Roger Corman

[therewillbeblus]

Stakeout on Dope Street is a pretty engaging and interesting film once I acclimated to its wavelength. At first I became overly irritated that it was operating like the lamest version of the already lame subgenre of the docu-procedural crime film, but this aspect is quickly revealed to be cheekily self-aware and often used to speed up the narrative rather than drag it down, splicing the margins of the film with poetic thumps of animated voiceover that both accentuates the alarmist finger-wagging and makes fun of it at once. This is functioning as a moral programmer but where each scene embodies the expected stereotypes of characterization and avenues of forward momentum yet contains unpredictably rich dialogue and nuanced approaches to the performances. That's not to say that the language and acting are farcically elegant or sincerely perfect, but each element is so clearly pitched at a different angle or elevation than your typical programmer, and the writing especially feels like a very intentional irony- just like the above take on voiceover narration.

So Kershner and his writers thrive in filling the gaps between what needs to be put in this kind of movie for the audience and distributors to indulge with offbeat creativity, and when these spaces are more apparent and treated as playgrounds to liberate within, the movie flourishes as well. The attention paid to a heroin addict the group visits is quietly powerful- a lesser movie would make a joke out of (or treat with a solemn warning) the juxtaposition between these 'straight' kids and the riff-raff, but this man's mannerisms and disposition as he takes in information, pauses, and responds creates a full-fledged character within a measly two minutes. The makers understand that it doesn't take forever to establish an extra dimension to a person as a real human being without needing to force a character out of them (this individual of course reverts back to a stereotype immediately, because that's the movie this is trying to be), and a film can still be short and feel concise with some fat on the bone.

My favorite part of the film is in the pure, unfiltered montage at the city dump, which plays like a silent physical comedy turned musical (by the way the characters embrace at the end, leading me to beam my smile and chuckle a good deal) and easily the best example of how these artists choose to use an experimental intervention to a broad scene idea liberally and inventively. A withdrawal scene that goes on forever is a close second, incredibly amusing thanks to the editing of a lyrical explanation by an addict to play over the images. Of course it's not a funny scene conceptually, but that clash of raw imagery and the endless rant of monotonous verse has a wry consequence the longer it goes.

As the film progresses along the moral propaganda machine it's following with precision, the voiceover has even more comical contrasts between its ominous tone and the choice of words uttered (think Rod Serling crying out "boyishly and optimistically" in a Twilight Zone timbre regarding the kids using drug money to make monetary purchases for their girlfriends while showing a montage of frequenting stores that seems like a regular old 50s commercial- what a bizarre concoction of flavors!) The music is used eccentrically here to sell these strange beats, never elevating itself to a dire pathos to match the grave messages of the literal voice, or images of perversity attempting to repel. The jazz instead makes everything pretty digestible, or the score is omitted altogether when a propaganda auteur would typically mechanically implement it for a full effect.

These absences are felt most strongly, at least for someone who's seen enough of these programmers to know when to expect the needle-drop- but it rarely came, allowing the scenes to play off more ambiguously and attract focus towards the uncomfortable silence of the exchanges between people from different social classes, soaking in the 'strangeness' of the situations themselves. That awkwardness is one we might overlook for the overpowering aesthetically-propelled moral sensations in a normal film, here meditated on and causing an unanticipated deeper relationship between viewer and the atmosphere of the scene itself, as we break from the trance of a programmer's autopiloting tonal and narrative beats.

Corman was apparently minimally involves outside of financing the project, so the creative team of Kershner, Schwartz, and Fenady probably deserve the bulk of the credit. Ultimately, this is still a film that's harnessed to its propaganda roots, so no matter how exciting its lampoons are, the gravitation to the ideas and necessary trajectory of its flow doesn't permit the idiosyncratic rhythms to obfuscate all imprinted banalities. But boy do they try- and for a film that schizophrenically wavers stylistically between paranormally unhinged and paint-by-numbers (seemingly dependent on the filmmakers' mood rather than a consistent qualifier), the climax essentially fuses these two polar styles together: standard compositions of shots punctured repeatedly by creative transitions using bowling, phones, and various other props uniquely given an unprecedented service. It's pretty enthralling when it wants to be, and it's all the more exciting for refusing to prompt the audience when it's going to choose to jump from conventionality into madness.

This is a film I likely wouldn't have taken a closer look at if I wasn't looking for peculiarities and risks taken to gain freedom from its genre constraints, so all of this intricate detailing of originality might be lost on another viewer. Personally, I thought it admirably took a trite design and poked a few holes in it with an abnormal and arrhythmical brand of erraticism, even if perhaps I wish it poked a few more.

[knives]

That does sound pretty exciting and definitely pushes me more towards going after it. Two stray thoughts: I’ve found it hard to determine how involved exactly Corman was on most projects. As a weird quirk in his self mythologizing he’s greatly downplayed his role in forming films. So on any given movie he very well could have just been the money man on the other hand he could have made some judicial notes and helped form the movie in a more director like way. Here for example there’s enough Corman alum such as Haze to suggest a slight guiding hand even though Kershner had the temperament to work completely independently (look at how he tangoed with Lucas).

The other thing is just a quick gush on scores since you brought them up. It’s kind of radical what happened on Corman productions after ‘57. Till that point he relied heavily on public domain music and traditional scores. After though seemingly all had these cool and startling jazz scores. I don’t know the cause of this change, but I greatly appreciate it as these scores really do elevate the films tremendously. For instance I just watched Machine Gun Kelly and so many scenes force you to laugh with him or shudder thanks exclusively to the score. There’s this one massacre that is cut with the music like a vicious comedy.

[therewillbeblus]

After though seemingly all had these cool and startling jazz scores. I don’t know the cause of this change, but I greatly appreciate it as these scores really do elevate the films tremendously. For instance I just watched Machine Gun Kelly and so many scenes force you to laugh with him or shudder thanks exclusively to the score. There’s this one massacre that is cut with the music like a vicious comedy.

That sounds great- it’s really the inexplicably off-kilter implementation of the score and voiceover (which functions similarly) in this film that drew attention to a subtly wry humor in the three montages. The other side (shuddering) occurs in its absence within the pre-montage scene of the heroin addict detailing the beginnings of the horrors of addiction. This transitions into an exhaustively lengthy montage of withdrawal but before doing so it’s silent, and this sucks us into the scene instead of condescending to the situation like through a microscope examining lesser creatures, as this scene might function as in a traditional propaganda picture.

Now I’m motivated to engage a bit more in this thread if only to mine for more examples of bizarre score application triggering novel tones to unexpected scenes, an irony that feels postmodern without obnoxiously making itself obvious through an aesthetic wink. The slight touch of this intervention is what makes it so admirable, which is funny since so much of the visual style and content is loud. As opposed to those necessary surface level exhibitions of creativity, allowing the manipulation of sound connotations to exist as subliminal tweaks is a welcome restraint of mood alteration, never distracting us from the visuals but heightening absurdism in the background to alter the route of our conditioned response.

