criterionforum.org

knives wrote: Sun Feb 20, 2022 2:31 pm The Brain Eaters, directed by Corman regular Bruno Vesota, has a lot of great ideas swirling in it with the conclusion having that monster you’re in love with thing that so many have since exploited. The movie really can be seen as a distaff Slither with Hawksian heroes. I do wish it had exploited the inherent sadness of the concept better though.

This was plenty entertaining for the expected reasons but also gets a ton of mileage out of its bargain bin classical score. I'd certainly recommend picking up the Shout-exclusive Blu-ray before it sells out soon

Here’s 1963 which in quality and quantity feels like the biggest year since ‘57.

Beginning with familiar expectations The Raven quickly becomes a rather wild ride. Quoting from the poem we’re introduced to a typical Price character longing for his wife and neglecting his daughter. This is treated with the utmost seriousness until Peter Lore’s raven flies in and reveals this to be a most ridiculous comedy or phrased another way Jack Nicholson plays the straight man to these geriatric horror legends. I’ll readily admit there’s not much going on here besides the fun of these actors bouncing off one another, Matheson doesn’t have Griffith’s sense of satire nor quality of humour, but for me that’s enough for a fun night at the movies.

It’s hard not to talk about The Raven and not bring up The Terror which owes everything to it. Supposedly the Poe wrapped early and Karloff was contracted for two more days of work which Corman rushed something like a script for using the actors, Jack Nicholson and Dick Miller, he had on hand. This didn’t really work into a coherent film so Corman had some friends such as Monte Hellman, Nicholson, Jack Hill, FF Coppola, and I’m sure others shoot a bunch of scenes until it almost resembled a film. The making of this is undeniably more interesting than the final result, but something that doesn’t get discussed is how the film’s cohesive failure shows how big Corman had gotten.

Little Shop of Horrors was made basically the same way to a grand success. I suspect because he was operating on a smaller wavelength. By The Terror he was more thoughtful about his process and more dependent on time. In other words he was more professional and the old methods just couldn’t work. He’s also locked in by genre as this gothic Poe storytelling doesn’t afford the same degree of looseness and random impositions. You can have Haze randomly visit a prostitute and it feels natural to the film, but a random rendezvous with a witch just feels random here.

Despite my critical feelings I do like this movie and think it’s pretty fun. Certainly I’d take it over a lot of more successful films. I dearly wish Arrow or somebody would properly restore this as it’s clear that the colors could pop and that this was made for a widescreen framing. Oh, well, if Dementia 13 can get a fancy release this probably can as well.

The Haunted Palace is the last Poe themed of the year and just an absolute favorite. I absolutely love this and now that I’ve actually read some Lovecraft I love it all the more. Corman tired with Poe, but desiring he money that name brings does a very close adaptation of Lovecraft and sells it as Poe. Gotta love that producer’s shrewdness sometimes.

Artistically this is Corman’s most impressive yet with a huge cast and a summary of his themes with an atmosphere of the fun. The cast is what gets me the most. Just a few years earlier Usher could hardly hold four actors and here we get the sense of a whole village with a murders row of actors such as an extended Elisha Cook cameo. Lon Chaney is undoubtedly the best newcomer. Made up like the dead he’s so exhausting to watch and dances with the time of the film to ensure it doesn’t remain camp.

That’s another distinguishing feature here. Running in he opposite direction of The Raven Corman makes a truly sincere film that’s more Hammer than anything from AIP. While the luscious production design, Harry Reif and Daniel Haller should be better known names, and effective lighting could place one in a mood for camp like Fisher Corman uses the elevated visual language to ensure the stakes of the story seem real rather than exaggerated. The story is a rather roundabout way of dealing with the familiar theme of grief.

It also highlights again for me how the Price protagonist has more in common with Corman’s women than men. He’s a sympathetic figure driven to violence to match the world around him. Usually, especially following the Poe cycle, the men are toxic undermining their grand ideas with cruelty. Just look at the men in The Terror by comparison. Karloff, spoiler for that film, is an adulterous murderer, Dick Miller is a bow of kindness ferments all of the violence of the film, and even Nicholson has red hands from a useless search for the truth. By contrast Price is a romantic figure turning to evil due to a cycle of violence he personally shares no part in.

X: The a man with the X-Ray Eyes is unquestionably one of Corman’s best with an eerie performance from Millard and a premise that is genuinely haunting. Dillon and Russell have made a script that plays like the best version of Nightmare Alley as Millard’s pursuit of knowledge makes him Doctor Manhattan. I love the transition from parlor tricks and a goofy exploitation of the powers, it’s not surprising that this duo also wrote some William Castle films, to this uneasy world that is so depressing. Even more than his gothic films this sort of depressed character piece is where Corman excels.

I do want to say, insofar as comparing this to the Poe’s, as much as I was displeased by his Premature performance Milland gives what might be his best performance here. His baseline desire and hunger for knowledge constantly placing his hand on the stove is handled with this delicious resign that is perfectly encapsulated by his star. Millard’s not he only one holding this afloat either. Don Rickles of all people gives a great supporting performance as an exploitative shyster who doesn’t know how to react to Milland. He really helps to add tension to the film.

And tension there is. Corman films aren’t really scary instead applying arch tones to sad material. Here there’s plenty of sadness, but it is utilized through a scary dispassion which I find especially haunting. This just one of the most frightening films ever thanks exclusively to theme.

Penultimately comes a major surprise for me and one of the more interesting discoveries in a while. It’s shocking that The Young Racers rest in such obscurity given how essential a Corman it is both in terms of quality and as a symbol of his career. It seems to be the seed by which all of the counterculture films that Corman would end the decade blossomed from. You have it all from the exciting use of cars, the women lost in their own transition, and most interesting for being the love hate relationship Corman has with his male protagonists whose ideals he clearly admires and behaviors abhors.

