So bad they're great: 5 surprisingly solid Roger Corman films
"You will die in agony! Die!"
Detail from poster for "The Wild Angels"
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To the lay filmgoer, the name Roger Corman tends to conjure up images of a schlock merchant known for producing campy grindhouse fare like Death Race 2000 and its handful of equally preposterous spin-offs like Deathsport, which features David Carradine as a barbarian on a motorbike. It's not necessarily the stuff of the respected auteur, but in terms of direction, Corman's films are some of the most visually rich and sustainably clever genre films ever made. In time for the Anthology Film Archives' 14-film retrospective starting today, here are five Corman-directed films that transcend his kitschy reputation. (Click through the titles for showtimes.)
1. The Pit And The Pendulum (1961)
Adapted from a screenplay by American horror maestro Richard Matheson, this Poe adaptation is one of Corman’s most lush directorial efforts. Featuring gothic set pieces that would set the standard for the horror genre, the film is a beautifully lurid example of Corman’s staunch dedication to macabre detail. The dungeon in the film, especially the part that houses the titular pit, is an unworldly creation of lurid bursts of color and ominous medieval torture devices. And Vincent Price delivers an iconic performance as a former member of the Spanish Inquisition whose wife dies under mysterious circumstances. A formative film in Corman’s filmography and assuredly one of the most accomplished of its kind.
Line of dialogue that says it all: “You will die in agony. Die!”
2. The Intruder(1962)
Based on Charles Beaumont’s novel by the same name, The Intruder is probably Corman’s most plaintive film. It plays out like a blunt Twilight Zone-ish parable about the permissive mob mentality that spurs on racism in a small Southern town where integration is now being enforced. William Shatner gives a surprisingly grounded performance as eponymous stranger who rouses the local bigots to action. Corman handles Beaumont’s loaded material with a surprisingly light touch, filming the town’s throngs of angry protesters with effectively menacing, mostly silent tracking shots. Only a craftsman like Corman could make such a heartfelt, albeit simplistic, moral tale out of such heavy-handed material.
Line of dialogue that says it all: "What you don't know is that this so-called [National Association For The] Advancement Of Colored People is now, and always has been, nothing but a Communist front led by a Jew that hates America and doesn't make any bones about it either!"
3. Masque Of The Red Death (1962)
Masque of the Red Death is Corman’s most ambitious Poe adaptation, a film he wanted to make instead of The Pit And The Pendulum but sat on for a couple of years for fear that it was too similar to Ingmar Bergman’s mortality play The Seventh Seal. Not a strict adaptation by any stretch of the imagination, Corman’s Masque features allusions to Shakespeare’s The Tempest and an inescapable air of atheistic pessimism. Vincent Price plays a megalomaniacal feudal lord who, in the absence of God, worships Satan and takes great delight in making life-or-death decisions in his castle while the peasants die slowly of the plague-like Red Death. Thanks to the rich costumes and sets, the film has a dream-like quality that makes it one of Corman’s more idiosyncratic films.
Line of dialogue that says it all: “If a God of love and life ever did exist, He’s long since dead! Someone, something, rules in His place.”
4. The Wild Angels (1966)
Filmed three years before Dennis Hopper’s watershed counter-culture classic Easy Rider, Corman’s The Wild Angels features Peter Fonda as a tough-as-nails, Swastika-wearing Hell’s Angel. Rather than strictly condemning Fonda and his biker gang for having no greater ambition than to party, piss off “The Man” and party some more, Corman warily sympathizes with their need to take to the open road (see the excellent final scene where Fonda buries his friend alone, exclaiming “There’s nowhere to go” to no one in particular). The film’s initial long take of the gang thundering down an open stretch of highway and the subsequent fatal chase scene with the Fuzz is not to be missed.
Line of dialogue that says it all: “We wanna be free to ride our machines without being hassled by The Man! And we wanna get loaded!”
5. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967)
A dramatization of the infamous 1929 mob slaying, The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre is Corman’s most ambitious, accomplished film. Through a comic-book-like voice-over narration, the film introduces us to a cabal of mobsters at various points only to abruptly drop each of their plotlines and pick them up again with acrobatic skill. Armed with a sizeable budget thanks to the film’s studio-based producers, Corman’s infectiously daft film tightens its grip on the viewer with each new volley of stray bullets and Italian curses Jason Robards unleashes as Al Capone.
Line of dialogue that says it all: Any of the incomprehensisble outbursts of mumbled Italian epithets Jason Robards spits out venomously in the film. He could be saying something about “the sons of the sons” but the rest is inspired, foaming-at-the-mouth gibberish.