[therewillbeblus]

Rock All Night

The top of the heap though is bartender Al and a newsman trading bon mots like an old couple playing a disinterested chorus to the action.

The bartender's inverted role was the highlight for me here. Not only does he play a dullard who functions as the antithesis of the wise, engaging ear of a 'bartender' in cinema, unable to carry a conversation with those he serves, but he can't comprehend the action and needs to be the one prodding the customers for answers to what's happening. In this way, the bartender is comically the one being 'served', and refuses to blend into the background as a nonreciprocal agent of igniting characterization in the barstool-occupiers. Corman has a blast stalling on these interactions, which made me do repeated double-takes as the player typically utilized as an extra to propel the momentum forward was the spoke in the wheel keeping the narrative static when it wants to move desperately between all the activity occurring in this story. Corman is teasing us lightly, as the key to the bit’s accumulation of power is that we recognize that we must inevitably be missing something by Corman attending to this running joke. This is especially true once all the moving pieces are established and we’re still grounded to the boring guy asking questions we as the audience know the answers to(!)- which is so perversely contrary to all laws of filmmaking at this time period and accomplished in such an amusingly self-conscious way so as to be the opposite of boring.

Unfortunately he doesn't allow this to be a subtle irony unspoken like his playful irregularities in Shakedown on Dope Street, for just as I was reaching the heights of laughter, with the idea finally clicking into place as one of permeating genius at the 2/3 mark, the bartender himself verbally acknowledges the gag by spelling it out succinctly and deflates its power. Still, it's a rich idea that only gets more impressive for transparently servicing the schematic design of the film perfectly as the runtime progresses, like a cartoon chase where the camera rests on a trap set for long enough to totally rupture our unbroken fix from the complacent driving force. This process boomerangs to involve us further by drawing attention to the peculiarity, allowing the audience to appreciate and embrace the eccentric twists to the excitement right along with the details to the more expected beats alike, all due to heightened senses from the sobering state born from confusion (yes another irony, but totally in step with what these films are doing at their best, again emphasized in the above writeup on Stakeout on Dope Street’s sound design of score and voiceover as applied to tone). A fun film all around.

[therewillbeblus]

Machine-Gun Kelly was a flat-out blast, and another example of Corman delivering an unnecessarily but incredibly welcome nuanced version of a prototype low budget biopic. First, I thought the flamboyant character who rips them off and then plays the rat never got pinned down into a box of stereotypical “gay” weakness from this era— instead playing it cool with a strong poker face rather than shaking in his boots. This isn’t portrayed as dumb either, but impressive, even if it doesn’t amount to success. The most interesting aspect is how Kelly’s psychosocial expressiveness is fleshed out and formulated by Bronson and the creators, making him arguably the stereotypically “weakest” character in the film. He possesses controlled unemotional restraint at times representing frightening antisocial behavior and “strength” but trauma spills out with emotional bursts seemingly unprovoked and uncontrollably.

Flo is perversely occupying the dominant role in the relationship and exposes Bronson’s weaknesses, in an aggressive taunting of his impotent abilities and core value, whenever she feels like breaking free from the female submissive counterpart. It’s a very complex dynamic often thanks to excellent dialogue, providing information on individualized characterization that reveals depths of bifurcated psychological layers spawned by the roles we need to play or receive from another to feel safe.

As mentioned, I love the score, which keeps the mood light while also paired with clearly morally sickening material like the nonchalant switch to kidnapping. Speaking of that third-act narrative jump, I love the patty cake hand game juxtaposed with the radio practically screaming for the ransomers to break the silence and complete the transaction already. We can feel the existence of desperate and scared parents invisibly and powerlessly trapped several notches behind that voice while Bronson and the girl keep their game up, neither reacting at all. Stockholm Syndrome trauma plus sociopathic stagnancy reign in this scene, yet it’s still being endorsed as the interesting and exciting narrative we want to ride with whilst recognizing the oily connotations- a precursor to the ear cutting/jolly music montage in Reservoir Dogs.

The film has some brutal violence, directly shown pretty grisly deaths deaths without blinking or moving the camera away with a wincing edit- soberly engaging with the world of the film. The psychological devolution Bronson reverts to particularly in the final act, rationalizing his way into surrender in a manner that refuses to face his emasculation by Flo, is riveting. Such a strange beast.

[knives]

Glad I was the grease in the wheels for that. Lovely thoughts. As a super side note I wonder who is Corman’s Saul Bass as those credits are always amazing.

Even more of a side note I was reading that apparently Tarantino was contracted to remake Rock All Night after RD and that fell through with a couple of ideas sneaking into Pulp Fiction.

[therewillbeblus]

That makes sense, and The Trip is a film he’s cited as one of his (many) all time favorites. I didn’t love it when I saw it many years ago but looking forward to revisiting it- maybe soon!

[therewillbeblus]

Sorority Girl

As what might be Corman’s first truly great film SG takes exploitation notes to develop a very sorrowful portrait of real life problems in the mask of violence. It’s a quick walk from Cabot’s bad seed to the wasp woman. It’s fascinating how friendly and caring the sorority is portrayed as with anti-hazing rules and the like contrasted with the cruelty of Cabot’s mother (who Cabot plays off of nicely even copying mannerisms) resulting in each act of madness having a breath of sympathy.

I can imagine when they weren’t snogging teens probably could relate to this melodrama similar to how they reacted to Twilight when I was a teen or whatever is popular in that same delightfully hokey vein nowadays. Even at 30 Cabot completely arrested me crying to her abusive mother asking what’s wrong with her. It’s frankly something out of a Cronenberg movie.

This was a really interesting exhibition of how parental conditioning informs destructive behavior, without diffusing Cabot’s responsibility for her actions. Corman allows us to hold judgment and sympathy in equal measures, as Cabot’s mood shifts toward her subordinates emulate a split personality- but underneath the loud exterior of erratic engagement is something sad and sweet. Cabot clearly has an active part of her that wants to be a good motherly figure to her pledges, just as she wishes her mother would have done (and still has a part that holds out hope that she will do) for her. She takes time to ask about their exercises with a gentleness, even if scrunched between her abrasive outbursts and threats- but a switch flips and she cannot actualize the sustainment of what being a good mother looks like, as it’s not something she’s experienced. She’s simultaneously resentment at her mother, self-aware that her mother has instilled poor character traits onto her, and oblivious to her own application of these harmful approaches on her social circle. Cabot doesn’t know why she doesn’t have friends and it’s a sad yet realistic examination of how partial recognition of problems doesn’t extend to all areas of life. The exploitation subgenre of drama helps to create a raw space where ‘hurt people hurt people’ in every day life within familiar structures containing power imbalances- whether family systems, or collegiate social groups like Greek life.

