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Posted: |
May 23, 2024 - 9:08 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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In GUNSLINGER, after her husband is gunned down, “Rose Hood” (Beverly Garland) takes his place temporarily as marshal of a small Western town. Screenwriter Charles B. Griffith had written two westerns for Roger Corman that had not been made. Griffith said: "He took me out to see THREE HOURS TO KILL with Dana Andrews and said to me, 'I want you to do the same picture but with a woman as the sheriff'."
Corman later said, "I'm weary of prepackaged formulas, and when you try out a new idea, you necessarily think about shooting a hackneyed scene in a funny way without resorting to parody. This wasn't a parody; it was 'Good God, how can I find a different sort of gunslinger?' Right away, I thought of a woman gunslinger, and the idea for the script came to me all of a sudden. It was the sheriff's wife. He's killed, and she takes over for her husband. It was logical when it wasn't, but that was enough for a six-or seven-day western."
The shoot ran a day over its 6-day schedule due to rain, and several actors were hurt during the production. Corman described the production of GUNSLINGER as "one of the worst experiences of my life," but Garland considered Rose Hood among her favorite roles, noting: “I think I was the first woman to play a marshal in a movie western. Roger would often cast against type in those days. I could never resist a plum role like a lady marshal in a genre that would never have considered such a gender reversal like that before. However, working with Roger was always an adventure and this film was no exception.”
Corman later said: “My Texas distributor arrived in the city where I was filming and asked me how it was going. I told him that I thought that it was good but that there was too much violence and passion, and he answered, ‘Roger, I’ve been in this business for forty years, and you’ve been in it for just two. Let me tell you that no one has ever made a film with too much passion and violence.’ So, I pressed on. Everyone was dying. At the end of the film half of the city was dead.”
GUNSLINGER was the first film produced under the Roger Corman Productions company name. Ronald Stein's score was released by Percepto in 2007 as part of their 5-CD box set “Mad, Mod & Macabre - The Ronald Stein Collection.”
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Posted: |
May 28, 2024 - 10:47 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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In the 1956 western THE OKLAHOMA WOMAN, Mike Connors plays gunman "Tom Blake," who works for "Marie 'Oklahoma' Saunders" (Peggie Castle), who has opened a saloon in Silver Hill, and is currently backing the incumbent, corrupt senator, "Jimmy Marsh" (Thomas Dillon), for re-election. Marie’s old boyfriend, “Steve Ward” (Richard Denning) has just returned after a 6-year stint in prison.
The movie was made for $60,000 in SuperScope. Corman said he "tried to create a bigger look than the budget might indicate and save time and money in the process." He experimented shooting consecutively the components of multiple scenes that faced in one direction, then reversing the angle and shooting them all in the opposite direction. He said this made it easier for him to match backgrounds and wardrobe, "but it was too difficult for the actors, and since then I've tended to shoot more in sequence."
Ronald Stein's score for this film, one of the few Corman films unavailable on video, has not been released.
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Posted: |
May 29, 2024 - 10:03 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Well-meaning scientist “Dr. Tom Anderson” (Lee Van Cleef) guided an alien monster to Earth from Venus, so that he can rid mankind of feelings and emotions. But only death and sorrow resulted, so his colleague “Dr. Paul Nelson” (Peter Graves) acted to stop the creature before IT CONQUERED THE WORLD.
The film featured one of the more memorable creature designs in a Corman film. Paul Blaisdell, who made the creature, researched Venus and "came to the conclusion that if it would have any life — it would be vegetable. In trying to make it look as far removed from anything resembling animal-like, I whipped up a nightmarish creation resembling a pear-shaped, cucumber- like creature, with two mobile, branch- like arms." He created the monster with rubber skin over a wooden frame, latex antenna, and carved pine teeth. Flashlights were used to make the eyes glow. Originally the claws worked, but they were damaged on the first day of shooting. When Blaisdell unveiled the costume to the film's executive producer James Nicholson, Nicholson happily exclaimed, "Paul, you've done it again!"
The film was one of the better-reviewed Corman films of the period. It also performed very well at the box office, grossing $1.7 million. Ronald Stein’s score was released by Percepto in 2001.
