Movie review - "Dementia 13" (1963) **1/2 (rewatching)

 I wanted to see this on the big screen. Thoughts:

- wanted to like it more than I do but as a quickie it's impressive

- Luanda Anders is wonderful and the film never recovers from her death, the best bit

- Bobby Campbell a little odd, the other female lead a little erratic, Patrick Magee terrific

- needs a Vincent Price

- spooky atmosphere

- lots of chat, I got confused. 

Movie review - "Night Tide" (1961) *** (re-watching)

 Haunting mood piece which owes more than a little to Cat People but is effective. Although low budget it benefits from location work at a sea fair. Dennis Hopper is excellent as a lonely, lecherous sailor who falls for a woman who may be a serpent.

Movie review - "Dementia 13" (1962) **1/2

 Coppola's Psycho knock off has a great murder sequence with an axe to show how tremendous he is with genre. There's a memorable opening, with another guy dying, a superb Luana Anders performance. Once Anders dies half way the film never quite gets its groove back though Patrick Magee does all he can.

I got confused in the second half to be honest. Mary Mitchell is a rather bland blonde - Coppola loved his blondes. Bill Campbell is alright.

Clearly made by someone with talent. Some great moments. I do find it patchy.

Movie review - "Beast from the Haunted Cave" (1959) **1/2 (re-watching)

 The South Dakota locations give this freshness, though it must've been a tough shoot, But they're really out there in the snow. Some good acting by Frank Wolff. Michael Forrest is a dull hero but the role is dull. Chuck Griffith resuses the Key Largo plot again - Wolff's moll falls for Forrest - but it's a smart low budget script.

Could've done with more monster. The last section in the cave is fantastic with the monster in creepy caves capturing people in webs.

Movie review - "Creature from the Haunted Sea" (1961) **1/2 (re-watching)

 The last of the Corman-Griffith black comedy trilogy. It's a madcap adventure with lots of fun stuff - the irreverent nature, the fact a clean shaven Robert Towne plays a leading role, the circumstances of its inception, the comedy of the monster with ping pong ball eyes.

It's not that a good movie. It was made too fast, even for Corman - it seems rushed and it's not that well directed. Little Shop of Horrors had more heart because Jonathan Haze was motivated by love and the monster just wanted to be fed - it wasn't his fault he was hooked on blood. There was a lovely core to the film. 

This doesn't have that. Everything is a joke, and there are funny jokes, but there's no heart. Towne falls for a local girl who comes up at the end out of nowhere when it's been set up he's going to fall for Betsy Moreland, the creature is introduced far too late (this is the biggest flaw of the film), Tony Carbone is a joke gangster, ditto Betsy Moreland when some seriousness or at least genuine emotion would've helped. My attention drifted off a bit.

The best thing about it is the garnish around the side - the gags in the narration, the Beach Dickerson being allowed to impersonate animals, Dickerson impersonating animals, Moreland singing a song 'Creature from the Haunted Sea' on a boat while there's fighting (apparently this was added by Monte Hellman - I assume it's a homage to Claire Trevor in Key Largo), the gags about Towne's secret agent name. It's quotable.

Movie review - "Little Shop of Horrors" (1960) **** (re-watching)

 Look, I get it. The humour is broad, and hammy - and really, really old school Jewish. It's like vaudeville. Roger Corman's direction isn't great. He just sort of puts the camera there. But he could harness Charles Griffith who has a clever idea, wonderful structure and off the wall ideas. The basic concept of course but side gags like a cop whose kid has died, and the odd characters like Dick Miller eating flowers and Jack Nicholson loving pain.

It's rough and broad and mad but still holds up.

Movie review - "Queen of Blood" (1966) **1/2 (re-watching)

 Love the credits. The integration of Russian footage. The spookiness. Takes a while to get going - the story doesn't start til the last half hour. I have a lot of affection for this.

Movie review - "Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women" (1968) **1/2 (re watching)

 The grade is too high objectively speaking but I took into account the circumstances under which it was made: a Soviet film bought by Roger Corman to cut up without sound. Curtis Harrington had a go but this one, done by Peter Bogdanovich and Polly Platt, is better.

It's frustrating that the characters cant talk. Yes there's a Soviet section but also one on Venus with Mamie Van Doren. The sexy Venus women promise more than they deliver. They clamber through the surf in shells, trying to hang on to dignity. It is silly and fun and you can sense Bogdanovich and Platt really trying hard.