I guess nowadays you’d call this an examination of toxic masculinity. All of the men are driven by ego protection and an inability to see women as having their own agency. He result features them tearing each other apart, though unlike later examples redemption can be seen. Youth can change even as old age, as represented by Patrick Magee more scary than Price ever tried, shows a hardening of the clay.

The film also showcases Corman’s new relationship with Europe and how it can provide superior production values. This is a truly gorgeous film that beats many similar studio products of the era.

This is another one with some left over money, but not enough for Corman himself to make a movie. Instead he gave his assistant Francis Ford Coppola to prove himself after directing a couple of nudie cuties and Americanizing one Russian space epic. This jump to legitimacy is Dementia 13. I still haven’t seen the director’s cut, but watching the theatrical cut in a superior print has raised this from a boring mediocrity to an interesting mediocrity. It still comes across as the umpteenth Psycho knock-off with an overly stiff first act, but the Bunny Lake elements are now more clear to me with Coppola having a lot of fun with the perversity of the premise.

What really hooked me more so this time is how this isn’t merely a psycho ripoff, but also a Rules of the Game riff as these wealthy elites amuse themselves to death. The family just being weird is the best part here.

Next up will be a year filled with things to talk about, but not so many movies.

knives wrote: Sun May 01, 2022 6:00 pmX: The a man with the X-Ray Eyes is unquestionably one of Corman’s best with an eerie performance from Millard and a premise that is genuinely haunting. Dillon and Russell have made a script that plays like the best version of Nightmare Alley as Millard’s pursuit of knowledge makes him Doctor Manhattan. I love the transition from parlor tricks and a goofy exploitation of the powers, it’s not surprising that this duo also wrote some William Castle films, to this uneasy world that is so depressing. Even more than his gothic films this sort of depressed character piece is where Corman excels.

I do want to say, insofar as comparing this to the Poe’s, as much as I was displeased by his Premature performance Milland gives what might be his best performance here. His baseline desire and hunger for knowledge constantly placing his hand on the stove is handled with this delicious resign that is perfectly encapsulated by his star. Millard’s not he only one holding this afloat either. Don Rickles of all people gives a great supporting performance as an exploitative shyster who doesn’t know how to react to Milland. He really helps to add tension to the film.

And tension there is. Corman films aren’t really scary instead applying arch tones to sad material. Here there’s plenty of sadness, but it is utilized through a scary dispassion which I find especially haunting. This just one of the most frightening films ever thanks exclusively to theme.

I really enjoyed X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes as well, though I may have read Milland's character slightly differently. My favorite aspect of the film (beyond even all the imaginative pitstops the creators pack into this lean drama-disguised-as-thriller) is how he admirably works in the reverse order of expectations for this kind of superpower narrative, that typically involves a devolution of character into power, such as Stan Carlisle to use your example. Instead, Milland moves from an exertion of ego into levels of humility, as he's broken down in parallel with his isolation and sadness following multiple losses. Even at the beginning, I read his use of power as a moral one in choosing to save people's lives over being well-liked or respected by his colleagues whose toes he's stepping on in the procedures, but over time he becomes despondent and oscillates between self-effacing distancing regarding his gifts and measured kindness (i.e. in the 'schemes' with Rickles, who I agree is very good here) to erratically clutching onto weaponizing his powers at the casino- though this last bit is so clearly a self-destructive plea to gain something when he's feeling so alienated and hopeless that it didn't strike me as anything egotistical or calculated self-determination. Any emphasis on the hunger for knowledge stopped early for me, and the bulk of the film is spent on the pathos merged with fun exteriors in engaging applications of these skills, which is a great way for Corman and co. to have their cake and eat it too, honing in on the consequential experiences of an existential vacuum coupled with the fleeting fun we can vicariously have as a result of these consequences. The final stop at the religious ceremony to surrender is the only way this film could end, and it's a masterful choice.

I actually agree. The depression I noted is in part caused by how consistently his ego is driven by a desire to be a good man. There’s no villain here and there’s this sad romance where Milland and the lady want to connect through this good deed and have to do these trysts instead.

A great example is the situation with Rickles and how for his research Milland immediately goes back to being a doctor though in this exploited way.

That fantastic ending compounds all of this.

Yeah I was thinking we were more or less aligned on this one, but I suppose I didn’t detect an eeriness in the performance nor a comparison to Stan’s deceitful ladderclimber, which is why I wanted to clarify. We definitely had the same sensitivity to the implicit depression pervading the narrative through tone, and your note of the sad romance is an excellent one of endless examples for how Corman stuffs this faux-programmer with imaginative as many doses of devastatingly isolating and impotence-inducing variables as he does amusingly inventive applications of the superpower. Per usual in his best work, it’s a cutting cocktail of opposing tones that nonetheless goes down smooth against all rules of the game, thanks to his expert application of craft.

The eeriness for me is the sadness and that definitely more reflects how I react to the scenario than necessarily what it objectively is.

I’m not used to posting so quickly, but 1964 is such a banner year I couldn’t contain my excitement. It’s very emblematic of where Corman had gone reaching a peak of artistic skill that he would never as director surpass. Everything following this crescendo can’t match. It also marks the beginning of Corman’s Second decade making movies independently. This decade would be marked by stability and branching out into the mentor role that he would take on with furor in decades three and four. First the movies.

The final two Poe films are unquestionably the best showing all aspects of Corman with his collaborators performing with amazing skill. I almost feel like I don’t need to write them up the quality is so famous and self evident.

The Masque of the Red Death plays like the end with everything heightened and the Bergman relation going from influence to outright theft. Price is playing his only truly soulless devil with lip curling pride. It’s an amazing performance that is too outsized to be the basis of the movie. Instead Beaumont and Campbell’s perverse script returns Corman to the world of women and local talent as Jane Asher’s crimson angel tugs the audience to and fro as an emotional entry point to this hyperstylized world. I love Floyd Crosby’s work, but Roeg uses color and lighting and angles in away so beyond everything else that the movie becomes a lesson in how to. The script’s beauty and Corman’s strong hand never lets this just be a Ken Russell exercise in excess. It remains a powerfully human story.

