#roger corman

On  April 5, 1926, the incomparable Roger Corman was born! Without even a kernel of doubt, we proclaim that Corman is one of the most important figures in film history. The great man pioneered indie filmmaking, brought the works of several venerated foreign masters to the States, launched the careers of EVERYONE (Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson, James Cameron, and Francis Ford Coppola are just a few of the graduates from the Corman Film School), and has produced/directed some of the most eXXXquisite genre movies that cinema has to offer. His Poe films are among the best Gothic thrillers in eXXXistence, skillfully marrying shock-show tactics with arthouse techniques. Corman’s best is divine, and his worst is just fine! The man is an absolute giant, and he will always be a true icon of the moving picture. Long live King Corman!

Ho-wdy, Ho-rror Ho-mies!

The Price is F-right with this week’s groovy movie! Ever had your palm RED? Then let Vincent Price read your future in this sickly scream-story! It’s pure POE-try as Prince Vince tries to corrupt a young woman in a plague-ridden kingdom. Prepare for the scarlet scares of… “The Masque of the Red Death!”

Check it out, Ho-rror Ho-mies!

Forever and always, Edgar Allan Poe remains ho-rror’s greatest author. With all due respect to cosmic Howard Phillips and kingly Stephen, Poe’s lugubrious literature is unmatched in both influence and fear. He is the Shakespeare of scare; the Tolstoy of terror. Besides maybe Dracula, no other name conjures the demonic and devilish quite like Edgar Allan Poe. To goths, ghouls, and those who find comfort in the creepy, Master Poe is a kindred spirit. Lugosi avenged him in 1935, Jeffrey Combs played him on stage, and the Munsters owned a pet raven in his ho-nor. Even Homer Simpson quoted the Tomahawk Man in his inaugural Halloween special. Poe is the patron saint of the macabre, and we salute him now with a truly sensational film based on his work, 1961’s “The Pit and the Pendulum.”

We could go on and on about this particular film. Does it star a deliciously hammy Vincent Price? Indeed. Is the stainless Barbara Steele simply unforgettable in a part we won’t dare spoil? You better believe it. The visuals? Spectacular. The script? Brilliant. We will certainly discuss all of that in the future, but since Poe’s birthday was this month, we want to focus on the Poe-tic aspects. And if you ask us, this is the best cinema has to offer when it comes to Poe.

Roger Corman’s Poe films adapted the gloomy writer’s work with varying degrees of accuracy. Some were fairly close to the original stories (“The Masque of the Red Death”), others used the source material as a jumping-off point (“The Raven”), and one was actually a Lovecraft tale with a Poe tit-le (“The Haunted Palace”). Is “Pit…” on the faithful end? Well… sorta. If we are talking purely on terms of plot, Corman’s “Pit…” only resembles Poe’s in the sense that it includes a pit and a pendulum. However, Poe’s yarn was vague and short: there is simply no feasible way to eXXXpand it into a full-length feature. Screenwriter Richard Matheson ingeniously adapted not just the eponymous tale but the pervading themes of Poe’s entire bibliography.

Corman’s “The Pit and the Pendulum” may not adhere to that particular piece, but to say it ignores Poe is downright false. It’s undeniably pastiche more than adaptation, yet it captures the essence of Poe better than many slavish retellings. Love is lost, madness grows, and even a potentially mundane sequence is tinged with a certain graveyard poetry. There are those who may find the film’s brand of ho-rror a bit melodramatic, but who was more melodramatic than Poe? In the telltale storyteller’s tradition, the Gothic here is as grand as it is melancholic.

You will likely encounter movies that follow Poe’s words to a greater eXXXtent, but I doubt there is one that feels more like Poe than this ‘60s chiller-diller. As one of those weird Wednesday Addams kids who grew up on Poe’s work, I can tell you that this film evoked the same sense of wonderful dread I felt reading those tales of mystery and imagination. Through Corman’s filmic fright, Poe lives!

Here it is, creeps:

Ho-wdy, ho-rror ho-mies!

This week, terror is in full BLOOM! The flower is power in this botanical beast known as… “The Little Shop of Horrors!” You won’t be singing after this 1960 BUD chiller, in which a misfit discovers a most unusual fertilizer for his hungry little plant. Featuring a young Jack Nicholson, this Corman corker can’t be missed! 

Check it out, Ho-rror Ho-mies:

movieposters1:

Hollywood Boulevard | 1976

Hollywood Boulevard | 1976

Hollywood Boulevard | 1976

Allison Hayes in The Undead dir. Roger Corman (1957)

The Fall of the House of Usher (1960)

Director - Roger Corman, Cinematography - Floyd Crosby

“One candle left to burn now, before the darkness comes.”