Even if direct physical hazing is not the core manifestation of these outbursts for a while, the emotional abuse occurring in the elisions of mismatched power dynamics is excruciating and ubiquitous in this culture. Cabot’s own relationship with the idea of deserving love from her mother and that brewing resentment is projected onto a lover or a peer or lesser status, which is a pretty accurate psychological outcome, no matter how stereotypically Freudian it is- but that’s the value in psychodynamic theories. Cabot can’t even get a minor piece of validation from her mom- who responds to hatred with a neutralized flat statement of love, disallowing the slightest acknowledgement that Cabot matters to her mother at all. Cabot just wants to get a reaction heightened in any direction to demonstrate that her feelings affect her mom, which a more reactive response would satisfy.

While we’re certainly left wondering what Cabot’s mother specifically did to her in childhood, we aren’t ever given an indication there was physical violence, and so an interesting theory is posited by Cornan: that experience with neglect can lead to abuse. Such an idea is so ahead of its time within the field of psychotherapy, and would only start to be considered and authenticated in recent years- but throughout the 20th century (for decades after this film came out) it was more of an x->x; y->y hypothesis where neglect perpetuated neglect, and physical abuse led to physical abuse. The desperation of Cabot is devastating in her later confrontation with her mother- who condescendingly pathologizes her as a "child," without halting to consider that trauma in early childhood development stunts maturation.

The evil plotting might be ridiculous on the surface, but in a very short runtime Corman draws a characterization that oscillates between cognizance (as well as apology and desire to change from that awareness) and defensive burying of trauma, ultimately manifesting as survivalist externalizations of pent-up pain. I love films that take an extremist text positioned at uncovering common experiences of vulnerable truths that one is unsupported by, and thus incapable of finding a healthy solution for independently. The lack of support results in this blindness to a direction to find relief, and so only a cycle of social and personal destruction can occur, because it’s the sole financed intervention from learned experience.

The film seems to be making a sly statement on our segregated social circles as well, beyond family (though amusingly using its language without ever actually spelling it out!), for even in sororities where people are supposed to be unconditionally supportive “sisters ” (wink), Cabot’s peers reject and distance themselves from her based on mental illness. I’m aware that nobody could or would detect this as such back in the 50s, so perhaps this is where modern contextualization makes the film infinitely more interesting, but it’s still another nail in the coffin: No matter how hard Cabot tries, her fate is sealed. Her mother participated in molding a repellent human being, and her social community that uses familial linguistics to signify siblinghood relationships also abandon her based on these traits. There is no hope, and Corman seems to recognize this absence of deeper relational intimacy, an affinity that could bypass the surface level harm to witness and engage with the internal pain in his current cultural climate. Though he's admirably not laying the blame anywhere, since it’s intrinsic to the level of depth society is conditioned to comfortably endure- as many a melodrama has outlined already. In this way, Corman’s inability to locate and cast accountability with a fulfilling release reflexively mimics Cabot’s own inability to do so.

The blackmailed sister‘s ultimate blame of Cabot for her attempted suicide is taken at face value rather than ironically, but subtly (and, unfortunately, likely unintentionally) reinforces the impulse to blame outwardly rather than look inward at pain to do the necessary work to find personal strength and be more selective about reaching out to healthy resources. This would be another great example to accentuate the film's theme of a desert of assistance and harmony propelling knee-jerk imputation- here significantly coming from a principal who is not Cabot, thus alleviating her as the insulated identified client and universalizing this black hole of a self-preserving sympathetic nervous system deterministically triggered in isolation to others. Oh well, her distress is endorsed while Cabot's isn't and that works appropriately in a sense of demonstrating the fatalism behind Cabot's particular cemented situation-as-existence as separated from others in yet another way, and informs her final noirish choice to concede into the sea.

[knives]

Beautiful and your words make me realize what an affinity this has to Alan Clarke’s Scum which also uses a compressed set of actions to really underline the psychological points the authors intend.

Also in all of this I’m beginning to think that Cabot was Corman’s best actor from this period (no one will ever beat Price for me so it’s an unfair comparison). As much as I love Miller and Haze they’re often distinctly themselves and function like Eric Blore which is a lot of fun, but Cabot really stretches her muscles to make a unique individual in each film.

[therewillbeblus]

Wow, you weren’t kidding- I just looked her filmography up and it didn’t even resonate that Cabot played Flo in Machine-Gun Kelly, despite the fact that I watched the two films less than 24 hours apart! Even more profound is that her characters in each film are very broadly operating under the same condition: a woman who engages with others under two faces, one soft and leveled, and the other aggressively cruel and dominant. However, each character and performance is so nuanced that I never made the connection. Not sure how much this is a testament to her skills and ability to escape into a role or an indication that I need glasses

[knives]

If you need glasses I do as well. I’m definitely more pumped then I would have thought for a rewatch of The Wasp Woman from this. That’s got to be her signature role especially since it’s a time when we’re always in her corner as opposed to these two.

I think she is also who we have to thank for Jack Nicholson’s career. If I’m remembering correctly Corman felt like he didn’t have a good handle on some of Cabot’s close ups and so took some acting lessons to improve. He met Nicholson there becoming friendly leading to a collab Nicholson describes as his only work for a decade.

[therewillbeblus]

That's what wikipedia indicated under the entry for Sorority Girl.

Even though I know what you're getting at, I actually felt entirely in her corner in both films! The empathy for this woman as a doomed product of her social environment in Sorority Girl outweighed the harm she caused for me, especially considering a) the expression of her competing parts emulated an exaggerated split personality, further pushing the lens of a sympathetic mental illness, and b) as already stated, I don't buy the total dump of responsibility for the other sister's suicide attempt onto Cabot in the end. Corman doesn't diffuse responsibility for Cabot, even with the multitude of reasons to have compassion for her, and she's the complex star deliberately pitched at deserving our concern- so why should she also carry the burden of what another person decides to do in response to her blackmail?

That alleviates the agency of a stigmatized act from one character and allocates it to Cabot, weighing down a person who is already carrying far too much alone to the point of drowning (oooh, is this a metaphor for her final act?!). This evokes an interesting subtext regarding 'weakness' (which should never be subscribed to suicide, but in the era of this film, it's worth meditating on), where the pretty girl who is an underdeveloped character- but from a distance, with limited information, we gather has not had to endure much hardship- moves quickly towards a defeatist conclusion of total escape from the lightest stressor when she's tested. Conversely, Cabot is withstanding countless stressors and a vacuum of social allies or personal skills in a net sum of zero supports to cope, and still manages to resiliently stay composed until the final frame when the choice of that sister's agency is placed onto her and the unfairness of the world becomes too much to bear. If anything, this context makes me appreciate her character and the film so much more.

In Machine-Gun Kelly, Cabot is just awesome- a clever woman who has preserved herself into the role of a manipulator to get her needs met, and rest on an even playing field with the masculine ruthless killers she associates with. When she seamlessly slides into the dominant role in public, taunting Kelly, such a full-tilt move appears to be suicidal, but her tempered yet situationally-maniacal confidence lifts her into being the winner of the scene- the interesting antihero character that the audience wanted Kelly to be before he flaked out on us. Instead of feeling let down, Cabot hijacks his role as an act of service for herself and reflexively for the audience. She reveals that she has been serving this function all along as the complex and exciting central character we as consumers expect from the film, people expect from the company they keep in the world of the film, and that the film needs to survive on the wavelength it still wants to operate on, despite Kelly's facade and unmasking of his cowardice.