Functioning as a post-script Tomb of Ligeia sees Price ceding ground as the old Hollywood for the new. This rugged, simply shot (by Hammer alum Arthur Grant) film scripted in tersest terms by a fully realized Robert Towne sees the world slowly swallowed whole. This is a very quiet film removed of excess and almost even the gothic accoutrements to get at the emotional heart of what all this was attempting to communicate. Usually I don’t buy Corman’s self mythologizing, but after this one-two punch I believe him when he says he stopped making Poe films after this because there was nothing left to do.

Last and least albeit still great is the radical change of pace The Secret Invasion. This is very different from any Roger Corman film up to this point and shows a real independence even from his home studio AIP. Produced by brother Gene at UA Corman shifts to a war film scripted by Campbell at his absolute best. For the second time Corman does The Dirty Dozen before it existed. Though this time Corman can afford a star studded cast headlined by Stewart Granger and with a more concisely expressed set of themes. It’s kind of brilliant actually to use the Nazi’s extreme status to give a baseline goodness to the heroes preventing any criticisms of the military from seeming offensive. Granger is revealed as a petty ego driven man working for an empty system with horrible criminals saved in reputation by being against Hitler. That’s not to say the film is grim. There’s a lot of jokes and while it gets more serious as it goes along Corman never sacrifices entertainment always wrapping his themes in a wry smile.

So comes a close to Corman’s year leading to the most shocking year of his career: 1965 a year where Corman didn’t work. That’s not for a lack of trying though. Smartly, he realized he had hit his ceiling with these low budget efforts and was desperate to work in the system finally. Corman quickly signed with several studios hoping to finally make the great movies he was always imagining. To make new variations on the unvarnishedly personal vision of The Intruder. To see what he could do with money. Unfortunately the studios he partnered with didn’t see things that way. Instead Corman would suggest a personal project like a critical biography of Custer a decade before that would become a popular concept or a Kafka adaptation and they’d counter with some boring thing lost to history.

This bitter back and forth would eventually pay off(?) with A Time for Killing and two later Corman directed pictures, but was basically a waste. I’ll cover those in due time, but Corman’s subsequent efforts make perfect sense in the context of his total distrust with the system and his own embodiment of the counter culture in this experience. Of the eight films he has directed since two were pet projects from the studio days, one a favor to his brother, and the non-Frankenstein rest are zeitgeist pictures all about the death of the previous generation and in the intangible desires of youth. Corman was now questionably the ultimate outsider.

The other major reaction was the setting up of New World Pictures which would have its first film shown in 1970 and a wave of independent features from trusted friends like Monte Hellman and Curtis Harrington for the final five years of the decade. To say the least the next few posts are going to be weird.

knives wrote: Tue May 03, 2022 11:25 pm Functioning as a post-script Tomb of Ligeia sees Price ceding ground as the old Hollywood for the new. This rugged, simply shot (by Hammer alum Arthur Grant) film scripted in tersest terms by a fully realized Robert Towne sees the world slowly swallowed whole. This is a very quiet film removed of excess and almost even the gothic accoutrements to get at the emotional heart of what all this was attempting to communicate. Usually I don’t buy Corman’s self mythologizing, but after this one-two punch I believe him when he says he stopped making Poe films after this because there was nothing left to do.

I liked this a lot, which brewed slyly as a stylistically minimalist and narratively introverted work, fittingly about stagnant grief and delusion, before exploding at the start of the third act with wild set designs and unexpected trajectories of character and visual stimuli. I don't know if I'm reading this similarly or differently than you (mostly because I can't decode what you think the film is "attempting to communicate"), but it felt like Price and his new belle were both attempting to resolve emotion around loneliness and confusion through distracting tangible means, suppressing humility in the process. The eventual eruption of ominous pizzazz signifies the inexplicable and ungraspable nature of Poe's themes, mainly animal magnetism, a definitively indecipherable energy transmission. In that sense, this is like a pop-version of Cure, much simpler but brooding with an adjacent weight causing a familiar aching malady. The Poe quote that ends the film hits this idea square on by laughably denying us even a confidence on life vs death, the state we should be able to discern if ever there was one! It's a cheeky finish, and a deeply unsettling one all the same.

Glad to hear you liked it. I actually couldn’t get to a rewatch of it for this and so am working off memory. I’m sure a rewatch could bring more nuance to such a beautiful film. I can talk about 1966 which is the first year where Corman the producer beats Corman the director.

His lone film as a director, The Wild Angels, isn’t something to be sniffed at at least as a cultural milestone even if it doesn’t measure up as a film. It has a rambling nature that while more successful than many others still doesn’t fully work for me. The while is really hard for me to peg. Corman doesn’t dislike bikers like he did the beats, but the portrayal isn’t a positive one either. Nazi symbols abound and the characters are drawn in rather noxious terms of idiocy and violence.

If I were to hazard a guess Corman was curious about the attraction of this philosophy. The film plays at times as a docudrama and relentlessly avoids psychology with even the one scene suggesting the interior of a character being him running away from the pain of interior life. Corman provides something the opposite of Easy Rider in form and purpose as there’s no new American dream here to lose, but rather folks lost on the idea of community.

As a small sidebar, Peter Fonda is revelatory here. I’ve never felt strongly about a performance of his before, but here his mix of authority and isolation communicates so much anchoring an otherwise ramshackle film to something more meaningful.

And so begins Corman’s period period as super producer although The Shooting and its brother are more relevant for Hellman’s career than Corman’s. It comes in the midst of his most productive period as a writing partner with Jack Nicholson and also sees the birth of his most valuable relationship with Warren Oates. By this point as well he had begun to develop his signature style as a terse minimalist focused on interior action.

