In a recent issue, we looked at the "House" film that propelled former low-rent movie mogul Roger Corman into Technicolor respectability.  But it was his bread-and-butter black-and-white cheapies that led to the classic "Poe" fright film series.  So, just how moldy are the filmic skeletons in Corman's celluloid closet?  Read on to find out as we examine... 

By RON WAITE

What can one say about Roger Corman that hasn't already been said? He's been the subject of numerous books, articles, documentaries and is a living legend still strong in the Hollywood community. His talents are endless and has been a director, producer, writer, actor and endless source of encouragement to actors, technicians and friends for decades.

And like Wyatt Earp and his lesser known brother Virgil, or Jesse James and his lesser known brother Frank, Roger, too, has a younger brother (by one year) named Gene. While he is not as well known as Roger he has worked for half a century producing and writing many a film and to this day the not-so-familiar Corman is still hard at work.

By now fans are familiar with Roger's first effort, The Fast And The Furious. This was a complicated affair dealing with many people including John Ireland and was responsible for the formation of American International Pictures, or AIP.

As the story goes, the newly formed AIP "borrowed" the film for 30 days and promised the young Roger a three-picture deal if he would allow them to distribute his movie. The assured him they would supply $60,000 per pic with an average shooting schedule of 10 days.

Why this was remarkable is nothing short of astounding. First of all AIP had maybe $500 and no experience whatsoever in making movies, but with all the determination of those involved, it worked! Unheard of by any standards. The big studios continued to laugh and scorn and AIP execs laughed all the way to the bank.

Roger Corman would use stock footage, mostly of atomic bomb tests and military scenes, but unlike Ed Wood who used stock footage to make an entire movie, then toss in a few actors with a few inept lines, Corman managed to weave his scenes into a concise story. Also, Corman had the insight to delve into an untapped resource of the day: Teenagers.

Major studios made few, if any films, dealing with teens and rock-n-roll music and hot rods, but AIP and Corman were quick to plunder this virgin market and the teens ate it up.

Drive-in theaters were jammed with carloads of young people drawn to heavy-handed melodramas dealing with teen angst, though it's doubtful few, if any, of these teens actually watched the films on screen! Still, with titles like Swamp Women, Naked Paradise, Sorority Girl, Rock All Night, Carnival Rock, and She Gods Of Shark Reef, how could you not be drawn into the theaters?

Corman dealt with school, beatniks, sex, rock'n'roll, juvenile delinquents, fast cars and faster women, even drugs and alcohol and the Hollywood Gold Mine paid off. With proceeds from one film they'd begin work on another, and the 10 day shoot schedule often became a two or three day event.

Crank 'em out fast, get 'em to the theater, then start a new production. With immediate response they could see which films worked and which didn't. The 1958 classic film The Blob with Steve McQueen was perhaps one of the most memorable of the 50s teen horror movies, but Corman was already using this theme in his films years before Blob's release.

Roger also surrounded himself with young, talented people in all fields: writers, make up personnel, technicians, cameramen, sound and music. He left nothing to chance and with virtually no budget managed to create many memorable films.

Back then these little epics actually scared some people (like me when I was 7 or 8) and today we can sit back and laugh and enjoy their enormous innocence, His black and white films from the 50s remain a classic staple in the home video field and to those few horror hosts around the country who still run these films on late night TV.

Monster From The Ocean Floor (1954) was not directed by Roger (who produced) but by the infamous Wyott Ordung, of Robot Monster fame. Probably one of the worst movies ever made, Robot Monster assured Wyott instant immortality. He was, like Ed Wood, writer, director, actor and terrible in all formats. With a $12,000 budget, Monster was not the blockbuster anyone had hoped for, nor was it intended to be. Leonard Maltin called it "20,000 Yawns Under the Sea".

The Fifties were a great time for horror and sci fi movies. From 1954 through 1960 you could see such thrillers as The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters, Killers From Space, The Creeping Unknown, The Unknown Terror, Attack of the Killer Shrews, or Teenage Zombies. And the most popular film was Fall Of The House of Usher made in 1928, 1941, 1942, 1948, 1955, 1958 and the Corman color, wide-screen version made in 1960.

With Roger's intuition and sense of what the public wanted he kept pace with the many imitators and when the big studios lamely tried to add their films to the ever growing field, such as Warner Brothers' Them, Roger managed to out-do them every time.

In 1955 he produced a little cheapie called The Beast With 1,000,000 Eyes and I can still recall when I was very young seeing this and being very angry because there was no beast like the posters promised. The million eyes came from the fact that the alien creature that landed in the dessert was using all the birds and animals as "it's eyes". Lame, dumb and boring.

Much better on the really bad movie scale was the 1956 tale of It Conquered The World. I think this creature had more names than any monster in movie history. The crew called it Bruce. Others called it a walking artichoke, and worse. I spoke to star Beverly Garland about this creature (it kills her in the cave scene) and she said that Roger asked if she wanted to see the creature as it had just been brought to the set.

When she looked at it she screamed--not in terror but in shock. "This is the monster?" She could hardly contain herself. She said it was a good thing she saw it then rather than in the cave because she couldn't stop laughing, it was so ridiculous. The monster was the work of creative and imaginative monster maker Paul Blaisdell who conjured up some pretty amazing stuff using paper mache, Styrofoam balls, and household stuff like candles and coat hangers. Hey, when ya got ten bucks to work with ya make do!