Movie review - "Beast from Haunted Cave" (1959) ** (re-watching)

Oh, frustrating. This could have been great. It's fine - but it could have been awesome.

The locations are splendid - Deadwood South Dakota. Scenes on the ski slopes. A fantastic creepy cave. In the cave people are captured and turned into cocoons like in Aliens. Everything in the cave is fun. Yes the monster is a little silly but who cares.

The film should have been about the monster. But really it's Key Largo time - with Frank Wolff, an excellent actor, looking silly in a moustache playing a gangster with a drunken moll, Sheila Noonan... who gets redemption falling for handsome ski instructor Michael Forrest.

There's far too much hanging around the ski lodge emoting. They introduce Forest's sister (who cooks for her brother all the time) but she disappears. Promising subplots like henchman Richard Sinatra going mad feel underdeveloped.

Oh I so wish they'd made this more of a monster film. The cave is great. The drama isn't so hot. Chuck Griffith wrote it, and there is some of his intelligence on display.

Movie review - "Ski Troop Attack" (1960) ** (re-watching)

This film was apparently freezing to make and it looks freezing but the location adds a lot - the action sequences are decent and it only clocks in at 60 minutes. Troops on skis has novelty and because it was a patrol film it is inherently low budget. I got confused by what was happening at times it felt as though the film lacked coverage.

I wouldn't have minded more character stuff - an interlude with a German girl only lasts a few minutes but they could've gotten more out of it. The one conflict is between the more cautious officer and the bloodthirsty sergean. They needed a third character complicating things.

It's not one of Chuck Griffith's best scripts - there's no outlandishness. It is functional. And it's fun to see Corman as a German - I swear he's at the beginning among the Americans too.

Movie review - "The Terror" (1963) **1/2 (re-watching)

Look, it's a mess. I love this, love the story behind it's making, what film fan doesn't, but it's all over the place. It varies in tone and logic.

But it's got Dan Haller sets, Sandra Knight is beautiful and evocative, the atmosphere is creepy, Jack Nicholson is in a French officer's uniform, Jonathan Haze is creepy, Dick Miller is fun as the butler, Karloff is supericonic. The flood stuff works.

A movie of its own genre.

Movie review - "The Terror" (1963) **1/2

Watched this again because Dick Miller died. There is a lot of walking around. I mean a lot. Jack Nicholson, Boris Karloff do a lot of walking. There's also padding - people talking about what's happened or what might happen.

It does have atmosphere though. It looks great. I love the waves, and the credits, and the castle. I love the homey-ness of the old lady's place.

Jack Nicholson is very miscast but he's still Jack Nicholson. Sandra Knight is perfectly ethereal. Dick Miller is absurdly miscast. Jonathan Haze is fun. Boris Karloff is perfect.

This film has a magic. It is slow and confusing.

Movie review - "Queen of Blood" (1966) ** (re-watching)

I love this poster - have fond recollections for the movie, but really it's not that good. It's cute and has some genuinely creepy moments. It takes too long for the ship to get to the planet and for the alien to go amok. The alien is creepy.

Basil Rathbone looks as though he's about to drop dead. John Saxon and Dennis Hopper are fine. Creepy open credit titles.

Movie review - "That Guy Dick Miller" (2014) ***

Just as Dick Miller is an impossible actor to dislike so too is this tribute to him - full of love and good nature. Dick Miller was a beloved character actor whose presence illuminated many classic films - The Terminator, Piranha, Gremlins. He became a good luck charm for Joe Dante in particular, appearing in most of that director's movies - also Jonathan Kaplan.

Miller got his start with Roger Corman and became a part of Corman's late 50s stock company, even getting the occasional lead as in Bucket of Blood. He kept that status in the early 60s but kind of drifted out of popularity in the late 60s... then had a comeback in the early 70s at New World Pictures as many Corman alumni liked to use him.

That's kind of it for his life story - he has brothers, a wife who was very hot back in the day and gets a lot of screen time. People like him. He's occasionally anxious. He wrote a bit (including an early draft of TNT Jackson) but gave it up.

It's not a super gripping story - I think it would be better as a 50 minute featurette. Some things feel like padding, such as talking about making Gremlins. And I get it was disappointing to be cut out of Pulp Fiction but was it really such a major tragedy? 

Still, a very sweet movie.

