by Stephen Vagg
AIP
Corman enjoyed financial success with his first film, Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954), but returns took a while to come in, making it hard for him to obtain finance for his next movie. He needed a distributor who would pay him in advance. There were various suitors, including Columbia and Republic, but the only ones willing to give him a multiple-picture deal was the newly-established American Releasing Corporation (ARC), run by a lawyer, Sam Arkoff, and a theatre man, James H. Nicholson. ARC soon became AIP (American International Pictures) and Corman’s main backer through the ‘50s and ‘60s. It was a fascinating relationship – never exclusive, often beneficial but also fractious. Corman continually tried to work outside AIP but kept going back to them for various reasons (his own company was too small, Allied Artists floundered, he clashed with major studios etc). He knew he’d always be able to get money from AIP, and in turn he consistently gave them hits (The Wild Angels, the Poe pictures).
The relationship became increasingly tense through the sixties – AIP blackmailed Pathe into giving them Corman’s Premature Burial, the studio started tampering with the endings of personal Corman projects such as The Trip and Gas, and its financial conservatism cost Corman the chance to produce Easy Rider (although he could have covered the cost of that himself).
Eventually, Corman formed his own company, New World Pictures, which directly competed with AIP’s output. Interestingly, Corman leaving AIP coincided with Nicholson and Arkoff splitting up – they were like two parents who decide to get divorced when their eldest child finally moves out of home. (Though Corman did still produce a few movies for AIP after New World was set up, owing to lingering contractual commitments including Boxcar Bertha and Unholy Rollers)
Looking back, Corman probably had more in common with Nicholson (smooth, calm demeanour, wild imagination) than Arkoff (rotund lawyer, non-creative), but he always had much respect for the latter, particularly his business nous. And it’s interesting that Corman sold New World not long after Arkoff sold AIP… and that Corman’s artistic ambitions seemed to slack off once Arkoff retired. Maybe he needed to compete with “dad” to stretch himself.
Allied Artists
Most of Corman’s iconic films of the 1950s were commonly believed to have been made for AIP – at least, that’s what I used to think – but in fact several of them were done at Allied Artists, the successor to legendary poverty row Monogram Pictures.
Corman had a good relationship with Allied’s studio head, Steve Brodie, for whom he made iconic pictures such as Attack of the Crab Monsters, Not of This Earth, Machine Gun Kelly, War of the Satellites, and The Wasp Woman. Allied also distributed some of Filmgroup’s output (more on this see below).
Corman eventually moved away from Allied in the early ‘60s and never moved back, being more associated with AIP and the majors (Allied’s financial situation was constantly precarious). But for many years, Allied was a welcoming Corman home.
Filmgroup
Corman and his brother Gene set up their own mini studio in the late 1950s, Filmgroup. This always remained a part-time operation but produced some remarkable movies during its short life, including early features from Francis Coppola, Jack Nicholson, Curtis Harrington, Peter Bogdanovich, and Robert Towne – as well as Corman’s own Little Shop of Horrors, The Terror and The Intruder.
Corman made a (rare for him) business error by not registering most of these films for copyright, so they’re in the public domain. He eventually wound up the company, realising it needed someone to focus on it full time – a lesson he learned when he started New World Pictures.
New World Pictures
Corman’s iconic production company of the ‘70s, which got off to a bang with Angels as Hard as They Come and The Student Nurses and never looked back. It produced a swag of cult classics, launched much new talent, distributed a dazzling array of arthouse films, as well as making some inevitable flops but even they were iconic in their way (Deathsport, Avalanche). Corman eventually sold the company in the early 1980s – he could never resist a big pay day – after which it had a few more bright years of exploitation under studio head Robert Rehme before morphing into a far more sensible, less fun, entertainment conglomerate with a focus on television.
I think in the history of Hollywood, few studios are as beloved by fans as Corman era New World. Its output ranks up there with MGM musicals, Warner Bros gangster tales and Universal horrors.
United Artists
Corman engaged in serious flirting with three major Hollywood studios in the 1960s before he gave up directing to focus on New World. Among the three was United Artists, who might’ve seemed a safe bet with its history of (supposedly) supporting artistic freedom. In the ‘60s, Corman directed a series of films for United Artists produced by his brother Gene: The Tower of London, The Secret Invasion and Von Richthofen and Brown (they also produced I Escaped from Devil’s Island).
Each of the films that Corman directed was stressful in some way – he clashed with co-producer Edward Small on Tower, he felt the studio ripped him off financially on Secret Invasion, and people died making Von Richthofen.
