Roger Corman

Roger Corman died last week. It's hard to think of a bigger name in the movie business that became big primarily for its association with bad movies. Corman made bad movies, many of them popular, for more than 70 years, as director and producer. As producer, it's well known he helped foster the talents of Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Nicholson, Jonathan Demme, and many others.

I love many of his schlockier movies. In addition to providing fodder for Mystery Science Theater 3000, movies like Swamp Women with Marie Windsor had sleazy charms of their own. Who doesn't enjoy a gang of girl thieves, bare-legged in a swamp, somehow never getting one mosquito bite? As a producer in the '80s, he made some fantastically unrestrained pulp genre films, chock-full of naked women and slimy aliens. A lot of the problems in Corman productions evidently stemmed from his money anxieties, as director Jack Hill discovered when his fantasy film Sorceress faced erratic, sudden budget cuts that shredded Hill's original vision.

Yesterday, Paul Schrader said on Facebook:

ROGER CORMAN. Let's not too sentimental about Corman. Even in my exploitational extremes I couldn't interest Corman in my scripts. Rolling Thunder began at AIP but moved on to 20th. Roger wouldn't touch Blue Collar even with Pryor. As soon as they could Coppola, Scorsese and Demme all moved away from AIP. Roger was better at hyping his rep than at making good films or supporting good filmmakers.

It's a fair point, if slightly awkwardly timed. I'd argue Corman made some genuinely good movies in the 1960s, though. The Little Shop of Horrors is a genuinely sharp and nuanced satire, even if the musical remake is definitely superior. Corman's string of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, many featuring Vincent Price in his best remembered roles, are fantastic indulgences in atmosphere. The Haunted Palace is one of the best adaptations of an H.P. Lovecraft story, though the bar is admittedly low on that one.

He was the best of producers, he was the worst of producers. Rest in peace, Roger Corman, though your movies will continue writhing on screens for eternity.

X Sonnet #1843

Redundant thralls displease impatient bats.
Devoured time returns, becoming space.
Collected answers yield illusion stats.
Dissected clues construct a plastic face.
Dishonest motives break the happy stride.
Kentucky bourbon blots the summer start.
Refreshing liquor battles stubborn pride.
Appointments scrabble cool and careful art.
Success revoked the cheaper charms of us.
Loquacious plants devoured many men.
Recruiting Price at cost of Pallas bust,
Delicious junk sustained the movie tin.
Contraptions spin the image story's gleam.
Parentheses of tombs define the dream.