C Exploitation Thanks You


EXPLOITS OF A HOLLYWOOD REBEL Starring Roger Corman, Jack Nicholson and David Carradine


ORMAN’S WORLD:


Written by Gregory Locklear and Alex Stapleton Directed by Alex Stapleton Anchor Bay


Roger Corman is responsible for launching some of the most important


careers in the film business, and it would be impossible to envision the shape of Hollywood without his involvement over the last 58 years. So if you’re planning to put together the definitive portrait of his career, you’ll have to dig up a helluva lot of legends and A-listers for interviews. The task is seemingly insurmountable but to her credit, first-time director Alex Sta- pleton pulled it off beautifully. After five years of unremitting tenacity, she wrangled together a veritable


all-you-can-eat buffet of iconic film heroes including Jonathan Demme, Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese, William Shatner and the late David Car- radine in what was possibly his final on-camera interview just weeks be- fore he died. But it’s rare bird Jack Nicholson who steals the show with an amazingly candid, often hilarious and at times very emotional interview. Most of the critical epochs of Corman’s legacy are touched upon here,


from his early teen angst movies, to his biker films, creature features, women-in-prison flicks, to his audacity in importing foreign art house films from the likes of Fellini and Bergman and putting them on American drive- in screens. Unfortunately, little attention is paid to his iconic cycle of Poe adaptations


starring Vincent Price, though some of his lesser-known legacies are given their due, including his racially explosive, far-ahead-of-its-time segregation drama The Intruder (1962) which, according to brother Gene, is the only movie Corman made that ever lost money. The doc omits Corman’s most recent cycle of creature


features such as Sharktopus, instead ending with one of his career high points, the acceptance of his honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement at a private ceremony where the filmmaker is inundated with words of praise by protégés and peers alike. Quentin Tarantino perhaps best sums up the mood of the room when he says, “The Acad- emy thanks you. Hollywood thanks you. Independent film- making thanks you. But most importantly, for all the wild, weird, cool, crazy moments you have put on the drive-in screens, the movie lovers of the planet Earth thank you!”


The DVD and


Blu-ray extras are rather slight, featuring just a few ex- tended interviews and a handful of on-camera trib- utes to Corman by many of the interviewees, but the fea- ture itself is definitely required viewing, and is pure gold for movie fans from start to finish.


[For more on Corman’s World, listen to Stuart’s podcast interview with Staple- ton at rue-morgue.com. – Ed.] STUART F. ANDREWS


comes a blackmailing hooker, then moves up to being a hit woman. This led into the ’80s, when slasher films started booming, thanks to Halloween and Friday the 13th, and Crown had its own entry with Don’t Answer the Phone! (1980). Perhaps the title was a take-off on 1979’s When a Stranger Calls, because Don’t Answer the Phone! is a typical greasy psycho stalk-’n’-kill story, but there’s not that much phone-stalking in the movie. Crown also re- leased The Hearse that year, featuring a deadly death cab and a co-starring role for former Hollywood great Joseph Cotten (Citizen Kane, Shadow of a Doubt, Soylent Green). In November of 1980, Crown would lose its founder when Jacobs died at the age of 78.


Tenser had been the president of Crown since 1973, when Jacobs stepped into the role of chairman, but the two men had long been the figureheads of the com- pany. At the same time, Crown was starting to face new business chal- lenges. Companies such as AIP were being bought out or went out of business in the early ’80s, and drive-ins were being bulldozed by real es- tate developers. When Baughn joined the company in 1984, it was doing wide releases, instead of taking the films around regionally. “By this point, they were spending money on national breaks, full TV and newspaper ad- vertising,” he says. Luckily, a booming home video market was able to compensate for


some of the drive-in losses. Baughn recalls, “When the VHS business was taking off, all the VHS buyers were looking for movies that played 25 mar- kets in a TV orbit. Even if it was a crummy little film, and we had our crummy little films that were made for very little money, we would make a million dollars on a VHS sale. People thought a movie that played in 25 markets was worth paying for because they were in a boom market where people were grabbing VHS like crazy.” While some B-companies, including AIP, faltered because they tried to


compete with the majors, Crown ultimately died off because it didn’t want to grow bigger. Baughn remembers that the company had the opportunity to buy the Coen Brothers’ first film, Blood Simple, but turned it down. “The only thing we had to do was come up with an advance of $150,000. [Tenser] pretty


much had a T&A drive-in mentality, and his attitude was that he wasn’t going to pay for anything that wasn’t something he made, and he never wanted other investors involved. Mark was at the age where I think he felt he already made a pile of money, and I don’t think he wanted to gamble. He just couldn’t grow, and I think in his own heart he felt smart about that.” By this point, the writing had been on the wall for a while. Among the last horror pictures


that the company distributed were the occult sacrifice pic Prime Evil (1989), horror-comedy My Mom’s a Werewolf (1989) and the mind control-themed Brain Twisters (1991). By the ’90s, the newer wave of independents such as Miramax were under major studio umbrellas and had greater resources to compete with the majors than the original indies. “The majors didn’t want us around,” laments Baughn. “They were pushing up the price


of prints and advertising at a rapid pace, and we were being squeezed out.” Though Crown has been dormant as a theatrical distributor for a long time, the company


still has an office on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, with the Tensers still in charge after all these years. They’re not making movies anymore, but they’re still sitting on a large body of work, which they continue to license (a complete list of their titles can be found on the company’s official website crownintlpictures.com). The gems of Crown’s catalog live on – a reminder of the glory days of B-movie making.


RM28


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