It's a neat trick, and probably speaks volume to the value of people both embodying and transcending their roles for themselves and in the eyes of others- including the masculine eye. Part of us wants people in general who are foreign to us (gangsters to do-gooders, opposite sexes to one another, in film or real life) to retain the expectation of their place in our schematic idea of where they should be. We as honest civilians want gangsters like Kelly to be portrayed as hardboiled, strong, violent, independent- taking on positive qualities we can assume to engage in vicariously while watching this film- just as Flo wants Kelly to be these things to serve her own needs; but she also wants him to cower just as we need him to transcend his role to make us feel superior in some way beyond a background detail of moral fiber. For Flo, Kelly wants her to be a classically-submissive woman relying on his strength and power, but deep-down he also needs her to be strong for him, as he's far weaker than we, she, and even he consciously realized he was. I love the idea that Kelly himself wanted Flo to take on the dominant role as he was allowed to be submissive, which simultaneously creates a reciprocally-valuable relationship yet stems from an imbalance in expectations. We crave normalcy but also to disrupt it to gain excitement and power (Flo) or reprieve from the guise of permanent stoicism (Kelly).

I don't know, that's a rant I could probably continue for way too long, but there seems to be something there- or perhaps I just think so because Corman appears to understand that a deeper psychology exists that hasn't been explored by the point of his filmmaking in the 50s, and he's willing to go to the lengths of putting that out there without offering false pathologies. It's incredibly admirable and lends rich material to faux-programmers.

[knives]

I agree and to clarify my meaning it’s that Wasp Woman, with its allegorical story, presents Cabot a situation where she’s not active, but rather reactive with her behaviors that require responsibility in a more A to B fashion for the plot. Less inferences to make.

[therewillbeblus]

Oh I knew what you meant, and reading the description of the film before I posted only cemented that clarity, but I just took it as an opportunity to spin a yarn as further thoughts spilled out from that unintentional prompt

[knives]

I think I’m going to continue with posts by year for a while now. I’m still missing a few from 1958 which shows Corman returning to his producer only role to ensure a large output, but I’ll try to return to those later.

I’ve already touched on Machine Gun Kelly a bit above, but to try to match blus a little here are my initial thoughts which is also where these reviews could easily succumb to look at this early role for this important person, in this case Bronson’s first time as a leading man, but I’ll try to keep that to a minimum. Machine Gun makes that easy though as it’s a truly great film firing on all steam for a disturbing portrait of masculinity unhinged. I was deeply reminded of White Heat for which this often plays like a Cagney centered prequel. Bronson gives one of his best performances thanks to being called on to perspire. Susan Cabot, in another unrecognizable leading role, even gets to call him out on it musing that the action man persona which would soon define Bronson was just a way to avoid his own mortality.

This is paired with some of the best aesthetic work in a Corman picture. The cinematography is some of Crosby’s best playing up the shadows to make sure the long arm of the law is never far away. An opening shot just of a door establishes the chill and thrills better than any action scene could. The real stars though are Gerald Fried with the best jazz score yet for one of these Corman’s and Ronald Sinclair’s ironic cutting which really helps to communicate all of the characters’ thoughts while emphasizing mood constantly.

All of these as well as other qualities make this seem very epic. This first act is in open spaces with a sense of freedom in the air. Kelly and his gang seem like ideal and idealized cads who you want to pal about with. As the film continues though their nastier sides come out, the exteriors are replaced with interiors, and Corman leaves us with a true sense that the charm should shake the audience, not out of Kelly’s and the gang’s cowardice and opportunism, though that is there, but out of basic humanity.

another produced film is queer director Justus Adiss’ The Cry Baby Killer. I want to emphasize his queerness because I genuinely believe it is infused into the text which deals with sensitivities and outsiders in a way that I believe only an outsider could fully emphasize with. This isn’t to ignore ignore what everyone will ever talk about: this is Jack Nicholson’s debut and it’s a real miracle that it would take another decade for the world to discover him. His performance here not only outclasses the rest, but shows a complicated actor in pupate whining with sympathy and madness.

The script supporting him helps build this by emphasizing his technical innocence while making no bones about the dangerousness of his mindset. The first act is made up of a lot of Corman pet themes and it contours to expectation so well, including great work by Crosby that allows this to be a silent film at times, it’s kind of bizarre he’s not the director. The crime is set up not from Nicholson’s perspective, but rather the girl who motivates him. This keeps Nicholson as an enigma while providing her with enough depth to suggest a film told entirely with her. Others see her in cruel terms, but the camera makes her the most likable character in the film. A comparison that forces itself to be hyperbolic, this reminded me a lot of Citizen Kane except we first get to see a glimpse of the unvarnished Kane.

Speaking of ambition even just two years before Corman’s team couldn’t have made this film. It successfully combines themes of feminism, youth, a pinch of racism, media satire, and mental health in way that earlier films would have come off as biting more than they could chew. Here things are so smooth it’s easy to forget the hard work and talent needed to accomplish that.

Finally, this provides another great jazz inspired score. ‘58 was the year Corman discovered music I guess.

The last producer only film for today is Kowalowski’s Night of the Blood Beast which has about five different names. My only other Kowalowski is his snake pic and this fits with the expectations set by that nicely. This has to be Corman’s most traditional Sci-Fi flick for good and for bad; mostly for bad. Varno’s script basically takes Hawks’ The Thing and adds a symbiosis twang to it. Like the Hawks film it doesn’t do anything with that bones turning in a television ready entertainment that doesn’t fully entertain. Even the cast, usually a saving grace with Corman, is a bland set that are hard to distinguish. I honestly am not how many actors were involved because they all came across as the same person.

What I can’t say in praise of the film though is how it excited my mind at the possibilities of its concept. It’s ripe for metaphor. At first I thought it would make a great aids movie where he lead kills those he loves from a blood infection he’s hosting. Hell, it’s not too hard to make a line from this to Haynes’ Poison. It could also have been a pro-choice movie or a racial one. There’s a lot of potential here despite the end result being unsuccessful.

Back to Corman as director lets start with something bad like She Gods of Shark Reef. I t’s pretty clear why this was shelved for two years. It’s genuinely awful. Perhaps Corman’s worst film as a director in competition with Tower of London. Made as an excuse to extend his Hawaiian vacation after the delightful Naked Paradise and since he had left over color film stock it’s just a bunch of boring nothing with some of the worst actors Corman ever had. I wouldn’t be surprised if the film was just made up on the spot each day. There’s a ton of filler and I just can’t see what anyone would find worthwhile in this. Well aside from Corman who probably got a good tan from it. I suppose if one wanted to they could argue this as being about toxic masculinity, but that’s a stretch even for me.

Far better to reach mediocrity is war of the Satellites which I’ve talked about before. It’s an okay space flight flick suffering from stiffness, they really took all the fun out of Dick Miller, that is most interesting for the connective tissues it provides for silent space flicks and Honda’s upcoming efforts.