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Posted: |
May 30, 2024 - 11:52 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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In ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS, an expedition lands on a weird island with no living animals. The group includes biologists “Dale Drewer” (Richard Garland) and “Martha Hunter” (Pamela Duncan), electronics specialist “Hank Chapman” (Russell Johnson), and French botanist “Jules Deveroux” (Mel Welles). They are there to search for a previous expedition that disappeared and to continue research on the effects of radiation from the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests on the island’s plant and sea life. They learn to their horror that the earlier group of scientists have been eaten by mutated giant crabs that have gained intelligence by absorbing the minds of their victims.
The script was written by Charles B. Griffith, who had worked with Roger Corman several times before. Griffith later described the scripting process: "Roger came to me and said, 'I want to make a picture called Attack of the Giant Crabs, and I asked, 'Does it have to be atomic radiation?' He responded, 'Yes.' He said it was an experiment. 'I want suspense or action in every scene. No kind of scene without suspense or action.' His trick was saying it was an experiment, which it wasn't. He just didn't want to bother cutting out the other scenes, which he would do.”
The 1957 film cost an estimated $70,000 to $85,000 and grossed between $800,000 and $1 million. (It played on a double bill with NOT OF THIS EARTH). Corman talked of the film’s success: “This was the most successful of all the early low budget horror movies. I think its success had something to do with the wildness of the title which, even I admit, is pretty off-the-wall. However, I do think a lot of its popularity had to do with the construction of the plotline. I've always believed that, in horror and science fiction films, too much time is usually spent explaining the characters in depth and developing various subplots. Genre audiences really come to these movies for their science fiction elements or their shock value.”
“Of course, they want to understand the characters and want to empathize with them all in order to share the emotions present. But they don't wish to do that at the expense of the other aspects of the picture. I talked to Chuck Griffith about this. Chuck and I worked out a general storyline before he went to work on the script. I told him, 'I don't want any scene in this picture that doesn't either end with a shock or the suspicion that a shocking event is about to take place.' And that's how the finished script read. You always had the feeling when watching the movie that something, anything was about to happen. I think this construction, plus the fact that the creature was big and ugly, won audiences.”
Ronald Stein's score was released by Percepto in 2007 as part of their 5-CD box set “Mad, Mod & Macabre - The Ronald Stein Collection.”
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Posted: |
May 30, 2024 - 5:07 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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In the 1957 Roger Corman science fiction film NOT OF THIS EARTH, an alien agent (Paul Birch) from the distant planet Davana is sent to Earth via a high-tech matter transporter. There, he terrorizes Southern California in an attempt to acquire blood for his dying race.
Paul Birch complained bitterly about having to wear white contact lenses for so many hours during filming. Corman wanted him ready to roll on a moment's notice, so he asked him to leave the contact lenses in his eyes all day long, which caused Birch extreme discomfort. Birch and Corman wound up getting into a shoving match on the set, and Birch walked out on the production before it was finished. Corman used a double (wearing Birch's dark glasses and slouch hat) to finish the few scenes Birch had not completed.
Ten minutes of Ronald Stein's score was released on a Varese Sarabande Stein compilation CD in 1995.
Roger Corman produced two remakes of NOT OF THIS EARTH, both with the same title. The first version, directed by Jim Wynorski, was released in 1988 and starred Arthur Roberts and Traci Lords. The second, released in 1995, was directed by Terence H. Winkless and starred Michael York and Elizabeth Barondes.
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Posted: |
May 31, 2024 - 12:07 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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In THE UNDEAD, “Quintus Ratcliff” (Val Dufour) hires prostitute “Diana Love” (Pamela Duncan) and takes her to his former professor “Olinger” (Maurice Manson) who runs the American Institute of Psychical Research. To prove a point to Olinger, Quintus places Diana under hypnosis and is able to regress her to her past life in the Middle Ages as “Helene,” an innocent woman who has been sentenced to burn for witchcraft. Speaking to her past self, Diana guides Helene to make an escape. As the witch’s sabbath nears, the real witch “Livia” (Allison Hayes), aided by Satan himself (Richard Devon), appears, trying to get the knight “Pendragon” (Richard Garland) and others to apprehend Helene.
Roger Corman produced and directed this 1957 film, the sets for which were all built inside a converted supermarket. Screenwriter Charles Griffith recalled: “Roger said to me, “Do me a Bridey Murphy picture.” (Bridey Murphy was a purported 19th-century Irishwoman whom U.S. housewife Virginia Tighe claimed to be in a past life. Her story came to light in 1956, and Paramount acquired the film rights.) “And I told him that by the time Paramount finishes theirs, ours will fail. At the time, everybody was saying that they were making a bad picture. [Roger] just said that we’d get ours done ahead of theirs and clean up. So, I did [a script called] “The Trance of Diana Love.”