Top Ten Filmgroup Films

Random procrastination top ten film related post time... just listened to a podcast on The Filmgroup, a short lived production company established by Roger Corman in the late 50s to distribute some films he helped finance and occasionally directed. No blockbusters among them .- indeed, Corman thought it wasn't even worth copyrighting the films (you had to pay a fee then) - and the company wound up in the early 60s. But they included some incredible films. So, a top ten! All these films easily available on you tube etc - all of them are great examples of how to make interesting low budget films and believe should be studied accordingly...
1) The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) - directed by Corman and more importantly written by the legendary Charles Griffith, a crazy black comedy shot in two days apparently (it did take a little longer) whose structure is so sound it formed the basis for a popular musical - still holds up
2) The Intruder (1962) - remarkable look at a rabble rouser in the south well played by William Shatner - some quite shocking scenes (eg a little old southern lady casually using the "N" word) - well written by Charles Beaumont
3) The Terror (1963) - a film impossible to dislike, being a combination of having a few days of filming Boris Karloff walking around a castle, Jack Nicholson as an officer in Napoleon's army, Sandra Knight as a mysterious person, Dick Miller as Basil Exposition, additional footage being directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Monte Hellman, Jack Hill, Nicholson... actually quite creepy in spots
4) Night Tide (1961) - Curtis Harrington's first full length feature as director (I think)...an eerie, atmospheric boy and his siren story... early performance from Dennis Hopper
5) Dementia 13 (1962) Francis Ford Coppola's first full length feature as director... (he'd made some softcore movies before) an enjoyable psycho thriller written in three days and shot in about a week... atmospheric, well acted... Irish locations help
6) Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961) insane Charles Griffith themed spoof comedy with a hilariously terrible monster, way out lines, and a lead performance by Robert Towne no less!
7) Last Woman on Earth (1960) - the first feature writing credit for Robert Towne, who also appears as an actor - not quite the quality of The Last Detail but interesting
8) Queen of Blood (1966) - excellent creepy sci fi "killer alien on the loose in a space ship" movie years before Alien, from Curtis Harrington... uses footage from Soviet sci fi films which Corman got cheaply as did...
9) Battle Beyond the Sun (1963)/Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965)/Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968) - I've always thought film schools should do a compulsory excercise where students had to cobble a feature with just a few days shooting new footage and using footage from old Soviet sci fi films - that's what Corman did with these movies... they were directed respectively by Francis Ford Coppola, Curtis Harrington and Peter Bogdanovich (his first feature!!!) so obviously it's really really good training
10) The Wasp Woman (1959) - creaky film with a great concept (woman tries to reverse aging process becomes a killer wasp) and central Susan Cabot performance.
Anyone interested in making low budget sci fi/comedy/thrillers could learn a lot from any of these films.

Book review - "Roger Corman: Blood-Sucking Vampires, Flesh-Eating Cockroaches, and Driller Killers" by Beverly Gray (2013)

I've read pretty much every English language book on Roger Corman going and have enjoyed them all, but this one is easily the best. It's far and away the best researched and also the only one that takes a critical view. I love Roger Corman, Corman movies and books about both, but they all tend to tell the same stories and repeat the same myths. This one actually looks behind the myths and tries to get a better sense of the man, and as a result the most believable, complex picture of Corman is conveyed.

A lot of the myth was true of course - the drive, frugality, genuine directing talent, incredible ability to adapt and survive in a changing filmmaking environment (he continues to so do today even in the world of downloads and internet), an eye for young talent, awesome contribution to cinematic history, creation of genres, promotion of female filmmakers.

But there is other stuff here which has gotten far less publicity, although it feels true (and human, as opposed to the superman figure of the authorised books): a constant negative depiction of women in his recent movies (strippers and rape victims); Corman's health issues (back troubles and so on) and family crises (his daughters were good girls but his two sons would raise hell and wound up suing their parents to get information about the family trust); a sometimes difficult relationship with his wife; the drastic drop in quality in his cinematic output ever since the early 80s; lack of sense of humour (the greatness of his early comedies all came from Charles Griffith, with whom he had a major falling out); a sense of cheapness so ingrained it seems pathological, the manipulation of underlings, poor treatment of employees (firing them before the holidays so they don't get holiday pay), temper tantrums, homophobia.

Gray does have affection and admiration for Corman, often talks about his good points, and has spoken to lots of people about him, but there were times I thought she was a little unfair. For instance, can you really blame Corman for being stingy when so many people he'd done business with/competed with over the years have gone bust (eg AIP, Dimension, the people who bought New World off him). He really is last man standing from that era. Also some of the incidents that Gray refers to involving Roger and Julie Corman happened in her time when working for them - to then write about it without knowing she was going to use it for a future book feels like she's betraying their confidence or something.