It does speak well on Corman as producer when he trusts an artist. This is a pretty weird movie with no obvious hook and yet, seemingly, Corman just took what Hellman delivered and trusted things would work out. Though a transgressive story of wicked men with a mysterious and strong willed woman fits so well with Corman’s own stories the movie was probably just wonderful in his eyes.

Ride in the Whirlwind has Hellman being the first Corman student to surpass their teacher while under his tutelage. This has a remarkable similarity to The Wild Angels on the thematic level as through metaphor Hellman and Nicholson articulate a new social awareness that all the same has major blind spots and is motivated out of some unsavory elements of the American condition. This film is far more concise and engaging without ever being didactic. It plays as a basic quality oater for the most part with Harry Dean Stanton’s stare speaking volumes more than Dern’s soliloquies.

My favorite film of the year though is Curtis Harrington’s gonzo Queen of Blood. I’m an absolute sucker for ‘60s Euro-Pudding sci-fi and this might be the best example I’ve seen despite being American and borrowing, mostly in the first act, from ‘50s Soviet sci-fi. It’s just such a gorgeous well constructed film with handsome figures moving through space. It’s the least thematically dense film of the year, but for me the most enjoyable.

In general I haven’t brought up Corman’s entries to the reconstituted foreign film genre due to a lack of interest, see this year’s terrible sounding Blood Bath, but this film is almost entirely original footage and Harrington is such a massive talent I couldn’t avoid it. I’m curious for those in the know if there’s any other entries that are this worthwhile and if there’s any easy way to see the original films they were made from? Thanks in advance.

knives wrote: Mon May 09, 2022 1:28 am Though a transgressive story of wicked men with a mysterious and strong willed woman fits so well with Corman’s own stories the movie was probably just wonderful in his eyes.

I just revisited The Shooting and its sister film, Ride in the Whirlwind, as well- the latter of which really brings us into the depths of moral relativity as we venture with these bland principals through a misunderstanding-gone-awry with potentially lethal consequences. It's an amusing juxtaposition in pivoting from the guilty troupe, which was more colorful and interesting with Stanton, favoring the lawlessness and then the rule-breakers by necessity instead of revolving around order to provide safety. Still, the film's propulsion vis survivalism ultimately doesn't work as well under a bifurcated act structure (though it's still a good movie), whereas The Shooting's marvelous trajectory from barely-graspable security of space into barren wastelands mimics the psychological and philosophical plights of its characters perfectly.

However, I didn't think any male character was wicked. Like Mille Perkins' femme fatale stripped down into obviousness, Oats, Nicholson, and Hutchins are all 'characters' devolved into rote action and singleminded, introverted existential aims. We are not privy to them, but I'd argue that even Nicholson is less wicked than he is (inexplicably) tricked, like Hutchins, by Perkins' "charms." The pathos-bred joke here is that she doesn't have any; her cards are open in plain sight, as are theirs, but they are so compelled to stick to their respective solipsistic narratives that they miss anything greater. The desert as a nebulous, lonely, and directionless landscape doesn't just swallow up these characters but serves as a fitting milieu for their personalities and static 'progressions', mirroring via externalization, just as they respond to it in reciprocal literal and symbolic (dis)engagement.

Only Oates is aware enough (though I don't know if he possesses any 'skill' here, it's more of a willingness- a brave one to ascend the defense mechanisms held and clutched to by the other men) to see what everyone 'is', and yet he magnetically goes along with the plan for his own desperate quest to find his twin brother, though 'why' seems a mystery to even him, and that's why the film is so successful. When we finally see that they look alike, it seems eerily tragic and empathically clear that such a lonely man in a lonely world would be destined to seek the only warm body out there that reflects his 'self' in superficial instead of deeply vulnerable terms. Regardless of intelligence, emotion reigns, and the mission to locate surface-level recognition is indicative of Oates' need to fulfill that vulnerable part of him, even if it's not possible to be matched in the flesh. The first act's explanation of the 'action' kicking off the plot, and the reactions, both by Oates and in the elisions of what's not done or said or left behind as a message by his brother, speaks volumes to this point. It's a monstrously effective film, one of the very best westerns I've ever seen, and exhibit A of what one can accomplish with no budget.

If you disagree because of the depth of the characterization I agree to that extent, but I feel comfortable arguing that the starting point of their relationship is that roughness and disturbing chivalry that, say, Peckinpah was exploring at the same time. I was referring to the surface elements with that post.

Yeah, the word ‘Wicked’ definitely seems like an intrinsic diagnosis, getting at and summarizing essence rather than surface level roughness. Though either way, I realize now that I only noted this because your differentiated them from the Woman, describing the men as wicked but the woman as strong willed. This grabbed my attention since she occupies the femme fatale role in this arguably-noirish western, and I’d think most viewers would see the woman as ominously wicked and -at least the two protagonist men sans Nicholson- as being allured by that wickedness in one way or another.

I suppose it’d be fairer to say I’m intrigued by how you labeled each gender role, and were more charitable to the femme fatale in that labeling- which is rooted in curiosity rather than forming a hardline disagreement.

I wasn’t thinking in noir terms but if I had I probably would have picked up on that too. Instead I was thinking in western terms where the woman is usually split between Madonna and whore and here she’s explicitly not a whore.

knives wrote: Mon May 09, 2022 3:03 pm I wasn’t thinking in noir terms but if I had I probably would have picked up on that too. Instead I was thinking in western terms where the woman is usually split between Madonna and whore and here she’s explicitly not a whore.