“I separated all the different things with sequences with the devil, which were really elaborate, and the dialogue in the past was all in iambic pentameter. Roger got very excited by that. He handed the script around for everybody to read, but nobody understood the dialogue, so he told me to translate it into English. The script was ruined.”
Griffith said the film was "a fun picture to shoot... We filled [the supermarket] with palm trees and fog, and it was the first time Roger had used any of that stuff. He didn't like to rent anything. You could see the zipper on the witch's dress and all the gimmicks were very obvious and phony—Roger deliberately played to skid row, a degenerate audience."
Actor Mel Welles recalled "we almost died of asphyxiation from all the creosote fog that was created” in the supermarket. Richard Devon added, "They had a bee-smoker to create the dreadful-smelling fog." The movie was the first of several that Devon made with Corman. However, he did not enjoy THE UNDEAD, saying:
“(Corman)'s temper was really quite awesome. On THE UNDEAD, someone had left one of my speeches out of the script, so naturally I couldn’t learn what wasn’t there. And he was not just upset, he was maniacal. Anything that cost a penny over his minuscule budget turned him into a monster... He was just screaming his head off. Everybody was telling him that it could be rectified, and I said [calmly], ‘Roger, it’s all right, don’t worry about it. We’ll get somebody to write it out on a card or something and I’ll read it.’ So, one of the prop guys wrote it out on a little cardboard box and I read it. We did it in one take, and that was it.”
THE UNDEAD was shot in 6 to 10 days at a cost of $70-$75,000. Ronald Stein’s score has not had a release. The film was featured in Season 8, Episode 6 of Mystery Science Theater 3000, when the episode aired on the Sci-Fi network on March 8, 1997.
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Posted: |
May 31, 2024 - 11:47 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Dick Miller had his first lead role in 1957's ROCK ALL NIGHT, his eighth film for director Roger Corman. In the film, the Cloud Nine bar, a local teen hangout, has been taken over by a pair of escaped killers (Russell Johnson and Jonathan Haze), who hold the teens hostage. One of the bar's customer's (Miller) realizes it's up to him to save the kids. The film had a pop song score, with music by The Platters and other artists.
American International Pictures had signed The Platters to appear in a film and asked Roger Corman if he had anything suitable. Corman decided to use a TV script called “The Little Guy” that he had bought from Jane Wyman. Corman gave the script to Charles Griffith to expand into a feature. According to Corman, The Platters were only available for one day and that day was not on Corman's schedule. "That put quite a bit of pressure on us, considering the entire script had been written around The Platters," said Corman. "We had to re-write it again, quickly. In the final film, The Platters are only included in the first ten minutes of the plot. That might have upset a few moviegoers who walked into the theater because of the star billing the group received."
Corman said "To get the film shot within a week, I'd go all day with just the lunch break, then shoot till dinner time. Then after a bite to eat, I'd work on the next day's shots and production problems, get a few hours' sleep and begin again the next day."
The film had no original score, relying on the songs and some stock music from Ronald Stein.
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Roger Corman made another rock ‘n’ roll film with 1957’s CARNIVAL ROCK. Like his first foray into the genre, ROCK ALL NIGHT, this film was another that was based on a television script. In this case, it was "Carnival at Midnight" by Leo Lieberman, which aired on the series “Climax” on CBS, on 3 January 1957.
In the film, fifty-year-old “Christy Christakos” (David J. Stewart) operates a run-down nightclub, currently featuring rock ‘n’ roll acts, as part of his ocean pier carnival. Christy is hopelessly infatuated with the much younger “Natalie Cook” (Susan Cabot), whom he has promoted from waitress to the club’s star singer. “Ben” (Dick Miller), Christy’s assistant and friend, tries to convince him that he must pay more attention to his business because a principal creditor, “Kirsh” (Bruno Ve Sota), is demanding repayment of a loan and is threatening to attach Christy’s property.
Walter Greene provided what score was needed between the musical acts, which included The Platters and The Blockbusters, both of whom had appeared in ROCK ALL NIGHT.
