Master storyteller Roger Corman passes away

I want Dr. Scarabus’ house for a Halloween party. If you’re a fan of Roger Corman’s The Raven (1963), you’ll know exactly what I mean – massive front door that creaks ominously, floor-sized black candelabra with red candles (that apparently never drip down to make a mess), plenty of watchful gargoyles (we actually have several of those), a huge fire pit in the foyer with towering flames surrounded by big toothy gargoyles to warm up a dark and creepy night.

The ability to create a great, crashing storm for atmosphere would be lovely too.

A great master of the B-movie genre passed away last week, and we’ve lost the creative mind behind that made so many films for fans for decades.

Corman was called “the king of B movies” and “low-budget cinema maestro”. He made a variety of films in his lengthy career. His work wasn’t meant to be high-brow, (although some movies were quite serious), just entertaining. He knew how to tell stories.

He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in industrial engineering from Stanford University and worked briefly (four days) at U.S. Electrical Motors, but quit to become a mail-room messenger at 20^th Century Fox movie studio.

Working his way up to the position of story reader, and the property he really like was made into a movie with the esteemed Gregory Peck. When Corman didn’t receive any credit for that, he left Fox and tried various things, including studying English Literature at Oxford University, a stint as a stagehand at KLAC-TV, and an assistant to literary agent Dick Hyland.

In his spare time, he wrote a script, sold it and saw it made into a movie called Highway Dragnet in 1954. He used the money he earned from that to produce his first feature, Monster from the Ocean Floor.

That little movie did well enough for Corman to continue producing, but he went in a completely different direction with a thriller involving a jail break and a car race called The Fast and the Furious the following year. (Yes, the same title was licensed by Universal Pictures in 2001 for the beginning movie in their F&F franchise.)

That same year he also made a Western, directed The Beast with a Million Eyes, made another western, and then another sci-fi called Day the World Ended.

Corman had a lot of ideas and a prolific work ethic.

My favourites were all his many sci-fi and horror movies. They’re a blast to watch for a Halloween movie night with a good supply of popcorn and maybe a Bloody Mary or two ;).

Corman got a lot of inspiration from the tales by Edgar Allan Poe, who’s one of my favourite authors, so those films were a marriage made in heaven. The House of Usher (1960) was a really good one, straight Gothic horror, while at the other end of the spectrum was 1963’s The Raven, very loosely based on Poe’s famous poem. Both movies starred Vincent Price, as did many of Corman’ horror films. The Masque of the Red Death (1964), also with Price, belies its somewhat lurid-sounding name with an interesting style and a character study of its big-bad, Prince Prospero.

But The Raven is my favourite, a very tongue-in-cheek stretch around the titular bird, who comes tapping on retiring and melancholy sorcerer Dr. Erasmus Craven’s door (Vincent Price), and turns out to be a bespelled bumbling sorcerer named Dr. Adolphus Bedlo (played by veteran actor Peter Lorre). Bedlo asks Craven for help in breaking the spell, and wants Craven to accompany him to the house of the perpetrator, the sketchy Dr. Scarabus (Boris Karloff).

Craven steadfastly refuses, until Bedlo tells him that he’s recently seen Craven’s supposedly dead wife, Lenore, there. This is a bait Craven can’t resist and off they go, accompanied by Craven’s pretty daughter and Bedlo’s more sensible son (played by a very young Jack Nicholson). I won’t reveal the rest of the plot, other than to say that the actors all seemed to be having a great time – although apparently both Peter Lorre and Jack Nicholson liked to ad-lib some of their lines, which drove Karloff crazy. As one example, when Craven asked Bedlo if he’d ever see Lenore again, Lorre grumbled out “How the hell should I know?”

Some of the other silliness included Craven’s inability to avoid repeatedly running into his oversized telescope at the start of the movie, and Bedlo’s various ‘spells’, which were all made of famous Latin phrases, like “Veni, vidi, vici” (I came, I saw, I conquered, proclaimed by Julius Caesar after he won a fast victory at the Battle of Zela), and “Cave canem” (Beware of the dog). The movie was nominated for the Top 100 Funniest American Movies in the American Film Institute’s 2000 list – it won’t have you falling off your chair (or sofa) laughing, it’s just good, atmospheric fun.

“Jim Jr.,” the raven appearing in the title role, was nominated for a Patsy Award, along with several other animal actors, despite the fact that behind the scenes it kept pooping on Jack Nicholson’s shoulder. Nicholson and Lorre didn’t get along on the set, Karloff hated being strung up in the air on chairs for the big duel, and Hazel Court, the buxom actress who played Lenore, Craven’s not-so-dead wife, complained that, after the film came out, the critics focused more on her chest than her acting. Apparently one critic for Time magazine wrote, “The sexy, lusty redhead is played by the English actress Miss Hazel Court, in whose cleavage you can sink the entire works of Edgar Allan Poe plus a bottle of his favorite booze.”

Corman produced more than 300 films and directed over 50. He mentored the careers of some very big names in the movie industry: Peter Bogdanovich, Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme, Martin Scorsese, and gave early career breaks to future stars like Jack Nicholson, as well as Sandra Bullock, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Robert De Niro, William Shatner, Talia Shire and Sylvester Stallone.

He would produce up to seven films a year. The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), was shot in two days. Corman saved time by using the same sets as A Bucket of Blood (1959), and once joked that he could make an epic about the fall of the Roman empire with two extras and a sagebrush.

Corman was highly cultured, despite his fondness for making B-movies, and was the U.S. distributor of international arthouse films by directors Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa, François Truffaut and more.

He was given an honorary lifetime Academy Award in 2009 for his “rich engendering of films and filmmakers.” When presenting the award, Quentin Tarantino said, “Roger, for everything you have done for cinema, the academy thanks you, Hollywood thanks you, independent film-making thanks you. But, most importantly, for all the weird, cool, crazy moments you’ve put on screen, the movie lovers of planet Earth thank you.”

When asked once how he wanted to be remembered, he said, ‘I was a filmmaker, just that”.

Networks Turner Classic Movies and Silver Screen often show Corman’s films, and The Raven is currently available on Tubi.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
    While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
From The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe