acting for production, taking a job as a writer on "The Gabby Hayes Show." In 1951, he directed his first film, "The Cowboy", which was nominated for a Peabody Award. Buchanan would never again taste critical praise, as he segued into directing low-budget, exploitation fare intended for the grind-house, the drive-in or straight-to-television. In the late `50s and 1960s, he directed movies for drive-in exploitation specialist American International Pictures, churning out such celluloid travesties as "The Eye Creature," "In The Year 2889" and "Creature of Destruction." With some of the lowest-rated films to chart on the Internet Movie Database, Buchanan gave legendary Z-movie "shlockmeister" Edward D. Wood Jr. a run for the roses for the title "Worst Director Ever." In her NY Times obituary of Buchanan, Margalit Fox wrote:

"One quality united Mr. Buchanan's diverse output: It was not so much that his films were bad; they were deeply, dazzlingly, unrepentantly bad. His work called to mind a famous line from H.L. Mencken, who, describing President Warren G. Harding's prose, said, 'It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it.'''

Buchanan directed a series of low-budget films in the early `60s addressing such topical and taboo issues as sex ("Under Age") and racial relations/miscegenation "Free, White And 21," "High Yellow"), themes that were perennial grind-house circuit favorites. He also solidified his reputation as a hack with a spate of ultra-low-budgeted remakes of AIP science-fiction potboilers, including "Zontar, the Thing from Venus," and "Mars Needs Women," a film whose succinct title, at least, is a classic of sorts.

The year after president John F. Kennedy was cut down by sniper-bullets in his hometown of Dallas, Buchanan exploited the event by writing and directing a fictionalized account of the judicial reckoning" of J.F.K.'s alleged assassin, "The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald" (1964). He had been in Dallas to shoot a striptease-film at The Carousel, Oswald-killer Jack Ruby's Dallas nightclub, `Naughty Dallas' (1964). The Oswald picture was the first of what would become a lucrative vein for Buchanan: biopics and docudramas that limned the lives of everyone from Janis Joplin to Jesus, with Pretty Boy Floyd, Jean Harlow, Jimi Hendrix, Howard Hughes, and Jim Morrison thrown in for good measure.

In the late `60s, Buchanan relocated to Texas to continue his film career, helping to boost the Lone Star State's film industry. His movies were made with budgets under $100,000 (a figure that approximates about 1/30th of Marlon Brando's daily wage on 1978's "Superman" and 1/20th of Robert Redford's daily haul on 1977's "A Bridge Too Far" to provide contrast with contemporaneous Hollywood budgets). Due to their low costs and the well-developed drive-in and grind-house circuits of the 1950s, '60s & '70s, almost all of Buchanan's movies finished financially in the black. His production overhead was minimal as he typically was a picture's director, producer, screenwriter and editor.

In 1996, he published his memoirs, "It Came from Hunger: Tales of a Cinema Schlockmeister." In his memoir, Buchanan called his style of independent cinema "guerilla filmmaking." Classifying Buchanan as a genius of his genre, Rob Craig said on Horror-Wood.com: "Buchanan wrote or adapted prime pieces of pulp genre fiction on assignment, filmed them as best he could given his resources, and offered the results to the world with no apologies, nor any revisionist strings attached."

Buchanan was completing the editing of his last movie at his home in Phoenix, Arizona when he died on December 2, 2004, two months shy of his 82nd birthday. He considered "The Copper Scroll of Mary Magdalene," a story based on a Gnostic interpretation of Christ, to be his finest film. The man who had turned down the chance to become a minister had been working on the film since 1972. Returning to his roots, the film had became the goal of his career, and was an expression of his artistic as well as religious passion.

Buchanan was survived by wife of 52 years, Jane, by his sons Randy, Barry, and Jeff, and by his daughter Dee.

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Trivia

Directed the fictionalized account of the "trial" of JFK's assassin, had he lived, aptly titled The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald (1964), and Down on Us (1984), which depicted a secret government plot behind the deaths of rock idols Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison.

Had reportedly completed shooting his final film "The Copper Scroll of Mary Magdalene" which was based on the life of Jesus at the time of his death.

Father of Barry Buchanan.

Offbeat producer and director of low-budget '60s sci-fi films (Mars Needs Women (1967) (TV)) and other exploitative tales of interest (Common Law Wife (1963)).

First professional job was as a writer on "The Gabby Hayes Show" (1950).

When The Eye Creatures (1965) (TV) was re-released some years later, its opening credits displayed the film's new title in very large letters: "Attack of the the Eye Creatures".

Was a veteran member of the Directors Guild of America, the Writers Guild of America, and the Screen Actors Guild.

Was a folk musician, war-plant worker and an actor prior to becoming a director.

2007 Winner, Larry Buchanan

Predating Larry Buchanan’s MARS ...