As if this wasn't bad enough, when the creature was placed on the set, the actors and crew laughed and Paul Blaisdell and his assistant Bob Burns walked away--in shame? Paul was always proud of his work and one can only imagine what he may have done given the proper budget. In a last-minute change of plans Roger then decided maybe the creature should come out of the cave and attack the army (which consisted of Dick Miller and Jonathan Haze) but it was never meant to move. It really looked like a horrific tee-pee as it was pushed into the scene using some tricky camera work and editing. It falls over dead, as did most of the crew (dead from laughing).

Day The World Ended was a nifty little story about survivors of a nuclear holocaust. One by one they find their way to the home of Paul Birch (another Corman "regular"). With Richard Denning, Lori Nelson and Paul Blaisdell as the monster. Scenes were actually filmed at a swank San Fernando Valley country club. This was actually a fairly good story about what would happen if a handful of survivors made it. A tale of human nature and the inevitable outcome.

Not Of This Earth (1957) starred Paul Birch as an alien who comes to Earth in a "matter transporter". He lands in Los Angeles searching for blood to help his dying race. Beverly Garland also appeared in this film with a memorable performance by Dick Miller as an obnoxious vacuum cleaner salesman. At the end of the movie the alien is destroyed and his tombstone reads "He Was Not Of This Earth."

That same year Corman directed The Undead. This was a really strange story concerning two researchers who want to test out their new time machine. Unable to find a willing subject for their experiment they hire a prostitute. Not a very wise decision because she nearly alters history. You know how that paradox goes: if you change something in the past you can change the entire future. You've seen this a million times. Memorable in the cast was Allison Hayes who went on to become the 50 Foot Woman. And of course Dick Miller was there as well.

Saga Of The Viking Women And Their Voyage To The Waters Of The Great Sea Serpent is memorable for it's title and a young and shapely Abby Dalton. Susan Cabot (of Wasp Woman fame) was here as well with Jonathan Haze. The title says it all. Basically the Viking Women build a ship and head out across the uncharted seas to find their missing men, who are being held by barbarians.

One of my personal favorites was Attack Of The Crab Monsters. This film had everything, from the professor Russell Johnson (of Gilligan's Island fame) to Pamela Duncan and Ed Nelson. Imagine, scientists on an island to study the effects of radiation on the local plant and animal life and finding a giant paper mache crab with a guy inside wearing sneakers and one with a skateboard underneath as it moves along.

And the most horrible thing of all, the one crab looks like Saddam Hussein! In typical Corman fashion, everyone pitches in, so Ed Nelson was one of the guys operating the crab. This has to be seen to be believed.

Keeping up with the times and cashing in one the "new threat from Russia" namely satellites in outer space 1958 gave us War Of The Satellites with Dick Miller. Mostly talk but you can see the fear produced by the "red menace" of the times. That same year Gene Corman wrote and produced Night Of The Blood Beast with Roger co-producing. And I have to mention Robert Vaughn as a 35 year old caveman in Teenage Cavemen.

A Bucket Of Blood was a 1959 tale of a beatnik sculptor/artist played by Dick Miller. This was a very strange movie, sort of a take-off on the House of Wax theme. A sculptor who critics call awful kills people and covers them with clay, passing off his ghastly creations as original works of art.

And in 1960 the classic The Little Shop Of Horrors was released. Remade as a musical in 1986 as well as a Broadway stage play, the original is still best. Notable for being shot in 2 days and one night it stars Jonathan Haze. Made for a reported $34,000 it deals with a carnivorous plant named Audrey who grows larger by eating people supplied by Haze.

Written by Charles Griffith, a regular with the Corman troupe, he also supplied the voice of Audrey and appeared as a hold up man in an early scene. Look for a very young Jack Nicholson as a dental patient (that's dental, not mental. That role comes later) who enjoys pain. Jonathan Haze, having killed the real doctor, poses as a dentist and pulls Jack's teeth with no anesthesia. Jack, a masochist, grins--toothless--and actually enjoyed the ordeal!

So, if you want to SEE! Crazed crustaceans attack, SEE! An astronaut turned into a horrible creature, SEE! Half naked Viking women, SEE! A giant plant dine on vegetarians rent a video tonight and enjoy these Roger Corman classics from a time long ago. You won't be disappointed.

And take note of all the actors who went on to become big stars later in their careers. If nothing else these are fun films, plain and simple, without all the CGI stuff, color and grossly over-done big studio productions. Here is filmmaking at it's finest--or lowest if you will, but done with enthusiasm and care and attention to detail one would expect from million dollar pictures.

These are the infamous films that will live forever, in our hearts and minds and on video tape and on DVD.

Thanks, Ron!  Ironic, isn't it, that, aside from his color "Poe" films, the best-loved films produced and/or directed by Roger Corman are his early cheapies.  Perhaps because he was still struggling back then and filmmaking for him wasn't yet the cynical, mercenary pursuit it later became.  Whatever, the silliest and lamest Corman black-and-white "B" fright flick is loads more entertaining than most of his later, more polished, post-"Poe" horror potboilers.     

Article copyright © Ron Waite

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