films for Fox, starting with Alaskan Highway. The company was headed by George Warren, a cost controller for MGM, with William Magginetti as production supervisor and Harry Spaulding as story editor. Lippert was described as being "associated" with the company. "We use hack writers or new writers and beat-up faces or new faces", he said later. "No, I don't direct any of them. I wouldn't be a director for anything. No wonder they all have ulcers." Associated Producers Incorporated In 1959, Lippert renamed Regal as Associated Producers Incorporated (API) to make more low-budget films for double features (API having similar initials to exploitation specialist American International Pictures may have been coincidental). The core of API was Harry Spalding and Maury Dexter. All API's productions were done in-house. In October 1959, Lippert said making "little Bs" for $100,000 was no longer as lucrative because "it is now in the same category as the short TV feature which people can see for free." He persuaded Fox to start financing his films up to $300,000 and a shooting schedule of around 15 days starting with The Sad Horse. "I have an angle on everything", he said in 1960, adding that he found it profitable to focus on small towns and country areas. "There's a lot of money in sticks." In 1962, Lippert criticized Hollywood for the "slow suicide" in movie going, blaming involvement of New York bankers in creative matters, inflated overhead, union featherbedding and obsolete theaters. "The economics of this business have gone cock-eyed", he added. "The total gross of pictures has dropped from 20-30% and the costs have doubled. It's nuts." By this stage, he estimated that he had made "about 300 films" including 100 for Fox in five years. "One year, I made 26, more than the rest of the studios." "Most Bs cost $100,000 or $200,000", he said. "We shoot them in six or seven days. There's hardly any re-shooting. Unless something is glaringly wrong, we let 'em go. What the hell, people don't care. They want to be entertained. I've heard people coming out of my theaters after seeing a double bill that featured a big production, 'Everybody died' or 'How that girl suffered. Thank God for the little picture'." Lippert said that he wanted to make more Westerns "because they're cheap" but did not because "television had saturated the market." Faced with increasing production costs in Hollywood,