He also directed motion pictures, including Without Warning!, The Rack, The Monster That Challenged the World, Geronimo, Rough Night in Jericho, and Sam Whiskey.

"[3] The unit included actors George Montgomery, Arthur Kennedy, Alan Ladd, William Holden, and DeForest Kelley.

[3] After the war, Laven continued to work in the motion picture business, holding jobs as a script supervisor, dialogue director, and film press agent.

[6] In September 1951, Laven formed a production company with Jules V. Levy and Arthur Gardner, both of whom he had met while working in the First Motion Picture Unit.

[6][8][9] Operating on a shoe-string budget, the film was shot on the streets of Los Angeles—on the Hollywood Freeway, in Chavez Ravine, at the Produce Terminal, and plant nurseries, cocktail bars, and taxi offices.

In May 1952, Hedda Hopper announced the arrival of the new team as follows:"THREE FELLOWS, Jules Levy, Arthur Gardner and Arnold Laven, met in the army in World War II.

"[10]The trio's second feature was Vice Squad, a 1953 detective drama directed by Laven and starring Edward G. Robinson and Adam Williams.

"[12]In 1956, Laven went out on his own to direct The Rack, a drama starring Paul Newman and Lee Marvin about a soldier who is court-martialed for collaborating with the enemy after spending two years in a North Korean prison camp.

Laven received directing and producing credits on The Monster That Challenged the World, a feature about an army of giant mollusks that emerge from the Salton Sea in California's Imperial Valley.

A review in the Los Angeles Times called the film "distinctly chilling," noted that "Laven never lets the tension slacken," and described the plot as follows:"An earthquake opens a deep crevice under the Salton Sea and salt water, perhaps aided by atomic radiation, hatches long buried eggs of the phylum Mollusca.

... [T]hese sea-going prehistoric cousins ... leave silvery, smeary tracks, are as long as giraffes, as hungry as Great Danes and about as kindly disposed as panthers.

Laven was responsible for casting Lee Majors as Stanwyck's step-son, predicting big things for the young actor: "It's his first appearance before a camera and I'll go on record as saying he's one of the most attractive male stars to come along in years.

The film was Sam Whiskey, a western directed by Laven and starring Burt Reynolds and Angie Dickinson as characters trying to recover $250,000 in gold bars from a steamboat wreck.

[23] During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Levy-Gardner-Laven team also remained active as producers on such films as Clambake, a 1967 Elvis Presley musical co-starring Shelley Fabares,[24] The Scalphunters, a 1968 western directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Burt Lancaster, Ossie Davis and Telly Savalas,[25] and Kansas City Bomber, a 1972 drama starring Raquel Welch as a roller derby athlete.