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Posted: |
Jun 2, 2024 - 11:04 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Susan Cabot starred as SORORITY GIRL “Sabra Tanner,” who suffers from extreme emotional trouble inherited from her weird, snooty, rich mom (Fay Baker). So, Tanner gets back at the world by dominating her sorority sisters, especially “Ellie Marshall” (Barbara Crane) who leaks the news that “Tina” (June Kenney) is pregnant. Tanner then blackmails Tina by making her confess erroneously that “Mort” (Dick Miller) is the dad.
Roger Corman produced and directed the 1957 film, which had an unreleased score by Ronald Stein. Some exterior scenes were filmed on the University of Southern California campus in Los Angeles.
Corman said that the script was developed by AIP. He did not like it and had some of it rewritten, although not as much as he would have wished. While filming, Corman made Susan Cabot do an emotional scene in medium shot first, then when it was time to do a close up, Cabot's performance was not as strong. Corman said this prompted him to learn more about acting, so he enrolled in acting classes given by Jeff Corey, where he would meet people like Jack Nicholson and Robert Towne.
For her part, Cabot recalled that “We would have some sort of a script, but there was a lot of, ‘Who’s going to say what?’ and ‘How ’bout I do this?’ — plenty of ad-libbing and improvising. But Roger was really great in a way; he was very loose. If something didn’t work out, he changed it right away. He gave me a great amount of freedom, and also a chance to play parts that Universal would never have given me — oddball, wacko parts, like the very disturbed girl in SORORITY GIRL. I had a chance to do moments and scenes that I didn’t get before.
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In VIKING WOMEN AND THE SEA SERPENT, a tribe of Amazonian Nordic women are tired of waiting for their Viking men to come home, so they sail out to sea to search for them. Along the way, their flimsy canoe is attacked by a dinosaur-sized serpent, and they end up washed ashore on a mysterious island. There they meet the savage Grimolts, a tribe of warriors who have been holding the Viking men captive as cave slaves
Amongst the statuesque Viking women are Abby Dalton (“Desir”), June Kenney (“Asmild”), Betsy Jones-Moreland (“Thyra”), Sally Todd (“Sanda”), and Lynne Bernay (“Dagda”). The male cast includes a bleach-blond Jonathan Haze (“Ottar”), a blond-dyed Gary Conway (“Jarl”) as the hunky handsome hero type, a hammy Richard Devon (“Stark”) as the head-dressed wicked leader of the Grimolts, Jay Sayer (“Senya”) as his sissified son, and Michael Forest (“Zarko”) as a brutish lackey.
Roger Corman said he was approached to make the film by special effects experts Irving Block and Jack Rabin, who had acquired a script by Louis Goldman. Rabin and Block had done effects on ROCKETSHIP XM, KRONOS, and INVISIBLE BOY. They made a presentation about the effects, which Corman called "breathtaking…their pictures were beautiful, absolutely wonderful." Corman felt the "script was not especially great," but was persuaded to do it by Block and Rabin's promise to work for a small fee in exchange for a cut of the profits. Corman was reluctant to put his own money into the film. He went to AIP, who agreed to finance $70,000 to $80,000, although Corman said the presentation was more suited for a $2 million picture.
Corman was reportedly inspired to make the film by the production of THE VIKINGS (1958). He felt if he made the movie quickly, he could have it in cinemas before THE VIKINGS and take advantage of publicity for the bigger budgeted film.
In June 1957, Corman announced he would make the film for $300,000, triple of what he was used to. He said $50,000 of the budget would be assigned to special effects by Block and Rabin; Corman would normally spend $2,000 on effects. Another article that month said the effects would cost $210,000 and the movie would be Corman's twentieth and most expensive film to date.
On the first day of shooting, the initial leading lady (Kipp Hamilton) called in sick because she wanted more money, so Corman quickly replaced her with Abby Dalton. Similarly, June Kenney replaced Shirley Wasden when Wasden fell off a horse and was injured.
The shooting schedule was ten days, which Corman wrote in his memoirs was far too short considering the nature of the story. At Iverson's Ranch, Corman made seventy-seven setups a day, his record. "It turned into an insanely difficult shoot," he wrote.
It was the first film Michael Forest made for Corman. He met the director in an acting class and was cast. Forest said Corman "was a bit cavalier in the way he would do things and allow the actors to take the chances that they did. But I must also say this: Roger was right there. I mean, if he asked you to climb up something and you said, ‘Where do you want us to climb?’ he would climb up and show you — ‘This is what I want you to do.’ It wasn't as if he was saying, ‘Go out there and battle that tiger, I'll just stand back here and watch you do it’ — you know what I mean? He was good about that. But he didn't really protect the actors that much from getting hurt, not in the early days, anyway."
