by Stephen Vagg
Following Corman’s death, The Movies That Made Me Podcast, hosted by Josh Olson and Corman school alumni Joe Dante, replayed an episode where they interviewed Roger and his wife, fellow producer Julie, about key films that influenced them. I came up with my own list about films that I believe heavily affected Roger’s output. Some of these are guesses, but educated ones from a lifetime of Corman watching. The list is, needless to say, not meant to be exhaustive.
Key Largo (1948)
Maxwell Anderson’s stage play was turned into a famous film by John Huston featuring Bogie and Bacall, about gangsters who take hostages at a deserted hotel with a hurricane coming. It’s a great set up for a low-budget movie – limited locations, inherited tension, meaty acting parts (the head gangster has a boozy girlfriend, the hero is a drifter forced into heroism). Writer Charles Griffith used this template for Corman again and again, frequently (though not always) substituting “monster” for the hurricane – Naked Paradise, Beast from the Haunted Cave, Creature from the Haunted Sea, even to a small degree, Atlas – all feature a gangster baddy, baddy’s compromised girlfriend, compromised girlfriend falling for hero, group trapped in location. Because if a thing’s worth doing in low budget filmmaking, it’s worth doing a few times.
Richard III (1955)
This one is educated guesswork on my part. I’ve never read anywhere of Corman even having seen Laurence Olivier’s film adaptation of the Shakespeare classic, but it was widely screened in the US because it showed on television and through Corman’s career he displayed an interest in medieval stories (The Undead, Saga of the Viking Women, Masque of the Read Death, and The Tower of London which was about Richard), and/or tales that focused on villainous yet sympathetic protagonists who were betrayed by their ambition (the entire Poe series, The Intruder, Bucket of Blood, Wasp Woman, X the Man with X Ray Eyes, Von Richthofen and Brown, Capone). Or maybe it’s a coincidence, I don’t know.
Johnny Guitar (1954)
Corman’s brother Gene was a Hollywood agent at MCA looking to revive Joan Crawford’s career. He came across a book about two rival male gunfighters and suggested that the sexes be changed so it was about two female ones. The resulting novel was optioned by Crawford who then could demand she play the lead role in the iconic 1954 film (directed by another MCA client, Nick Ray). Roger Corman would follow this “hey, even though this is a traditionally male-dominated genre, why don’t we change the lead from a man to a woman” device throughout his career in genre films. He made movies about female sheriffs, Vikings, gangsters, teachers, vampires, medical professionals, undercover cops, race car drivers, and so on. He would also frequently use the Johnny Guitar template of a rough-but-good female protagonist up against a rough-but-bad second female lead (The Undead, Swamp Woman, Sorority Girl, Saga of the Viking Women). I’m sure Johnny Guitar was not the only movie that gave Corman these ideas, but the association of Gene and its approximation to Corman’s career makes, for me, an irresistible case.
Things to Come (1936)
Corman spoke about this with Dante and Olson: the classic British sci-fi film that had a tremendous impact on him as a child. Looking back, it’s not hard to see why – the imagination and scale yes, but also it’s about the battle between rationality and anarchy, with scientists (and reason) at the forefront of fighting fascism. I think this spoke to Corman, an engineering-trained rational attracted to the unregulated, passionate world of the arts, fighting that duality between art and business. He also made a large number of films where, as in The Shape of Things, society collapses (or is about to collapse): Day the World Ended, Gas, Teenage Caveman, Attack of the Crab Monsters, The Wild Angels, Night Fall, The Terror Within, Deathsport.
The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
A mystery not often examined in Hollywood history – who started the Roger Corman/AIP Poe cycle? Corman says it was he who suggested it to AIP, and I do believe him, but he often omitted to mention in interviews that a lot of producers were eyeing Poe around that time. In 1959, there were a huge number of Poe adaptation in development – so many that an article called him the hottest writer in town. Why was this so? Well, it was the anniversary of Poe’s 150th birthday, which always helps, but I think the real reason is the global box office success of Curse of Frankenstein and subsequent Hammer horrors. Horror movies were on the outs in Hollywood in the ‘50s until Britain’s Hammer came along with Curse of Frankenstein with its fresh take on the genre – it was in colour, a little more sexy, a little more gory, a little more psychological, and based on a public domain literary source. It made sense that producers would then look around and see what other high profile public domain authors in the horror space could be adapted. That meant Poe, who’d been popular with filmmakers in the late ‘30s (The Black Cat, The Raven). AIP and Corman, to their credit, got there first when Poe was hot again, with AIP being smart enough to nab Vincent Prince (attached to several of those other 1959 proposed Poe projects) and sign him to a long term contract. Thus, history was made.
