Cult, horror, and schlock freaks will always think of Roger
Corman primarily as the producer of some of their favorite cheap-o’s, whether
they be Little Shop of Horrors, Attack of the Crab Monsters, or Grand Theft Auto. Serious cinephiles
feel no guilt in praising the artistry of the best Poe pictures he directed,
particularly House of Usher and The Masque of the Red Death, or his even
less celebrated venture into message films, the remarkable anti-segregation The Intruder. They also appreciate how
he distributed works by European artists such as Federico Fellini, Akira
Kurosawa, and Ingmar Bergman (who loved the dubbed version of Cries and Whispers Corman put in
drive-ins!) in the U.S. Many of our most respected filmmakers—Scorsese,
Coppola, Bogdanovich, Demme, Nicholson— revere Corman as the guy who gave them
their real starts in Hollywood. Feminists who know more about him than his
insistence on stuffing gratuitous nudity into his movies appreciate the
opportunities he afforded women directors, producers, writers, and crew people
in an industry infamous for its sexism. Indie filmmakers of every stripe should
bow down to Roger Corman for his pioneering the frugal business practices that
made thousands of low-budget pictures possible.
With such a multifaceted career, it is appropriate that
Roger Corman receives a tribute as multifaceted as Crab Monsters, Teenage Cavemen, and Candy Stripe Nurses—Roger Corman:
King of the B Movie. Chris Nashawaty’s tome is part oral history, part
collection of film essays, part sumptuous coffee table picture book, and all
fabulous. It is also appropriate that a book with such a schlock-o-la title
contains so much insight, history, and humor, since many of Corman’s
on-the-surface ridiculous films contained a surprisingly amount of political
astuteness and smart self-awareness.
As you may have already sussed, this is not just a story for
fans of cleavers and cleavage. This is a tale of a guy who infiltrated the
Hollywood monster and rearranged its face according to his own rules. It is
telling that pretty much everyone Nashawaty interviewed acknowledges that
Corman ripped them off but not one of them seems to resent him because they
appreciate the tremendous jump-start he gave their careers. Deborah Brock—the
writer, director, and producer of Slumber
Party Massacre II, who’d go on to
co-produce the acclaimed indie Buffalo
’66—explains that when she interviewed for a job with Corman, the first
words she heard were, “I want to tell you about a job you probably don’t want.”
You can’t say the guy wasn’t honest.
Brock is just one of a gaggle of interviewees who shared
their stories with Nashawaty. Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Jack
Nicholson, Peter Bogdanovich (who tells the insane story of how he got the job
directing Targets), Penelope
Spheeris, Robert DeNiro, Dennis Hopper, Pam Grier, Jonathan Demme, Joe Dante,
John Landis (who also wrote the foreword), Bruce Dern, Diane, Ladd, William
Shatner, John Sayles, and Marky Ramone are just a taste of those who chipped
in, and they all give the man his due. Corman is one of those voices too, but
Nashawaty smartly doesn’t allow his main subject to dominate the story, lest it
appear slanted. And though this is a celebration, the interviewees don’t pull
any punches when talking about what a mess The
Terror is or the hardships of filming in Corman’s lumber yard “back lot” or
watching him towel-whip silverfish in a shower to clear it for his directors to
bathe at the end of the day or how they never got paid for their work. Peter
Fonda sums up working for Corman when he asks the boss where his dressing room
is, and Corman replies, “You see that tree over there?”
Such tales make Crab
Monsters consistently entertaining reading. The way Corman was almost
always able to turn his movies into money will be inspirational to all budding
filmmakers, even if his specific practices may no longer work in the current
market. In that way, Crab Monsters,
Teenage Cavemen, and Candy Stripe Nurses may also be an elegy to a
Hollywood that no longer exists. But don’t let that get you down, because there
are plenty of huge, full-color images of lurid horror, sci-fi, exploitation,
sexploitation, and crabsploitation movie posters to keep you tickled.