Even better than that and potentially a great film is Teenage Caveman. I’m not sure what exactly I expected from this, but it certainly wasn’t what Corman delivered. Instead I got something which could best be compared to The Giver and other dramatic dystopian satires. The end result unfortunately was best described by Corman himself as a good movie that could have been great. Robert Vaughn is another great discovery and the themes (along with their execution) are great, but the film has trouble supporting all that vision within its budget and runtime (a scant over an hour).

Campbell’s genuinely great script starts off with the quoting of genesis and end pointing a finger at Einstein. Religion is a disease for the people restraining them without seeming logic. Corman adds to this with the casting of Vaughn and emphasizing his pet hemes in the transcription of generational inter fighting to a by gone era. This element of the film feels very contemporary as the inability to communicate and empathize in the film mirrors exactly currently generational arguments especially over race theory though with religion as the lightning rod. The film as a result still feels quite dangerous as it’s perverse blasphemies in all directions seem to argue the wrongness of all.

The bulk of the film deals with the older generation’s flaws. Quite simply by taking a practically atheist perspective Corman makes a movie that could never be released by the equivocating studio system of his day and presents a proof for the American independents as dangerous not just for gore and sex, but also ideas. Even the best intended olds such as Vaughn’s father can’t function with a challenge to their ingrained perspective and rationalize new information into the old system. It’s a bit like a dedicated conspiracy theorist, or anti-abortionist, or to challenge one of my sacred cows a feminist who understands perfectly a new idea that defeats the old idea, but because the old are held so dear this new idea is mangled to fit the old.

That’s pretty rough, but in just a few seconds the ending undermines our perspective and positions about the characters asking us to change the whole system we spent the past hour developing. It adds on the idea that the youth of today can be the villains of tomorrow if they plow ahead against the past for the sake of progress without understanding the effects of the new. In its own quiet way this might be Corman’s most pessimistic film as a director.

[therewillbeblus]

Wasp Woman, with its allegorical story, presents Cabot a situation where she’s not active, but rather reactive with her behaviors that require responsibility in a more A to B fashion for the plot. Less inferences to make.

Interesting thought, as I felt Cabot was incredibly active in The Wasp Woman’s central predicament! Compared to the other two films, where her harmful behavior was empathized with either subtly (Machine-Gun Kelly) or more explicitly (Sorority Girl), as a product of her social environment, The Wasp Woman has Cabot consciously initiate her condition as insularly motivated by selfish drives in capitalist outcomes of her business and vanity due to age. She certainly approaches the role with nuance to be more of a Dr. Jekyll than a Dorian Gray narcissist, but her responsibility is total here, even if circumstantial, because there is no powerlessness or aggressive enforcement from the outside. Sure, a reading is possible that due to a society that damns women for not being ‘beautiful’ enough past a certain age, she was ‘forced’ to do something, but that idea isn’t really pushed. It would be silly to do so too, for there’s no room to weigh the monstrous consequences that occur with sympathy for the dilemma of an elite central board member of a company, who happens to be female, acting on her agency to do whatever it takes to save a company, instead of stepping aside or retiring or coming up with a more collaborative solution.

What usually helps make Cabot’s position more complex and morally grey is pairing her with another villain or problematic character to mirror why she has needed to match their behaviors or reinforce resilience in maladaptive ways. Yet here there is no villain- even the “mad scientist” tries to save her and is played as thinly empathetic! I don’t know, fleshing out a few more options to make Cabot’s choice carry gravitas or giving her a sparring partner to expose more layered needs for opting into the treatment could have lifted this film into the ambiguous space of those superior works, but unfortunately it’s mostly just a decently well-directed and shot and acted piece of fluff, with missed opportunities flaring up for me having just watched some unexpectedly rich Corman “programmers,” a term this film deserves without the tour of the ocean beyond the tip of the iceberg.

[knives]

Now I’m even more excited for my rewatch which hopefully will come this week.

[knives]

Not only was 1959 the close of the decade, but it was for Corman the close of an era with the upcoming year introducing a radical new phase to his career. The two big signals of that change at this point were his decrease in production, mercifully he was only involved with seven productions in year, and more importantly his first stab as a completely independent producer. The Filmgroup was made to give Corman freedom from AIP and flopped as a distributor folding within two years. Yet on even smaller budgets than usual it did make some interesting films and even got Corman to begin what is probably his biggest contribution to film as an importer from Europe.

The biggest named film from the group is also the one we’ve been talking about :The Wasp Woman. This rewatch definitely gave me an added appreciation although I would still rank it as a middle of the road Corman and definitely less deep than the other Cabot’s for reasons blus pointed out above. I do want to push back a little bit though and argue that there is a lot going on here tied wonderfully to the opening boardroom scene which through tremendous economy fills in a lot of characterization making for a thematically weighted film. I don’t take the film as having a negative view of capitalism with her as someone in charge of her own company probably being sympathetic to where Corman was at that moment. Rather the scene illustrates her misunderstanding of how she is a commodity leaving her rather tragic, I definitely felt bad for her by the end. Her friends suggest a flexible view of society where a person doesn’t need to be faded out, but with age can change and adapt sort of like being young at heart. Cabot doesn’t have ears for that though.

Instead she hoists her own petard with an aggression against herself in the opening that is so pointed that it paints over what follows with the pains leading up to this point. Cabot plays her cosmetics executive with a heated desperation. She’s amazingly strong in some respects and you could see how she came to lead an industry, but also how the society around her makes her feel worthless and obsolete. As in Sorority Girl Barboura Morris makes for a powerful counterpoint as a woman not yet suffocating under the pressure of failing masculine expectation.

In general I’ve felt Corman’s portrayal of women is unusual from the degree of characterization and perhaps a genuinely feminist outlook to some extent. I’d really love to read a Laura Mulvey on him or at least the Cabot films, this being her last, to better than I am capable of examine these traits. At best I can say here that Corman seems invested in how women through acts of survival are supporting and undermining systems that instigate their troubles. Most of the time that ends in melancholy and defeat. The perfect emotions for horror.

The next film down, and one for AIP, I doubt will even need much defending as although I prefer it’s spiritual sequel A Bucket of Blood is perhaps the ultimate example of a Corman film showcasing his full talent, philosophy, and ability to hit the zeitgeist. Previously Corman hit against the beat movement but here he murders it in cold blood Doug the beats their own better and highlighting it as totally empty. There’s such a sour humor from all,sides it’s hard not to relish in it as Corman accuses them of hypocrisy being just as rank and in it for the money as him, but with a posturing as if art was their first priority.

That film is so perfectly encapsulated by Griffith’s script, perhaps his best, which hits all of its jokes with a delightful cackle. Though the real star is obviously Dick Miller in a role unlike any other he ever played giving us an empty James Franco of a man who parrots the pointless language he hears accidentally convincing others of his depth. It’s kind of amazing that in this harshness Miller comes across so sympathetic as someone just doing what needs to be done to fit it which whether in art or business is to make a killing.