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Corman made gangster films prior to Warren Beatty’s masterpiece (Machine Gun Kelly, I Mobster, St Valentine’s Day Massacre) – and, as mentioned, Key Largo was a huge influence on him – but Bonnie and Clyde (script doctored by former Corman writer Robert Towne) showed him a formula he could really get behind: Depression era femme-driven gangster tales… plenty of action but also strong female component and scope for social commentary. So, he made Bloody Mama, Big Bad Mama, Crazy Mama, Lady in Red (which Sayles dubbed “Big Bad Mama Three”), Big Bad Mama II. He also did male driven tales too like Capone, Baby Face Nelson and Dillinger and Capone.
The Stewardesses (1969)
Little remembered “three girls” movie about airline stewardesses, as they were known then, this was originally shot as a softcore porno then changed into a more regular film that became a box office sensation. Corman figured he’d get into the action and commissioned three girls film (well, four girls) about nurses, The Student Nurses, from Stephanie Rothman. She added drama, politics, feminism and comedy and it was a huge box office hit. Corman spent the next five years financing a series of three girl movies about nurses, stewardesses, and teachers and some of them are so fun you wonder why people don’t revive the genre more today (although it still thrives in television).
99 Women (1969)
Women in prison films were not a new genre (Caged, Yield to the Night), but this Harry Alan Towers-Jess Franco flick showed that you could take advantage of more relaxed censorship in 1969 by cranking up the lesbian sex, drugs and sleaze, to considerable box office benefits. Corman took note and sent Jack Hill off to the Philippines, resulting in the glorious The Big Doll House. As with “three girls” films, “women in prison” pictures were ideal for Corman with their nudity, action, progressive politics, and female leads. The success of The Big Doll House launched a boom of women in prison flicks from Corman – The Big Bird Cage, Women in Cages, The Arena, Caged Heat – before that genre too ran out of puff.
Lawrence of Arabia (1963)
For a generation of movie goers, Lawrence of Arabia is considered the perfect film, with its combination of boys’ own adventure, intense acting, white savour heroism and anti-colonialism, political chat, complex sexuality, beautiful photography and stunning sequences. Corman was enamoured with the film (it is a great movie), and spent much of the sixties trying to figure out a way to do Lawrence of Arabia on the cheap. That was what he asked Peter Bogdanovich to write him (the script was never filmed) and what he tried to do with Robert E. Lee (also never filmed), and kind of did with Von Richthofen and Brown (was filmed). He never really succeeded, because you can’t do Lawrence on the cheap, which means studios, which Corman disliked working for. He was thus far more likely to be inspired by..
Alien (1979)
In the mid 1960s, Corman financed a film which basically had the same plot as Alien, Queen of Blood (1966) but it wasn’t until Alien came out that he realised how lucrative that plot could be (Queen doesn’t get to the creature killing people on board until late into the movie). And so, the Alien knock offs, with monsters on board space ships and/or stomachs being burst open in Corman opuses such as Galaxy of Terror, Forbidden World, The Terror Within, Humanoids of the Deep, and many more. There are rape scenes in far too many of these films. Of course, Corman knocked off other iconic movies of this period: Jaws (Piranha, Humanoids of the Deep again), Star Wars (Starcrash, Battle Beyond the Stars), Gremlins (Munchies), Jurassic Park (Carnosaur) – but never as much as Alien, presumably because the concept is so suitable for a low budget.
I should also add that perhaps Corman’s most influential film – The Wild Angels, which kicked off the biker genre and, in a way, New Hollywood – was inspired by a photo of a funeral in Life magazine. Sometimes it helps to not just watch movies for inspiration.
