Arkoff was born in
Fort Dodge, Iowa, to
Russian Jewish parents. He was the son of Helen (Lurie) and Louis Arkoff, who ran his Louis Clothing Co. Arkoff first studied to be a lawyer. He began his career in Hollywood as a producer of
The Hank McCune Show, a seminal sitcom produced in 1951. In 1954,
James H. Nicholson founded the
American Releasing Corporation, which later became known as
American International Pictures, and made Arkoff the vice-president. AIP films were mostly low-budget, with production completed in a few days, though nearly all of them became profitable. Along with business partner
James H. Nicholson and producer-director
Roger Corman, he produced eighteen films. Arkoff is also credited with starting a few genres, such as the
Beach Party and
outlaw biker movies, and his company played a substantial part in bringing the horror film genre to a novel level with successes such as
Blacula,
I Was a Teenage Werewolf and
The Thing with Two Heads. American International Pictures movies starred many established actors in principal or cameo roles, such as
Boris Karloff,
Elsa Lanchester,
Peter Lorre, and
Vincent Price, as well as others who later became household names, including
Don Johnson,
Nick Nolte,
Diane Ladd, and most notably
Jack Nicholson. A number of actors shunned or overlooked by most of Hollywood during the 1960s and 1970s, such as
Bruce Dern and
Dennis Hopper, also found work in one or more of Arkoff's productions. Arkoff's most financially successful film was the 1979 adaptation of
Jay Anson's book
The Amityville Horror. Following the sale of AIP to
Filmways in 1979 for $30 million, Arkoff was unhappy with the direction of the company and resigned in December 1979 to set up his own production company,
Arkoff International Pictures., receiving a payout worth $1.4 million. Arkoff's 1992 autobiography was titled
Flying Through Hollywood by the Seat of my Pants: From the Man who Brought You I was a Teenage Werewolf and Muscle Beach Party. In 2000, Arkoff was featured alongside former collaborators including
Roger Corman,
Dick Miller and
Peter Bogdanovich in the documentary
SCHLOCK! The Secret History of American Movies, a film about the rise and fall of American exploitation cinema. == Personal life and death ==