That’s an interesting reading, thanks for the clarification. In that case, since she’s worshipped (delusionally, I’d argue) by two of the men, but where any Madonna faux-exterior is seen through by Oates who is our central point of identification, what do you make of that? Is the dissonance between their worship and his skepticism producing a chaos that betrays a reflexive destruction of western tropes, mirroring the destruction of the simplified categorization that the other men project onto her, due to protective defenses to avoid vulnerability sourced in alienation from self and others? Or is this too a projected simplified categorization, just working in the other direction- though it’s the direction that counts because it’s survivalism vs hanging onto mirages of exaltation?

It seems that every character is deceptively devolved down to thin terms, not because they are truly empty, but because they must embrace those roles to work towards a singular goal. It's significant that each character's goal is wildly different and isolated from one another's: Perkins' is determined vengeance; Hutchins' is naive, desperate intimacy; Nicholson's is being needed through egotistical superiority; Oates' is the vaguest in also seeking a connection, but one that carries a weaker barrier separating himself from the vulnerability, as it's wrapped up more consciously in self than in an objective that ignores the self's sensitivity (Oates mostly communicates this nonverbally, with his body language, and vocal nuance in desolately-restrained tone of voice and modulation during sparse speech patterns). Each of these 'goals' are both overly simplified and appropriately stripped down given the context, and so the question becomes whether or not it matters how much depth is under the iceberg if it isn't acknowledged on an existential level by the character. Oates' behavioral hints at emerging as a subtle (but defined, just not with clear roots) outlier amongst the foursome allows this question to reign as supremely important to the film, and makes the exhibition more objectively tragic.

Or, instead of a query into polarized significance, is the lack of effort put into identity a factor in the fluid elasticity of identity? If The Woman chooses to forsake a multidimensional personality in favor of her one-note existential mission, she loses a sense of self and allows projections to occur. She also gets to control her individuality in a tangible way by relinquishing control over how others define her, as well as the larger enigmatic mass of the world at large and its impenetrable meaning by honing in on the palpable target of meaning she can engage with: finding Oates' brother. She can be both the Madonna or the femme fatale. Genre ceases to matter in this desert, as does analysis or layers of purpose or psychological density. It’s all emotion and drive, buried in the elisions and thus granting infinite shades of color unpronounced, obliterating any thin readings at face value. If a character chooses to be thin, are they in a vacuum? Or are they truly craving emotional catharsis, channeling vulnerability- but does that matter, if they are closed off and unwilling to engage this way? It both does and it doesn't, and everything in between. The very notion that the characters can choose to be thin or complex, and all the unstated reasons for these reactions to context, makes the film rich.

To answer perhaps too simply everyone sans Oates views her as a Madonna which creates that sense of enigma I mentioned, but in reality she is just a person. That’s what causes this disassociation. She, like many Corman heroines, fits better with masculine archetypes even though most of the characters can’t conceive of such a woman.

It’s quite interesting to compare this to the next Hellman-Corman joint which is also about men who can’t conceive of a woman outside their male imposed definitions even when everyone can see the truth.

Just a little shout out to the film club which is talking about The Intruder right now. This post is for 1967 though and while it’s a short one it’s a hell of a trip.

Technically Corman worked as director for three films this year, but the first (a western called A Time For Killing which was finished by Phil Karlson) doesn’t have any notable footage from Corman. Instead it’s notable as Corman’s biggest failure forcing him to deal with the ceiling that he had built for himself and arguably the motivation for ending his directing career. Ideally this should have been his big breakthrough. It was a good script funded by a major studio and staring Glenn Ford. Corman did everything he could to ensure the producers were happy.

According to Corman he was fired over air conditioning. Specifically to save money on the production he was only using one fan of the two provided. This triggered worry in the studio that Corman was going to make a cheap looking feature. To whatever degree that’s true the experience was a professional embarrassment that stunted his ambition. After this year Corman would not make another film for a major studio until the Death Race remake and his work as a director was basically finished outside of some favors and a passion project. This year did produce one other studio film though.

If A Time for Killing was Corman’s tragedy with the studios than The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre is his rousing success as he precedes to make a personal film using their means his way. It’s a pretty nasty film that must be a personal favorite of Nicholas Pileggi given how many techniques feature into his own sagas, I’d say Scorsese since this is most similar to The Irishman but Scorsese seems so apathetic to Corman I doubt he’s seen the film. The most startling thing here is the voice over which is a plainly spoken recounting of crimes people have committed and how they died. It begins to be a bit creepy when characters aren’t introduced with their murder suggesting that eventually that is what we will see.

The expansive scope adds to this nihilistic edge where the lives depicted don’t amount to much as even the biggest names like Segal are woven in and out with their character functioning to characterize the systems they are in rather than the person themselves. Actually now that I’m speaking it out perhaps more than Scorsese this film reminded me of Frederick Wiseman. In that case Robards is the outsized Marty Walsh too big a personality to be limited by one role until he becomes synonymous with the system.

I’m any case this highlights how forward looking the film in its abundance of contradictions is. Stylistically at times it’s like a through back with Corman working from ultra detailed sets, but it also seems to advanced with the camera movements and voice over especially seeming like they’re here ten years too soon.

The day itself is probably the most fatalistic element of the movie, to complete that thought. The entire film lurches toward almost perversely holding back on violence using stylized shooting to mask it when it does come up making the over the top shoot out, staring Corman’s bench of actors, an unsettling end. I remember a commentary stating that Leone was far more concerned with the lead up to violence than violence itself and this like no film other than Bonnie and Clyde holds the audience in anticipation for that final moment of death.

Corman’s final film as a director this year is one of his most famous and best although it served as another nail in his trust in other producers and money men. The Trip manages to succeed in the face of those challenges though.

Corman is never really subtle about integrating his influences into his films so I was caught off guard when this turned out to be an Alain Resnais journey into subjectivity (before it becomes a Bergman journey into subjectivity). It’s that subjective element which works best and where Corman’s qualities shine through the strongest. Fonda plays a stand in for both Corman and writer Jack Nicholson, yes that one, dealing with intense personal frustrations by going on a trip.