In the lesser known category Corman made three more gangster flicks this year. One, an independent production called I, Mobster, is only available cropped so I skipped it and two smaller filmgroup productions. The better in every way is High School Big Shot. For such a short film this plays a real long con leaving two avenues to examine it from. One from the POV of ‘50s hysteria where this is an after school special gone to an extreme. That’s at first blush what this was to me. I thought it was going to be a complete dud with stiff scenes at school about the wickedness of cheating and women. The crazy thing though is that little backstory was hinted at here and there for everyone until there became reason for the actions presented beyond a moral imperative and so came the second lane of sympathetic noir melodrama.

In a lot of ways this is the closest successor to Sorority Girl as it builds a background of incidence to explain the characters’ desire to be loved and inability to achieve that in a healthy mode. In a way it’s more ambitious if less successful as it attempts this with three characters, the lead his father and would be girlfriend, undermining the genres it embodies in the process. I especially love what it does with the femme fatale giving her hints of pathos to the degree than rather than a villain she becomes someone to feel for. Significantly less well off is T-Bird Gang. It’s a largely forgettable film that is as generic as things can get, but it has a score for the ages that I’d love to put on during a long drive.

The final pair for today is a goofus and gallant of the Corman brothers. Attack of the Giant Leeches is more a Gene film than a Roger Corman film. The two brothers worked together for decades and you get a sense of the ambitions of one versus the other after awhile. While there are exceptions, The Big Red One, Roger was the more ambitious Corman always striving for more and, again with at least one exception Private Parts, Roger had the far weirder sense of what populist media could be. Attack of the Giant Leeches illustrates this perfectly by being a boringly prototypical ‘50s monster movie.

The leeches are radioactive giants without characterization. Between their scenes the movie is filled with a generic hicksoitation plot that might as well as be Herschel Gordon Lewis’ work. What you expect is exactly what you get.

One minor point of interest though is how advanced these movies have become. We don’t get just the tiniest glimpse of the monster and they’re consistently shot in a stylish way in widescreen. The Corman’s were definitely experts at this point with care even for their lowest films.

Our Gallant is the very special Beast From Haunted Cave. I couldn’t think of a better illustration of the Gene Roger divide I was talking about before than this. Even more than Leeches the logline for this sounds absolutely mercenary. Stuck in South Dakota having finished a shoot under budget and early Corman through together resources to make a quickie extra film on the same set. Charles Griffith was told to reuse his script for Naked Paradise making that the Corman Rio Bravo. Throw in a first time director hired just because he was a friend and this should be terrible, but instead it’s a weird poetic beast that benefits from repeat viewings.

Griffith as time went by leaned more and more to a gothic surrealism in his scripts and the contrast in versions shows just how quickly by his developed. The comic relief is toned down as well as the gangster stuff with the romance of the hero being nonexistent. Instead he focuses I on the psychological state of the female lead played wonderfully as a sulken dead spirited Tennessee Williams extra by Sheila Noonan. It’s a tough and angular performance. Griffith also tosses in a monster subplot that plays like a dreamed fantasy and looks forward to some of the images Corman would ask his writers to craft in the Poe films.

Of course all this is covering the led as that friend hired as director is none other than Monte Hellman whose reputation is so that I feel like I can’t provoke controversy by claiming already in his first feature is a better director than Bernard Kowalski. Hellman makes a lingering film full of silence and a feeling of violence. While he hasn’t yet master the humour of the Oates films his dramatic sense is surprisingly mature with the opening act’s bar sequence just being sad. He really makes this off the cuff cheapie an ambitious and effective film sensitive beyond what’s asked of it and superior to even more serious efforts.

Up next a tl;dr for the ‘50s.

[therewillbeblus]

The Was Woman

I do want to push back a little bit though and argue that there is a lot going on here tied wonderfully to the opening boardroom scene which through tremendous economy fills in a lot of characterization making for a thematically weighted film. I don’t take the film as having a negative view of capitalism with her as someone in charge of her own company probably being sympathetic to where Corman was at that moment. Rather the scene illustrates her misunderstanding of how she is a commodity leaving her rather tragic, I definitely felt bad for her by the end. Her friends suggest a flexible view of society where a person doesn’t need to be faded out, but with age can change and adapt sort of like being young at heart. Cabot doesn’t have ears for that though.

That’s a fair reading and not too far from my own, though I was sidelining areas of sympathy to focus more on how she digs her own grave rather independently, compared to the resilience tied to constraining setting conditions in the other two films we were contrasting this one with (and, really, in response to your memory of the film being one where it was hard not being in her corner since stuff was happening ‘to’ her- which I feel is actually occurring drastically more in the others). I don’t think it’s critical of capitalism either though- it’s just that she has a clear hand in her infection and demise here. The film could have carried a fatalistic tone if Corman had played up the ‘woman in a man’s world’ aspect and framed even a wealthy dominant figure as self-diagnostically empty of worth without her external superficial positioning, but I didn’t feel like he drew enough empathy for her there despite many opportunities to do so. Many great filmmakers have crafted an avenue to universalize the insecurities of the 1% and Corman’s elastic humanism seems ripe to pull this off in this narrative, hence my disappointment after such complex dives in the other viewings. I do like your point about Corman potentially drawing very personal parallels to her position (sorry for that alliteration, wow) running her company. Though again, I wish he tried harder after that initial scene- which I agree is far more fleshed out than it would be in another movie and was my favorite portion of the film (yes, the “boring” part according to probably 99% of the monster movie’s audience)!

[knives]

It’s definitely the film’s highlight. As a short it’s a real masterwork in the brevity of wit. I do wish the film could have maintained that.

[knives]

This is just a quick summary of the films so far because even though he was working only six years in the ‘50s there’s a lot to parse, 41 according to IMDb which is likely an under count. I’ll start off with my personal top ten which unsurprisingly is dominated by the man himself as director.

• Sorority Girl
  Rock All Night
  The Undead
  Machine Gun Kelly
  Teenage Caveman
  Bucket of Blood
  Carnival Rock
  It Conquered the World
  Beast from Haunted Cave
  Naked Paradise

Besides himself the only other director he worked with twice was Bernard Kowalski of all people. Dick Miller and Jonathan Haze are his most prominent actors, but Ed Nelson, Bruno Vesota, and Beach Dickerson come up often in the background. Mel Welles and Barboura Morris we’re the other major supporting players. Corman’s leads were almost exclusively ladies with Beverly Garland and the much discussed Susan Cabot. Paul Birch pops up occasionally as well.

Behind the camera Floyd Crosby is undeniably the lynchpin with a stunning 12 collabs. Other significant, more than five, partners were editors Ronald Sinclair and Charles Gross, writer Charles B. Griffith other Ronald in composer Stein, and especially jack of all trades Daniel Haller.

In addition to brother Gene the folks at AIP were the co-producing lifeline of Corman even as he tried to do on his own everything. Starting at the lowest of budgets and transversing all species of exploitation genre from the era these collaborators helped build him up to a genuine talent with a unique perspective that already stood out in the morass of skid row pictures from the period.