Corman came close to making several films with United Artists that never happened – they wouldn’t finance his Robert E. Lee biopic, and he turned down their offer to adapt John Updike’s Couples (a turning point in Corman’s career as he chose running New World over this).
20th Century Fox
Of all the Hollywood majors, Corman had the longest relationship with 20th Century Fox – in part, one surmises, because his brother Gene had good contacts there. Corman started in show business as a messenger boy at Fox (a friend’s dad got him the job); he became a reader, then quit after being ignored for his contribution in finding the story that formed the basis of The Gunfighter (1950).
Corman’s first movie distributed by a major, I Mobster (1958), was at Fox, and his most expensive movie as director was made for the studio, The St Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967). Massacre isn’t a bad movie; Corman griped that the studio charged him too much overheads and wouldn’t let him cast Orson Welles as Capone (Corman was right to want this).
In the 1970s, Corman produced four films for Fox (possibly taking over a gap in the schedule caused by the premature death of Corman’s former colleague, James Nicholson, who was making movies there): Capone, Moving Violations, Fighting Mad, and Thunder and Lightning. When Corman returned to the director’s chair with Frankenstein Unbound (1990), it was distributed by Fox. Most of his Fox movies may as well have been made for Corman’s own company, as I’m sure he himself realised.
Columbia
Of all Corman’s dealings with the majors, those with Columbia promised the most and wound up being the most traumatic. The studio, struggling in the wake of founder Harry Cohn’s death, signed Corman to a multi picture contract but kept rejecting his proposals (including scripts about Robert E. Lee and the Battle of Iwo Jima, and adaptations of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Kafka’s The Penal Colony). Eventually, the studio gave him a Western, A Time for Killing, and fired him during the shoot, replacing him with Phil Karlson. Corman bounced back, but I bet he never forgot it.
I’d like to think that Columbia learned their lesson from the experience too – Time for a Killing flopped – as later on when Bert Schneider, Bert Rafelson and co. set up their independent shingle, BBS, within Columbia, the studio were more hands off – and were rewarded by the huge success of Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces and The Last Picture Show (all made by alumni from the school of Roger Corman).
Millennium Films
After Corman sold New World, he promised to stay on as a consultant for the studio, as well as making movies for them through his new shingle, Millennium (a title taken from the name of a 1981 retrospective of Corman’s work at the National Film Theatre in London), the “new New World”. In October of 1983, Millennium was renamed New Horizons (Corman says no one could spell or understand “millennium”) and Corman was soon suing New World for monies owned, ending that arrangement, leading him to set up his own distribution arm, Concorde Films.
Still, I thought it was worth giving Millennium its own entry because those first post-New World films from Corman were quite lively. You’ve got some sci fi (Space Raiders), some character drama (Love Letters, Suburbia), teen sex comedy (Screwballs), sword and sorcery fantasy (Deathstalker, The Warrior and the Sorceress). That’s a diverse, interesting slate with ambition (particularly Love Letters and Suburbia, both written and directed by women), geared for cinema as much as video. If Corman had been able to focus on production instead of distribution – if he’d been able to find another AIP, for example, where there was at least some trust – with the cushion of his New World library, who knows what he might’ve been able to achieve in the 1980s. But I’m sure by this stage in his career, after all his dealings with other studios, he felt like “here we go again, I need to do this myself” and he did.
Concorde-New Horizons-New Concorde
As mentioned, Millennium films became New Horizons, then Corman set up his own distribution company, Concorde, which later merged to become Concorde-New Horizons then became New Concorde and… ah, anyway basically this whole period is “Corman after New World” – the period when Corman films became less fun, and film buffs started paying less interest. The budgets were lower, they were aimed at the video market, there was more of them (meaning Corman gave them less individual attention).
There were some unique pictures in the group (Streetwalkin’, Stripped to Kill, Brain Dead, The Unborn), and some new talent did emerge (eg Carl Franklin). But there’s no denying, the overall average dropped sharply. Most discussions of Corman’s output skim over the post New World Pictures, and I can’t really say they’re wrong to do so.
AMC and The Syfy Channel
As the ‘90s kicked on, Corman formed close relationships with new markets – cable stations and streamers. Two of his most notable were AMC and the Scifi channel. AMC’s efforts included the Black Scorpion TV series and pointless remakes of some of Corman’s ‘50s classics. Syfy Channel’s efforts were monster mash ups. I’m glad Corman kept busy. It would have distracted him from the antics of his sons. This King Lear aspect to Corman’s life and career will be discussed in a later article.