The film is very opening and caring about LSD arguing for its worth and having the only villain of the piece be Fonda’s difficulties with accepting the reality of the situation he intends to avoid. Everything on this level is incredibly endearing for how accepting it is. Just look at Bruce Dern’s wizened supervisor and how he interacts patiently and carefully with Fonda. This is so well done that when the script forces itself to be a movie by leaving the subjective experience or becoming about a bad trip it’s disappointing even if the individual scenes are still great.

Famously the studio recut the ending to make the film less positive about drugs as a therapeutic device leading Corman to start New World, but that doesn’t come across so powerfully nowadays with the ending retaining a sense of hope and love for the future.


This also has probably the shortest Dick Miller cameo in history.

The final film of the year has Corman sitting only in the producer’s seat giving time to highlight one of his lesser known protégés. Devil’s Angels is basically a sequel to The Wild Angels before that had been so perfected a concept. The end result is superior in every way with a clear headed script, some violent performances, and sturdy direction from Daniel Haller. If that name is new to you, don’t worry he’s probably not known to most, but he has quite literally set the table for this whole retrospective being Corman’s gopher for any and all needs. Typically he’s credited with art direction, but in practice that meant whatever needed done he would get done. Haller’s short career as a feature director, he has an extensive television cv, shows him as a sealed well who let nothing out as he imitates to the point of improvement Corman’s aesthetic.

This is the one time I’ve encountered where he also improved upon Corman the storyteller taking Griffith’s script and ensuring it integrates a well thought out set of themes to great character development. The main character and only individual for the longest time is John Cassavetes in the Fonda role. Cassavetes plays a much more self assured figure long in the tooth and with no time for musings. He seems much more suitable and believable as the leader of a group of adult delinquents as one character calls them. This opens up the film to be similarly straight in its theme which appropriately enough is straightness. Cassavetes can’t handle hypocrisy and sees society as damned by it and although his utopia of truth is violent and animalistic it at least isn’t playing a persona.

Of course the second character of the film ruins the whole concept by showing the need for order even in anarchy and the role of playing politics even with your family. Cassavetes is obliged to wrangle his massive gang. This gang is too big to get any individualization, but that seems appropriate as they are just a reflection of Cassavetes’ needs (again quoting from the film). It also allows Griffith to play up some of his politics such as a small plot about one of the women’s rationalizing of her pregnancy in the times before Roe.

The final character of note, though not the final character, is the sheriff introduced about midway through who is the older reflection of Cassavetes attempting to be moral within the broken system rather than tearing it apart. It’s a stern part which also helps build the tension as the film is clearly sympathetic towards him even as it shows him too to be mistaken in his beliefs.

Haller and his team have crafted undoubtedly the best biker film, so much so that the opening will literally be lifted wholesale for Easy Rider, I’ve seen and a truly essential work to understand the era.

I'm curious how you'd respond to my writeup on The Trip from the previous page. I felt like Corman and Nicholson weren't going for an entirely endorsing depiction of LSD, and are rather using it as a gateway to portray both ends and everything in between on the spectrum of merit in opening peripheries to all the invisible value we often neglect, and also that feeling of alienation that pervades even the most caring, 'free love' milieus. You talk of Dern's unconditional love and support as a guide, but while I wouldn't use the word "villain," it's significant how Dennis Hopper's guide immediately, if softly, turns on Fonda when there's a possibility that Dern might be dead- a rejection that destroys the utopian notion of unconditional barrier-breaking affection with the very-real and inherent drives to resort to defaulting selfish motives. I don't think Hopper is the antithesis of Dern or anything, but that's the point: He's not an outlier here, but engages in a reaction everyone is capable of. So the trip's trajectory reveals sobriety to both the power of love and support and the characteristic survivalism that promotes separation between people- reinforcing America's essential individualism against the illusory collectivist ideal.

There's also the significant detail that Hopper has definitive evidence that Dern is still alive, having just spoken to him, and yet is still susceptible to being overtaken by fear, causing him to conceal into isolation- LSD be damned. Instead of enlightening him into a space of trusting his instincts or gravitating toward faith in his fellow man, Hopper retreats with fear against all tangible information he knows to be true- second-guessing his experience with deep-rooted fatalistic emotions. It's like the 'You take yourself with you wherever you go' truth applied to a mental trip vs a physical journey. That aspect doesn't seem studio-imposed, as it's an oscillating (and accurate) part of an acid trip -and general social engagement- occurring throughout the film. Instead it fits squarely within Corman's interests to explore the complex, gray psychosocial depths between the individual and their social environment, both in promotion of these tools and skeptical of their power to alter ingrained and organic obstacles to existential ideals.

Also, I'm just really curious what you mean by "this turned out to be an Alain Resnais journey into subjectivity (before it becomes a Bergman journey into subjectivity)"- sounds like a valuable observation but one I need a bit more to go on to comprehend, if you'll indulge me there!

I think they’re trying to do two things that are a bit contradictory. The first is to give an objective look at LSD experiences which the makers had actually used prior to writing, with the exception of Bruce Dern, and became shaded with a positive bias. This is brought down some by the competing goal of easily making an exciting film. Where the contradiction comes in to me is that they, understandably, view a bad trip as more exciting than a good trip.

That said, while I find it less engaging, the bad trip finale does offer a lot of interest for me such as with your point about Hopper’s bad guru defining the casual antiutopia of the era. Watching all of these counterculture movies in a row makes me see something like Altamont as a known inevitability rather than the awakening that most people have treated it as. I think the film’s conclusion is one that is positive about the drug, but not about people. The original ending supposedly made it more clear that the experience even with the bad trip was one which helped Fonda.