Next time begins Corman’s most significant decade as a director with the year that would make him immortal thanks to two very different films.

[knives]

A new decade and a real change from Corman is without question what has made him a legend. In a lot of ways 1960 was a make it or break it year as changes in the industry made it impossible for Corman to keep trucking on and creatively A Bucket of Blood had shown Corman maxed out on that aesthetic. Fortunately Corman seemed to realize this, but before the good let’s go with something I’m not as hip to.

Ski Troop Attack is an okay war flick conveys that Corman was pretty boxed in by his budgets at this time. There’s such a desire presented on screen to do something great that it becomes a bit sad how minimalist it winds up being. No wonder he would push for Usher soon after.

The film itself is pretty standard down to the action packed ending feigning a pretense of war is hell. The one sequence that seemed genuinely great to me was with the woman hostage. There’s a tension there due to perspectives and how despite cosmically obviously she’s a villain the degree she sees herself as the suffering victim of aggression is illuminating in its empathy. It reminded me a lot of the prepper scenes in Borat 2.

I wasn’t expecting much from Battle of Blood Island by the director of High School Big Shot. Not only was that one only okay, but Ski Troop Attack suggested a limitation to Corman’s expression in the war genre.

Though not as good as antecedent Hell in the Pacific this Philip Roth adaptation with a quiet brutality managed to be pretty good. Most of that probably goes back to Roth who this follows a lot of themes from. A cynical, agnostic Jew helps a now crippled Christian good old boy after a fight in the pacific. Rapp develops the tension of the film with a beautiful kind of minimalism as the cracks in their relationship only slowly show. In contrast to Boorman here we start with an assumption of connection. After all these are both Americans, but later they come to realize they have as many differences with each as they do the Japanese. What I especially enjoyed is that even though the Jewish Moe is the perspective of the film, who we the liberal anti-war audience shall sympathize with, the naïve Ken isn’t someone for us to look down on, but rather a genuine man who may pose difficulties to long held truths or even a friend. Through subtle and slow storytelling Rapp provides a film that is arguably more relevant today than it was sixty years ago.

Last Woman on Earth is my least favorite of the year, yet even it has a few merits. Robert Towne is the big discovery of the year not only writing this sci-fi romance, but also staring in it. He was smart to pursue writing instead of acting. That’s not to claim this script is a great shake. In many respects it’s another take on Naked Paradise pared down to its essential parts. The opening scenes before the apocalypse are quite good suggesting the model for New World and highlighting the rather nasty perspective of Towne over other Corman writers. At its best this film plays a bit like a straight take on Design for Living. The male characters are too opposed to ever take the logical way out.

This also has probably the most ridiculous home video release history I’ve ever seen till this day. Tubi’s stream for example comes from a black and white television print that has been colorized. Fortunately Roku has a VCI quality scan from the original negatives with the original color and widescreen.

Bucket of Blood’s spiritual sequel Little Shop of Horrors is probably my favorite non-Price Corman. The vaudevillian Jewish humour is the best facsimile I’ve ever seen by a group of non-Jews with this sense of the absurd just being completely to my wavelength. It’s also fun to compare this to Bucket of Blood where here there isn’t an easy target, but rather we forced into a situation where these villains are all so lovable. It’s made such a big cultural impact and is frankly so good that I’m not really afraid my lack of words will indicate anything except the deepest respect.

And finally the big boy. The film that set Corman in stone and has been such a major part of my life since I was a small one. House of Usher is merely okay, but that’s because it’s the foundation for a set of films, many not made by Corman, which defined the horror aesthetic of the decade even internationally, unquestionably Bava was working in tandem with what Corman was doing almost to a Pepsi and Coke degree.

Supposedly Corman went to AIP and asked for the budget of two films to be combined into one major production with a real star. It was a major risk that all the same paid off better then anyone could dream giving Price a whole new career, ensuring bigger budgets and more daring concepts from Corman and frankly keeping AIP alive longer then it should have.

This is a real minimalist adaptation with some crisp and simple cinematography from Crosby. There’s only four actors to the whole. Price is easily the best actor bringing a menace to his enigma, though Corman would quickly discover Price is better the sadder he gets. The film also sees a further shift to a male focus, though that again might be just from how Price overpowers everything else.

Next year sees an even better Poe adaption and not much else.

[knives]

Corman even on in the ‘60s has reduced his output enough that I can finally take on two years in a post. So without further ado is ‘61 and ‘62.

I haven’t seen Atlas, another remake of Naked Paradise, but the other two ‘61 films are fairly genius in their own ways. More modestly and the last of its kind is Creature from the Haunted Sea . I was not looking forward to this at all, but I should have had more faith in ‘60s Corman. He and the crew clearly had no interest in playing straight the sort of film they could afford on this budget and so Charles Griffith decided to work his magic for what feels like a closer to the series of comedies started by Bucket of Blood. This time around the target is the movies themselves in what feels like a set up for Godard or perhaps Luc Moullet is a more accurate point of reference. In any case the film is totally deranged as Robert Towne narrates a tale of stolen gold that’s really a political farce as the world’s most idiotic secret agent. No description I can give does better than watching the film at explaining its genius.

The second feature is one of my favorite of all time to the point where I might be even more inarticulate than usual. The Pit and the Pendulum is one of the films that made me a film fan and one I could watch every day for a million years and never tire of. Just by expanding on House of Usher slightly and hiring Barbara Steele Corman has made an insurmountable masterpiece that simultaneously provides a chilling portrait of madness and a well humored film in the meta sense of its own aesthetic. Price is so powerful here in his pathetic quality. I find his horror star quality to almost be in opposition of Peter Cushing’s where Price suggests someone to place empathy upon so that when he snaps it doesn’t cause recoil but begs if there was another option. That works well here as he movie punishes him into being a villain. Really I just want everyone who hasn’t already to rush to this masterpiece which I’m tempted to watch again just from writing about it.

After such a short year Corman had a much more robust 1962. I already wrote extensively about The Intruder in the ‘60s thread, but want to take this as a moment to talk about its production and how it reflects the ambitions of Corman at this point. The two Poe films had made Corman a big star who was being talked about not only in Hollywood, but even France. This was pulling him in two directions. One commercial as he wanted financial independence from AIP and the other artistic as he wanted to make important films with big themes. These two forces are best represented by The Intruder on the artistic side and Premature Burial commercially. The artistic throw didn’t succeed teaching Corman the important lesson that audiences don’t want histrionics, but rather take moral lessons best when imbedded into an entertaining feature.

The commercial attempt was perhaps too successful as although set up independently Corman’s first non-AIP Poe was so attractive that the company butted in anyway buying the film rights. Premature Burial’s quality is less exciting. I can forgive Milland a bit this time around for not being Price, but the degree this is built around a Price character makes having a decidedly non-Prician actor a bit lumpy.

It is a fascinating thematic change with the switch to female heroines being subtle here, but a necessary step to accomplish the Masque.