Corman said that by the time he came to shoot the effects "I realized I had been had." While he felt Block and Rabin were honest, "they had simply promised something they could not deliver. A great sales pitch had distorted my judgement and AIP’s." He said, as a result of this, he no longer accepted oral proposals from people, he insisted it be written. Corman said he learned "an important lesson from this movie: don't fall for a sophisticated sales job about elaborate special effects."
The full title of the film is “The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent.” Corman said, “We couldn't figure out a way to put the title in two or three words, so I said let's go to the other extreme and give them the longest title they've ever seen, and then use the greatest cliché in historical pictures at the time, which is to open up on an engraved leather book, a hand comes in, opens the cover of the book, and there's the title of the picture.”
Albert Glasser’s score was released by Kronos in 2020. VIKING WOMEN AND THE SEA SERPENT was showcased on “Mystery Science Theater 3000” on October 26, 1991 (Season 3, Episode 17).
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Posted: |
Jun 4, 2024 - 10:27 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Dick Miller starred as astronomer "David Boyer" in WAR OF THE SATELLITES, produced and directed by Roger Corman. In the 1958 film, an "unknown force" declares war against planet Earth when the United Nations disobeys warnings to cease and desist in its attempts at assembling the first satellite in the atmosphere.
The low-budget feature was rapidly conceived, filmed, and released to exploit the international media frenzy around the launch of the Russian Sputnik satellite, the first in space. Corman recalled his meeting with Steve Broidy of Allied Artists: "I said, 'Steve, if you can give me $80,000, I will have a picture about satellites ready to go into the theaters in 90 days.' And then he said, 'What's the story?' And I said, 'I have no idea, but I will have the picture ready.' And he said, 'Done.' And he gave me the money.” Broidy claimed in interviews that when Corman delivered the finished product on time, he “gave him $500 to throw a cast party. They're still waiting for the party..."
Walter Greene's main title music for the film was re-recorded for a Monstrous Movie Music CD in 2006.
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Posted: |
Jun 4, 2024 - 11:16 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Charles Bronson had one of his first lead roles in the 1958 gangland drama MACHINE-GUN KELLY, which chronicled the criminal activities of the real-life gangster George "Machine Gun" Kelly.
American-International Pictures owners Samuel Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson wanted to make a gangster picture after years of making sci-fi and horror films. Roger Corman said he had been attracted to Kelly's story because of how the gangster had meekly surrendered.
Corman hired Robert Wright Campbell as screenwriter and said that Campbell "wrote a very good script with strong, well-sketched characters," based a great deal on the facts. Corman had hired Campbell on the strength of his previous work, especially FIVE GUNS WEST.
Dick Miller was scheduled to play the title role, but writer Campbell kept pushing for his brother, William Campbell, to get the part and began tailoring the script to emphasize his brother's strengths. To avoid internal squabbling, Corman gave the role to Charles Bronson.
The film was shot in ten days for between $60,000 and $100,000. It was a big hit, grossing $2.6 million. Gerald Fried’s score has not had a release.
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Posted: |
Jun 5, 2024 - 11:02 AM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Within a tribe of primitive men, the “Symbol Maker” (Leslie Bradley) is having trouble with his rebellious TEENAGE CAVE MAN son and apprentice (Robert Vaughn). The impetuous lad keeps straying beyond the river, into the forbidden "land beyond" where fearsome monsters, deadly quicksand, and the "God with the Touch that Kills" are to be found. As such taboo behavior is punishable by death, a black-bearded malcontent (Frank DeKova) campaigns to make the young Symbol Apprentice pay the penalty; and he also covets the young man's “Blonde Maiden” girlfriend (Sarah Marshall, billed as Darrah Marshall). The father is wounded retrieving his apprentice, who finally encounters the living God of the legend.
Originally filmed as “Prehistoric World,” with some 8x10 publicity stills retaining this title, AIP later changed it. Years later, Corman stated in an interview, "I never directed a film called TEENAGE CAVE MAN." Still, Corman thought the film to be pretty good, but felt it could have been "genuinely good" had he had more time and more money than the $70,000 he was budgeted.
Albert Glasser’s score for the 1958 film has not had a release. TEENAGE CAVE MAN was featured on Episode 15 of Season 3 of “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” broadcast on 12 October 1991.
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