As for the Resnais and Bergman comparisons, the film’s early points reminded me of Resnais quite a bit especially Muriel and Je t’aime as it used a fractured approach to memory in order to indirectly develop its characters and expose the film’s themes. This eventually gets ceded to a Bergman type of surrealism for those same purposes turning the film more explicit then the elliptical first act. It becomes very reminiscent of the Poe films in that regard. This I think even connects well to your first comments as I see the first act as doing well by the abstraction you mention and the later concrete hallucinations seemingly resulting from Fonda’s inability to deal rather than the drug. It’s a bit like we start in the real world, go to the Resnais world of LSD, and finish in the Bergman world of Fonda’s own psyche.

I definitely agree with you that the film is amazing for its ability to situate a person in their social context and isolation. Though that’s a major theme that runs throughout Corman’s directorial work. Fonda’s character has a lot in common with the Price ones for example.

Hope this clarifies some of what I said.

It does, thanks. The only thing I'm not so sure I agree about is the dichotomy of a good vs bad trip, and the contradiction you've gleaned from this reading. Now, the filmmakers certainly pigeonhole Fonda's experience into that dichotomy for the bulk of the film out of necessity, but the final act's kaleidoscopic montages during the on-off "bad" portion of the trip are elating and not only in a way that's more exciting to the audience. I recall Fonda indulging in these moments with a similarly-inspired awe when we part from the collage of imagery and back onto his subject, and for me that smashes the established dichotomy of the film's structure, of Fonda's pre-acid-breaking-social-barriers schematic interpretation of life's structure, and by proxy, our own rigid ideas of black-and-white/good-and-bad polarized qualifiers (including 'exciting vs. unexciting' and a perceptive contradiction therein) all at once. Such destruction breeds a creation (this is often discussed as a core process of hallucinogens' effects) of a new, less dichotomous experience, and schema of experience defined.

So the final act works for me in part because of the implications regarding the drug's (and cinema's) limitations to transform fear-based alienation into serene collective harmony with permanence, but also because, conversely, Corman and Nicholson are refurbishing our worldviews within the constraints their tools can provide, which is a tremendous gift. I love the oscillation between Fonda's euphoria and pain in that final part of the trip, and everything in between. The collages- the most exciting moment in the film, in my opinion -show Fonda's disposition taking in this stimuli with, not a neutrality, but a mixed and complex emotional state, responding to multiple signifiers, while still in awe of the sublime. If that's the optimal goal that cinema, drugs, et al. can offer- a compromised but ultimately boundary-pushing charge to liberate ourselves from complacent assumptions and definitions via perceptive growth, then it's a bonafide success- even with the reminder in the denouement of the failure of sensory-altering modes (art, drugs, etc.) to sustain this release. If anything, the film ends even more strongly by acknowledging that it's about to end and that our trip away from reality is over, but that's not necessarily depressing either- as we can pivot towards engaging with life on life's terms with a less dichotomous outlook if we so choose (and, with a little help from spiritual aids, whatever they may be).

This is a total cop out, but I think I just personally responded more strongly to everything before the escape and I don’t take that as qualitative outside my own experience.

I do heartily endorse your statements on the end which I was trying to convey in my own fashion. Despite the interference I think it comes through that the experience has been a good one for Fonda and that its end isn’t his end.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Soderbergh and believe he makes for a good comparison to Corman in some respects. They have a surprisingly amount of thematic overlap and their concerns about the medium as artistic and commercial is almost identical. If that’s the case then this close out to the swingin’ ‘60s is his post Underneath period of just being lost and awaiting some personal satisfaction. That said, Corman still managed to come out with some of the greatest films of his career during his wilderness period.

Corman had some involvement with Jack Hill’s long delayed Pit Stop and something called Naked Angels, but I’m not sure the exact involvement he had with them so I’ll be sticking to a pair of features he actually produced starting with one of the best debuts of all time with Bogdanovich’s Targets. I’m almost humbled by it to the point of not being able to say much. It’s an amazing film that only seems more and more relevant in its concerns with aging, the distinctions between real life and the movies, and the mere presence of a mass shooter. It’s so different and yet so closely tied to Bogdanovich’s later career while also being a massive inflection point for Corman who like Karloff here must abandon he camp he is known for and find new pastures.

Far less known to me making for a truly exciting discovery is Haller’s The Wild Racers. This is the second time in a row that Haller has made a Corman sequel that best the original this time taking the themes and story of The Young Racers and developing a story where the medium is the force of narrative propulsion. I need to double check, but I think the editing here is one of the first, and best, times an American tried the extremities of the New Wave for a mainstream feature. Headlined by Verna Fields the editing team really makes the whole movie. Short of Violence at Noon I can’t think of a single other sound film so totally reliant on montage to communicate plot. The rapid fire not only conveys the tension of the race, but gives an amazing clarity of the violence, attraction, and shock the lead has to him. It’s not a great performance, but the editing makes him a great screen character.

Editing isn’t all the film has going for it though. True to its New Wave style both Cinematographers are graduates from of the wave with lesser known Daniel Lacambre having shot Suzanne’s Career and Santa Clause Has Blue Eyes before becoming one of Corman’s most reliable DPs and Nestor Almendros needing no introduction. They use their own tricks from gels, odd lighting, and a ton of subtle things bring a reality to this otherwise high octane story. Their grounded design is a nice contrast to the editing and allows the film to be emotionally effective as well as intellectually.

All the credit for orchestrating this goes to Haller who I might now consider a more significant and just plain old fashioned good artist then I initially pegged him as. Supposedly Corman was originally going to direct this, but got bored after some second unit work and threw it to Haller who thought he was going to be shooting second unit in exchange for producing a passion project of his which now I really want to see. He really took this rough bone and managed to weave with ease and simplicity a very effecting and stimulating look at the dangers of masculinity. The film ends with perhaps its only shot lasting more than a second and it manages to place a weight on the whole enterprise. Simply put this is a must see.

