by Stephen Vagg
Roger Corman’s success was based on three main pillars – extreme thriftiness, organisational excellence and an ability to spot talent. Few areas demonstrated the latter than Corman’s success in identifying, developing and using screenwriters.
Addendum: many, many fine scribes worked for Corman, and I apologise for any who happen to read this and get offended that their names are left off. And also, when I say “Corman movie”, I mean ones that he produced and financed as well as directed.
Charles B. Griffith [pictured with Corman]
Director Joe Dante once put forward the theory that the two people most responsible for turning Roger Corman into “Roger Corman” were Chuck Griffith and Frances Doel. We’ll discuss Griffith first – the brilliant, eccentric, pot-smoking radio writer who met Corman through acting pals in the mid-1950s and soon became the young producer-director’s favourite scribe due to his speed, imagination and understanding of structure. It was Griffith’s scripts that really propelled Corman to the top rank of B picture makers: the tough femme Western Gunslinger, his rewrite on It Conquered the World, the superbly constructed, bold Attack of the Crab Monsters, the wild imagination of Not of This Earth, the sheer gall of The Undead (reincarnation, hookers, dancing dwarves, Satan), the humour and tension of Rock All Night. There were, inevitably, potboilers as well (Teenage Doll, Ski Troop Attack, Naked Paradise, Atlas) but the crown jewels were a trilogy of black comedies: Bucket of Blood, Little Shop of Horrors, and Creature from The Haunted Sea. Watching these early films, it’s clear Corman’s ability as director didn’t match Griffith’s as writer, but the fact is, Corman was the one who found and used Griffith. Griffith frequently tried to break himself free of Corman, but was never as effective, and always drifted back, usually to the benefit of both men: Griffith penned the Corman mega hits The Wild Angels, Devil’s Angels, Death Race 2000 and Eat My Dust! While Griffith often whinged about Rog, often with good reason, he never really thrived away from him. Sidebar: one Griffith script that we really wish had been made: his adaptation of Poe’s The Golden Bug, scheduled for the ‘60s but put aside when Peter Lorre died.
“Bobby’ Wright Campbell
An actor with one of those “hey it’s that guy” faces, Campbell was also an excellent writer, who penned many key films in Corman’s career: Five Guns West (Corman’s directorial debut, with a story that pre-empted The Dirty Dozen), Teenage Caveman (a big hit), Machine Gun Kelly (Corman’s first critical favourite, and a breakthrough role for Charles Bronson), The Young Racers, Masque of the Red Death, and The Secret Invasion (a reworking of Five Guns West). Campbell never really got his due as a writer, but his reputation has risen in recent years – for instance, Quentin Tarantino calls Machine Gun Kelly the best script Corman ever shot.
Frances Doel
Doel’s actual script credits don’t do justice to her career – she surpasses Griffith as the most influential writer in Corman’s career, being an assistant story editor for Corman for decades, particularly crucial to the success of New World Pictures. Her achievements include discovering John Sayles and writing Big Bad Mamma. Still an underappreciated figure in the history of Hollywood screenwriting.
Charles Beaumont
Quite a well-remembered writer because he did a lot of horror and sci-fi, genres where the fans tend to be more devoted. In Corman-ology, Beaumont’s often confused for Richard Matheson (both men worked on The Twilight Zone and the Corman Poe cycle), his Corman credits include Premature Burial, The Haunted Palace, the superb Masque of the Red Death (rewritten by Campbell) and, most of all, the remarkable race drama The Intruder, from Beaumont’s own novel, and easily one of Corman’s finest pictures. Illness cruelly cut short Beaumont’s career: he died in 1967 aged 38.
Richard Matheson
Legendary writer who wrote several key screen adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe for Corman, most importantly the one that kicked it all off, House of Usher, followed by The Pit and the Pendulum, Tales of Terror and The Raven (my own personal favourite, a sheer delight). Corman called Matheson “the best screenwriter I ever worked with”, probably because he always shot Matheson’s first draft. Corman was called in to shoot some scenes for De Sade, based on a Matheson script, but took no credit. It’s a shame Matheson and Corman didn’t work together more – Matheson probably cost too much money but Corman did shoot the script.
Leo Gordon
A burly, rough-looking actor – like Campbell, a “hey it’s that guy” who was also a fine writer. Gordon penned several entertaining scripts for Corman, including Hot Car Girl, The Cry Baby Killer (Jack Nicholson’s first lead), Attack of the Giant Leeches, cult favourite The Wasp Woman, Tower of London and the legendary first draft of The Terror, which Gordon famously cranked out over a few days to get the ball rolling.
Robert Towne
Roger Corman met Towne in Jeff Corey’s acting class (along with Jack Nicholson) and quickly realised that he was a writer of talent, giving Towne his first feature script credits (as well as a few leading roles in the bargain). The Last Woman on Earth is interesting, but Tomb of Ligeia is magnificent, a genuinely clever and moving script that marked the end of Corman’s Poe pictures. Towne also rewrote the script for A Time for Killing, a Glenn Ford Western for Columbia which Corman started directing – only to be fired during filming (something he rarely bought up). For all his talent, Towne was too slow a writer to work consistently for Corman – among his unfinished projects for the director was an unused draft of Masque of the Red Death, and a version of the Gary Powers story – but the two men always spoke of each other with great affection. And the A Time for Killing script impressed Warren Beatty (who had considered acting in the film), leading to Towne being offered to script doctor Bonnie and Clyde, which really launched his career.
John Sayles
A novelist lured into screenwriting by the keen eye of Frances Doel, Sayles proved to be the greatest screenwriter who ever worked at New World: fast, smart, progressive, imaginative. How’s this for a hot streak – Piranha, Lady in Red, Battle Beyond the Stars – all masterpieces of genre writing (Tarantino calls Lady in Red the greatest exploitation script ever written; my favourite is Battle Beyond the Stars). Sayles took all those New World lessons to launch his own directorial career. It was the happiest of collaborations and I get why they didn’t work together again, but it’s a shame that they didn’t, especially in recent years when Sayles has found financing harder to come by.
Jack Nicholson
Yes, the movie star. Before Easy Rider came along, Nicholson was plugging away in Hollywood for years, and Corman was one of the few who gave him acting work – but also writing work. Nicholson wrote several scripts financed by Corman, including the cult Western Ride the Whirlwind, and, most of all, the counter culture classic The Trip, one of the key films in Corman’s oeuvre (and immortalised in Tim Lucas’ novel The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes).
Jim Wynorski
Wynorski is better known as a director, but he gets on this list because he worked on several key Corman movies in the early ‘80s as screenwriter only – Forbidden World, Sorceress, Screwballs. When he became director, Wynorski was crucial for the house style of Corman in the Concord Pictures era.
