Producer Roger Corman and myself
TO B OR NOT TO B
Movie buffs know Corman as the "King of the Bs," a title Corman says
is wrongly attached to his movies. When theater going began to wane in the
'30s, studios began to lure movie goers by combining two movies onto one
ticket. The "A" movie would be a major movie with top notch, proven talent.
The "B" movie would use low budgets and new writers, actors, directors, and
producers. Corman's movies were never meant to run behind other features,
but rather to compete directly against them.
He has even been immortalized in rock legend Frank Zappa's early
'70's song Cheapness for one of Corman's early sci-fi efforts, It Conquered
the World. Aficianados will remember this one where an inverted ice cream
cone from the planet Venus tries to take ofver the Earth. As with many of
Corman's projects, the fun and loose spirit of the movie makes it even more
endearing. And while major studios were spending as much as $1 million in
the mid to late '50s for a black and white feature, Corman was producing
them for under $100,000.
And in record time too! For instance, the day after the U.S.
Explorer satellite went up, Corman told a studio he could have a movie
ready in two months, a schedule he kept with War of the Satellites. Early
Corman projects were often accomplished in just a few days shooting and
using as much as one third of the footage shot for the finished movie. By
contrast, some of today's movies have dozens of hours of footage shot only
to be whittled down to an hour and a half movie.
POE IT TREE
Corman may be most famous among budget movie fanatics for his Edgar
Allen Poe movies which include The House of Usher (with Vincent Price,
1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (with Vincent Price, 1961), The Premature
Burial (with Ray Milland, 1962), Tales of Terror (with Price, Peter Lorre,
and an aging Basil Rathbone, 1962), The Haunted Palace (from an H. P.
Lovecraft story with a Poe title with Lon Chaney Jr., 1963) The Raven (with
Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, and a young Jack Nicholson, 1963), The
Masque of the Red Death (with Price, 1964),
Don't look for today's top stars in a Corman film—look for
stars of tomorrow. Some of the people who have participated in Corman
projects that have moved on to become stars in their own right include:
Mike Connors (Mannix); William Shatner (Star Trek); Patrick Magee (The
Avengers); Bruce Dern; Robert De Niro; Peter and Bridget Fonda; Don
Rickles; Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Ellen Burstyn,
Diane Ladd, and Sally Kirkland just to name a few.
IT'S MOVIE CHANNEL TIME!
For The Movie Channel, Corman has assembled a group of 26 movies
made specifically for the premium network. With the second season of 13
movies at a close, will the legendary director/producer renew his contract?
Fare for the The Movie Channel features includes remakes of earlier
Corman works such as 1960's The Wasp Woman which starred Susan Cabot as an
aging cosmetics magnate who uses wasp jelly to preserve her youth. As in
the The Movie Channel remake featuring Jennifer Rubin, the jelly has a
deadly side effect. Cabot starred in only three movies, all three Corman
films. Rubin starred in the 1991 Delusion and the 1992 A Woman, Her Men and
Her Futon among other films.
Newer fare includes Alien Adventures which tells the story of aliens
who feast on criminals who have marked a newly reformed street hustler as
the next course. Black Scorpion 2 features Joan Severance as a cop who
turns in her badge to fight crime as a superhero. And the last of Corman's
current crop is the long-awaited movie version of Vampirella, slated for
premiere on September 28 and scheduled for repeats through October.
ATTACK OF THE CORMAN MONSTERS
The saga of independent filmmaker roger Corman ranks with the most
amazing movie success stories. Having produced more than 225 films and
directed fifty others, Corman's modus operandi is to spot the artist and
their potential, put up the money, and order them to work. He is one of a
few to consistently offer responsible jobs in film to women.
Born in Detroit in 1926, Corman graduated from Beverly Hills High
School, and in 1947 received a bachelor's degree in engineering from
Stanford University. He took a job at 20th Century Fox, and by 1949 was a
story analyst at the studio. Disenchanted with studio protocol, however, he
left Fox for England where he did post-graduate work in modern English
literature at Oxford University's Balliol College. Upon returning to
Hollywood, Corman worked briefly as a literary agent.
In 1953, Roger Corman sold his first screenplay and became the
associate producer for the film for Allied Artists. The following year he
made "Monsters From the Ocean Floor", his first film as an independent
producer, on the unprecedented budget of $18,000.
Corman's films became a graphic testament to the notion that a
movie need not cost a fortune to be good. He began producing low-budget
features, all of them extremely successful, each having something to say,
yet couched in entertainment values accessible to audiences in every walk
of life. His cycle of eight Vincent Price—Edgar Allan Poe horror
classics gained international attention in the 1960's.
When the French Film Institute honored him with a retrospective in
1964, Roger Corman became the youngest producer/director ever to receive
such acclaim. Corman's long line of box office hits literally built
American International Pictures into a major force. Yet, despite his
success, Corman opted to escape from major studio supervision. Somewhat
appalled by the intrinsic waste and constrictions of studio overheads and
executive interference, he founded New World Pictures in 1970, his own
production and distribution company.
New World's first year in operation
astonished even Corman, as all eleven pictures distributed showed
substantial profits. New World rapidly grew into the largest independent
motion picture distribution company in the United States. In addition to
providing the public with such fast-past entertainments as "Big Bad Mama",
and "Eat My Dust", or cult films such as "Rock and Roll High School", New
World soon became the leader in presenting high quality foreign films to
the American public.
In January of 1983, Roger Corman made the decision to
sell New World Pictures. This decision allowed him to continue producing
films without the distraction of managing a huge distribution business, and
to make pictures on larger budgets, utilizing funds from their sales to
finance them. The day after selling New World Pictures, Corman announced
the formation of his new production company, Concorde-New Horizons.
In the
year that followed, he released five new films: the teen comedy
"Screwballs": the sci-fi adventure "Space Raider": the sword and sorcery
epic "Deathstalker"; "Suburbia", a punk drama directed by Penelope
Spheeris; and "Love Letters", a tender love story starring Jamie Lee
Curtis. Concorde's more recent releases include: "Dracula Rising", starring
Christopher Atkins ("Blue Lagoon"); "Stepmonster", starring Alan Thicke
("Growing Pains"); and "Carnosaur", starring Academy Award-nominee Diane
Ladd; "Reflections in the Dark", starring Mimi Rogers and Billy Zane; Paul
Anderson's "Shopping" (scheduled for a Fall '95 release); Talia Shire's
"One Night Stand".