Outlaw Immortal: The world of Roger Corman

“You’ll never be a star now, you little cunt.” So snarls the ferocious beauty in the poetic finale to Hollywood Boulevard, a Corman produced flick from the 70s. Fully strapped with boobs and bullets, she is crushed beneath the falling Y from Hollywood’s iconic signage. And so Corman himself, king of the B movies, was eclipsed by the advent of this same industry's mainstream blockbusters, his drive-in creature features suddenly obsolete. A sad story it seems, but let’s postpone this tale of woe for now because there is reason for celebration. Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel, the new documentary from Alex Stapleton, is released this week on DVD and Blu-ray. Director Stapleton stitches together a collage of outrageous, piquant imagery from Corman's career, guiding us through 1957’s Attack of the Crab Monsters up to his recent Dinoshark.

A veteran of countless films as both producer and director, Corman would sniff out trends like a dinoshark looking for blood in the water, grabbing the zeitgeist by its collar. This included tapping into 1960s rebellion for the newly discovered teen market and sampling LSD to lend authenticity to The Trip.

A godfather of the exploitation age, he embraced the genres of sexploitation, blaxploitation and women in prison, but his affinity with it went some way beyond what was on the reel, and it’s not only the audience who are manipulated, their dark feeding frenzy sated by bloody spaghetti bowls of gore, sprinkled with tits and ass. His performers and directors often suffered a certain level of misuse. Peter Bogdanovich was beaten by bikers as an extra in Wild Angels while Pam Grier endured mud, blood and fire in the steamy Philippine jungles, a Mecca for 1970s exploitation filmmakers. Yet they earned their spurs and their breaks, and a talented batch, including Joe Dante, Ron Howard and Jonathan Demme, worked for his New World Pictures and became the Corman alumni. While mastering their trade these green shoots blossomed into a crimson flower of carnage upon the drive-in and grindhouse screens of the 70s. Corman’s World shows his influence on a young Allan Arkush who tells us that “exploitation films don’t need a plot; they need sensational things...like girls shooting Filipinos out of trees.”

But it wasn’t always a cultural car crash. Corman uses the documentary to explain his use of text and subtext. He could secretly score moral and political points while ensuring that the audience still got what they paid their money to see. Was The Woman Hunt an intelligent dissection of sexism in the modern age, or simply an excuse for misogynistic nudity and bloodshed? ‘Set your sights on the tastiest game’, the strapline suggested. The effectiveness of any added depth rested upon the often dubious intentions of the filmmakers alongside the questionable comprehension of the audience. The duality of the situation was laid bare in the 2010 documentary Machete Maidens Unleashed, where a former actress gushes, "Taking off our tops was kind of a powerful thing to do." And an incredulous John Landis retorts, "What the fuck are they talking about?"

But then the blockbuster barged Corman off the track. He was swallowed whole by Spielberg’s rubber shark. Still he chose to remain in Hollywood’s penumbra, often citing modern day mainstream budgets as obscene. "Don’t get into the movies if you want to make money", he said, yet he made a profit on almost every feature. A rare commercial failure is The Intruder, a brave and intelligent attack on racial segregation, which remains his creative pinnacle. Its box office failure was affecting and cemented his return to the exploitation formula. The true testament to the man and his work is the list of luminaries who tell his tale with genuine affection in Corman’s World. Scorsese, De Niro and Tarantino sit among the others featured in this article. Jack Nicholson steals the show and in a jaw-dropping scene the colossus crumbles – he openly weeps. And just as we lament the passing of Corman’s age, Stapleton cuts to his wife fixing his bow tie before leading him to a lifetime achievement Oscar ceremony. This was rare reward for a man criminally underestimated by the film establishment as a simple schlockmeister.

1930s and 40s Hollywood may be viewed as the golden age but Corman’s glory days typify a treasured bygone era for American film; one which for right or wrong has done more than any other to mould our modern landscape of on-screen entertainment. Big studio dream factories melt in the white heat of his Technicolor nightmares. The brat generation of film school directors became the first circle of Corman beneficiaries when they went on to become Hollywood’s beating heart. Yet we the audience remain the everlasting victors: the spoils of Corman’s world are ours to cherish.

Suggested viewing from the vault of Corman classics: 

Masque of the Red Death
One of a rich seam of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations and Vincent Price collaborations.

Death Race 2000
A pastiche of modern societies taste for violence, which ironically satisfies our taste for violence

Boxcar Bertha
Scorsese cutting his teeth as director (before Corman suggested Mean Streets be made as Blaxploitation).

Any of Dinoshark, Piranhaconda, Sharktopus or Dinocroc vs. Supergator
Purely for the titles