In this period Corman himself did direct one feature, but it really only serves to highlight how after fifteen years he was no longer as passionate for that position. A few passion projects aside he’s running only because he forgot how to stop.

Target: Harry is a favor for brother Gene who was getting into television and had a great idea for a series starring Vic Morrow. It’s supposed to be a Bond knock off, but instead the script is a Maltese Falcon knockoff which Victor Buono underlines with a blatant Sydney Greenstreet imitation. This is a total job for hire with the only things suggesting Corman wasn’t completely on autopilot being the more than usual T&A and Monte Hellman as editor. Technically the film is quite good and just barely struts past its movie of the week origins, but in the late ‘60s an exception TV movie was still a TV movie.

So ends another decade and with our new decade next we’ll see a whole new world.

knives wrote: Fri Jun 03, 2022 2:53 am Corman had some involvement with Jack Hill’s long delayed Pit Stop and something called Naked Angels, but I’m not sure the exact involvement he had with them

I'm not sure about Pit Stop, but, as far as I can tell, Corman merely financed Naked Angels and had little to no involvement with the film itself.

On an interesting note, the score to Naked Angels was done by Jeff Simmons, who would shortly thereafter go on to be a member of the Mothers of Invention (Zappa's label even released Naked Angels' soundtrack). Here's links to both the opening and end title tracks (err with caution; the cover art is somewhat NSWF!)

Thanks for that. I had assumed it was the case, but didn’t want to make a determination. Naked Angels is a very Corman of the era title though and thanks for that music trivia.

The ‘70s open in a weird fashion for Corman who’s not making the best films of his career, but is definitely making some of the most interesting. To start things off his new production and distribution company released two pretty terrible and terribly important films.

We’ve all got to start somewhere and New World started at the very bottom. After trying a few times to start an independent production company based in quality I suppose it makes sense that this time Corman decided to go with making a buck and in the long term that strategy did pay off, but it also means that many of the the early films are indistinguishable and terrible.

As legend would have it Corman took a poll of college campuses and found that students would watch anything set in a woman’s prison, starring nurses, or with bikers. Plus nudity was favored over gore though that sounds more like a Corman preference than something based in reality. The prison projects, lead by Corman in the Philippines, were intended to be something like the A product with the other two genres, nurses lead by the future Mrs. Corman Julie Halloran and Bikers by no one in particular, somehow being left to fare worse. Corman’s ongoing relationship with AIP as well made a further split with artistically viable films going to them and only the least expensive ideas going to New World.

It was an extremely conservative approach that paid off in big ways quickly, but not with Angels Die Hard, which also serves as the first film made by New World. This is a copy and paste job of the other two biker flicks sans the criticism, charismatic lead, and basic filmmaking skills. If it wasn’t for the score this would be a totally worthless movie.

And yet I kind of liked it. The bikers here are teddy bears just wanting to bury some guy they found and being hounded by the man for no reason. It’s almost an aimless mumblecore Smokey and the Bandit treated with the utmost sincerity. Plus it has Tom Baker from the Andy Warhol gang in the lead. Still, I can’t wait for New World to make a good film.

Faring far better for being deeply interesting as well as mediocre is The Student Nurses. A helpful reminder that important doesn’t equate to good as this is a bit of a dog, albeit one I was entertained by to a degree across its short runtime. I can sympathize with the desire to reclaim this as a great feminist film. It was masterminded by women, has interesting and shockingly radical left wing politics, and the women are portrayed as in charge and never beaten down (although this sets a standard for these nurse for to not let the Hispanic nurse have a sex life and is just a tool for political agitprop).

The script doesn’t gather these elements in a successful way though being overly histrionic to the point where even if they could afford actresses who could act it would be difficult to carry this to feeling organic or compelling. Roth an also doesn’t seem to have the creativity to use the budget well shooting this like a soap opera. There’s competence, but just so. Even the LSD trip hits a few basic points so we get it, but never becomes experiential. That in a phrase is the whole film’s problems it never becomes an experience, but remains merely an essay to examine.

As if to illustrate my point about AIP being the A films Daniel Haller continues to impress even with The Dunwich Horror being his weakest film yet. For the third film in a row Haller is giving his spin on an established Corman concept. This time it’s the whole Poe cycle updated to the new age (though the story is Lovecraft). It’s also Haller’s weakest feature with a far less interesting set of themes compared to his previous films and the original Poe features. A young Curtis Hanson co-wrote this in a way that delineates the experimental too far from the narrative leaving it less surprising than Griffith’s or Matheson’s scripts.

That said the acting and direction keep this afloat as a interesting mixture of the gothic and youth culture.

To end things Corman directed two films this year. Both are good and show his increasing political obsession and pessimism. They’re not his best films, but emblematic ones to leave two of his favorites genres, the mob film and sci-fi, behind as a director. I was already familiar with Bloody Mama, but here’s a basic rundown. Corman’s at the fed up extremes of his career. This collection of New Hollywood actors behaving for Shelley Winters is kind of a smoke the whole pack film as the criminals, law, and nearly everyone in between due abhorrent things with Corman at his most didactic since The Intruder indicts America as a troubled enterprise. Boxcar Bertha would be a more coherent attempt at this thing, but the depths Corman goes to show a society successfully torn down is admirable and engaging.

Finally is the Dr. Strangelove inspired satire Gas which plays like a brightly lit smash up of Antonioni and Jim McBride. The film opens with this strange animated bit of satire where the world ends and continues along from there to expose the raging psyche of youth that doesn’t need the pentagon papers and Watergate to say we’re all screwed. A person’s ability to grove along to the film probably depends on how much ‘70s farce played by a bunch of very young people.

I really wanted to like Gas-s-s-s more, and the film manages to come alive in its final brief act with some creative ideas on how this group of naive youths might approach a makeshift society in its rebirth, but it's unfortunately too little too late. I'd love to see a sequel explore this path more intricately- there's a lot to mine there