What I can’t forgive though is Tower of London which is Corman’s worst film as a director and not worth wasting words. Just watch the Karloff and Rathbone take on Richard III instead which manages an actual great Price performance.

The last of these Corman directed films is Tales of Terror which is probably the film covered in this thread I’ve seen the most, not because it is particularly great, but because it is so fun. By this point Corman and his team were restless with the format, understandable with this being the fourth film in three years, and so they constructed an omnibus that allowed the possibilities of a Poe film to be near infinite (including a Lovecraft adaptation). Matheson’s construct is fairly ingenious on that basis. The first segment is like a greatest hits and exists to show they perfected this story and don’t need to return to it. It does wrinkle things some by making it a woman’s picture, it what comes next blows the door down.

The second segment, a combo of The Black Cat, The Tell Tale Heart, and The Casket of Amontillado, doesn’t even star Price and doesn’t feature a Price character. Instead it’s a comedic showing of Peter Lorre’s prowess as he drunkenly stumbles as a figure of power and pathetic. I could analyze the brilliant characterization as his power is the source of his failings, but mostly it’s the greatest fun in the world watching Lorre bounce off of various characters including Price returning to his dandy character. This segment might secretly be the best of Corman given his genius as a comedian of the grotesque.

The final segment is less good though again it sees Price playing second banana to a peer, this time hypnotist Basil Rathbone. This is where Crosby and editor Anthony Carras are given light to show as the thin story provides plenty of opportunity for visual play. It’s a fun way to end the film.

The year ends though with an oddball I hadn’t heard of before and I’m not even entirely sure what Corman’s role was in the film although it features many of his alumni. For the most part The Broken Land is a fairly generic oater with the predictable settings, characters, and narrative pursuits. There are two elements which help it to stand out and give me undue affection for The Broken Land. The first is a lightning supporting performance by a Jack Nicholson. He’s hardly in the film, but the hardened cynicism he shows is a natural fit and shows the star personality already forming. Even if the movie itself was hardly noticed Nicholson should have been and made a star six years earlier than he did. I’ve seemingly said that for each of his performances so far, but that’s because it is so true.

The second is the slight counterculture vibes simmering below. A villainous sheriff is not a new concept, but having his attraction to law enforcement directly tied with his villainy is. Previously the big secret he was hiding would be being a bandit or outlaw. Instead it’s that he’s done this before and just as disastrously. It’s almost modern, highlighting to me how so many concerns of boomers are also concerns of the modern age, for how it views crime as caused by the desperation of legal enforcement almost assuming the polis would be better served without police. This theme is just juicy enough that it could elevate the film to greatness at least in some eyes.

[therewillbeblus]

I finally revisited The Trip and it was much better than my memory suggested, though not without its problems. The most blatant issue isn't exactly a fair criticism since it's sourced in the technical limitations of the budget and era- Corman cannot replicate the LSD experience, like say Gaspar Noe did for DMT in Enter the Void, and in his attempts he sorta accidentally undermines his own ethos, concocting defined hallucinations that just aren't a ubiquitous or overwhelming element of a 'trip' for most, which play into the misinformed assumptions straightedge-'squares' of the time had about the drug, reinforcing their fears (Note: Amusingly, these are commonplace for DMT, which can frequently concoct those tangible visual hallucinations that usurp all stimuli in one's environment in the manner that people think LSD triggers, while Noe's aesthetics detail the subtle, slightly-tainted hallucinations of blurry waves in one's subjective pov more often felt in LSD - they should have switched drugs of focus!)

Corman can, however, replicate (or rather, document) the counterculture energy in kaleidoscopic (literally so, multiple times in the last act) phantasmagoria, which indulges the experience of being both a part of, and isolated from one's social context at once. It's a pretty effective film in that respect, and I definitely felt it got a lot 'right' about the multifaceted process. Although occasionally this falls short when returning to Fonda as a subject rather than surrogate, breaking our spell, which is the nature of trying to have its cake and eat it too, reaching for ambitions to replicate an experience and then disbar us from it. The weakest moments involve Fonda expressing his thoughts divorced from any aesthetic aid, which inadvertently invite condescending 'other'ing as we watch him unable to engage in verbal processes to express what he's feeling, seen as a fault rather than the inverse that he's having an experience so profound that limited methods of communication like speech can't do his sensations justice. I dunno, it's hard to objectively critique this film when it's trying hard to do something perverse and admirably even half-succeeding, doing its best under a small budget and with the technology of the time in general, but structurally it makes a few choice mistakes that wind up frustratingly forcing disengagement and thwarting avenues to indulge an open-minded position.. oh well, I do imagine Jack Nicholson did his 'research' for this simultaneously restrained and gonzo-filterless script, depending on when you tune in!

...And then there's a more charitable, if far-reaching and almost-inherently retrospective reading, where the film can function a bit like a progression of psychospiritual awakening rather than mimicking the effects of the acid trip itself, which it ostensibly is synonymous with and allegorical for here. In that sense, Fonda's movement works reflexively with the film's composition. He starts off framed as the isolated subject, coming in and out of stages of a trip, and so the audience by proxy are engaged in a cyclical pattern of getting involved and repeatedly disconnected from this experience, to embody and then incidentally be placed in a position to patronize him... which is the very thing he fears and feels himself sober or otherwise, the sensation of alienation pervading his zeitgeist. Ultimately we wind up traveling with him into the depths of subjectivity, blending with his experience in a way that utilizes the possibilities of the medium effectively. They become invaluable assets to forge something novel rather than limitations blocking the potential. The most honest and successful moments channel Fonda recognizing and embracing the fear that drives him, and the wild cross-cutting montages sandwiching this revelation. So, could Corman be using his low-budget restrictions (and, in general, the restrictions embedded in the central conceit- a knowingly impossible task of replicating an acid trip) on a meta-level to construct a narrative passage through form?

For the first two-thirds, I was struggling with this film while liking it well enough, but the last act brought it all home. I'll need to revisit this at some point sooner than the ten or so years it's been, as I imagine if I enter it with the reading I've developed in its final moments, I'd love it a whole lot more than I already do. And man, the more I let this sink in, the more powerful I find it- I mean, Corman victoriously targets and capitalizes on reversing the very deficiencies he's presenting us with at the start- perhaps just like his central character, lost and without support in a lonely milieu- where even his guides aren't trusted by his psyche; prevailing by surrendering to the flow, though even then there's no promise of a spiritual home run or flower-child affinity with his peers (even Hopper reverts to self-preserving Me and Mine mentality when there's the potential for a murder, despite having concrete evidence of that not being the case, having just spoken to the guy minutes before!) This could make a strong double feature with Petulia.

[knives]

I haven’t seen this one yet, but it sounds like it pairs well with The Wild Angels which is another Fonda fronted attempt to understand the counterculture.

It also interesting to note that The Trip was one of the films that motivated making New World as the studio futzed with it to make a more anti-drug film whereas Corman wanted it to completely reflect its characters’ perspective.