I did only feel the above things once or twice. This is on the whole an excellent, enthralling work, about the only Corman book which places as much emphasis on his output from the 1980s to 2010s as his earlier stuff. By all means also read his book and the one by Ed Naha but if you're into Corman this is a must.

Movie review – “Targets” (1968) ****

Extremely accomplished debut from Peter Bogdanovich – that’s if you count this, and not Voyage to the Planet of the Prehistoric Women as his first feature. It’s very confident and assured, as befits a man who was young at the time but had been obsessed by film since he was a boy, had studied it (and acting) for years, and knew many people in the industry to give him advice. Chief among them in this case was Roger Corman, who gave Bogdanovich an early break by hiring him for The Wild Angels and Voyage, and funded this movie (budget of $100,000 plus Boris Karloff for two days and some old footage from The Terror; it was later sold to Paramount). There was also Samuel Fuller who helped him knock the story into shape, and his then-wife Polly Platt, who worked on the story with him and did the production design.

 

It helps that it has a terrific subject matter: a serial killer in the Charles Whitman mode, well played here by Tim O’Kelly (what happened to him?) – a seemingly all-American boy who is stressed out then goes on a shooting rampage. Part of the reason this is so effective is O’Kelly isn’t “explained” at all through backstory, but via action; also Bogdanovich was confident enough even at this stage to have long takes where nothing much happens, then exploding into violence – which makes the violence more effective and terrifying. (You wish Bogdanovich did more bang-bang stuff in his career he handled it well without desensitizing the viewer.)

 

The plot with Boris Karloff playing Boris Karloff and Peter Bogdanovich played Peter Bogdanovich is an enjoyable counterpoint, with plenty of film in-jokes. Bogdanovich’s acting is a little stiff in places but he does an okay drunk scene. It builds up very effectively to a strong climax. A great film for Karloff to make towards the end of his career - part of me wishes it was his last.

Book review – “The Films of Roger Corman” by Alan Frank

I have a lot of affection for Frank because I loved his book on science fiction films, which I read and re-read in the 80s – come to think of it, that was the first place I heard about Roger Corman. This book follows a similar format of the sci-fi one: a list of films (in chronological order though not alphabetical), brief credits, a short synopsis and opinion from Frank, lots of quotes from other reviewers, plenty of pictures. 

Problem is there’s little here that’s new if you’ve read even one other decent book on Corman, especially Ed Naha’s. I think the one new tidbit I learned was Sally Kellerman of all people had some input to the script of Little Shop of Horrors.

Movie review – “High School Bigshot” (1958) *1/2

Tom Pittman isn’t bad as a smart high school student who has the misfortune of having a dad who’s a drunk, and a crush on a flirty sexy bitch who just wants cash. So he decides to rob a $1 million heroin transaction – as you do. Wikipedia pointed out that the plot is pretty much a rip off of The Killing, with a wimpy guy trying to impress his faithless woman by doing a robbery – only for the woman to get her boyfriend to rob the robbers. It actually works pretty well in a high school setting, but director Joel Rapp is no Stanley Kubrick. Very down beat and bleak – dad kills himself, everyone else either dies or goes to gaol. Very low budget – lots of deserted streets and rooms without much in them. Rapp later made The Battle of Blood Island for Roger Corman, who distributed this through his Filmgroup company.

Movie review – “The Mermaids of Tiburon” (1962) *

A scientist (George Rowe) is looking for a type of pearls. He has a rival (Timothy Carey) and gets involved with various mermaids well, topless women who swim under water. That’s in the later “nude edition” of this film. In the original 1962 edition there was less nudity – flashes of bare back mostly, plus shell bras.

The underwater photography is top quality and the woman attractive. This could be the best-shot film ever released by Roger Corman’s Filmgroup. At first it’s like “this is pretty hot, all these gorgeous women frolicking”. They frolic and frolic some more… and then after a while you start to wish something would happen. Carey turns up to be evil but he’s not that evil and it’s not exciting. None of the mermaids speak (there’s very little dialogue – most of it is done via narration.) The hero doesn’t even have a romance with a mermaid which I’m sorry is just crap. (In the original version – the one issued by Filmgroup, focuses on one mermaid, who has a fin and everything. But the director made a new edition where he added a bunch of topless swimmers without fins.)