Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel

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In a filmmaking career

that has spanned over 30 years,

my next guest is the man responsible

for such cinematic classics

as "the house of Usher,"

"wild angels,"

"the monster

from the ocean floor,"

"the attack

of the crab monsters."

Please welcome Roger corman.

Low-budget movies in those days--

it wasn't like today.

Nobody was really trying

to make them good.

There was the real emphasis

on the price.

Roger corman has made more

than 200 motion pictures in his career,

most of them

for extremely low budget.

He's produced

around 150-175 films.

He made so many movies.

In 1957, he directed 10 movies.

Most people

don't get to do that.

He made 250 movies

and never lost a dime.

Okay, this is not

a $20-million movie.

You know, this is

a $1.98 science fiction movie.

We knew these were made

fast and cheap,

and we also knew that taste

was out of the question.

There was no need for taste.

The way Disney movies, you know,

bring out the child in all of us,

you know,

so can exploitation.

Sometimes he'll give the notes

right on the script

and you get little

marginal references like

"breast nudity possible here?"

Question mark.

The goal was, Roger said,

"every motorcycle that runs,

have it smash into something.

And then when it stops running,

blow it up."

Aah!

He said, "your job,

if the cops come,

is to pick up the camera

and run."

I said, "we're in the middle

of the desert.

What do you mean,

there is no water?"

It's a Roger corman movie, you know.

There's no water.

You know, they kind of went

around the sound stage,

one take on everything.

That's just the way he worked.

You know, you didn't

argue with him.

And we were delighted

to be working.

It doesn't matter

if people are happy.

It doesn't matter if you have a permit.

None of it matters.

You know, the only thing that counts

is what you get inside the frame.

He's still around,

making pictures

in his 80s and he's--

i just saw him the other day.

He hasn't changed at all.

Man:
One, two, three.

And action!

Man:
One, two, three.

I'm in the water

with a giant creature on my arms...

...pumping blood out, chomping on

a beautiful girl in a bikini.

I mean, it's the essence

of Roger corman cinema.

Roger corman:

We feel that the monster

should kill somebody

fairly early

and then at regular intervals

through the picture.

The first kill should be

quite shocking.

The other kills can be

a little bit less shocking

as we build up.

And then of course the climax--

everything goes,

blood all over the screen.

Frances doel:
Roger had made

two previous movies

for the syfy channel

that did very well for them.

And he said, "okay, Frances,

it's 'dinoshark.'

you know what that is."

And of course I say,

"yes, I know what that is.

It's a giant shark."

"Yes, but not too much like 'jaws."'

"No, of course not."

- Woman:
122-Charlie, take three.

- Man:
Marker.

Julie corman:

"Dinoshark" is about a shark

that is unloosed

because of global warming

from an avalanche

north of Alaska...

Eric balfour:

That's your killer.

It hasn't eaten

in 150 million years

and it's hungry.

Julie:

...And somehow mysteriously

makes its way south

to puerto vallarta

and pretty much terrorizes

everybody and everything

in sight.

David carradine:

You know, that whole world

is just so different from

the "entertainment weekly" world

or the academy award world.

The golden globes

don't even hear about these things.

You know, these pictures--

they just go someplace else.

And there's an incredible

number of people

that want to see a picture

just like this.

Doel:
The paradise village

location

also had some accommodation

for actors and crew and so on.

So that's always been one of those

little tricks up Roger's sleeve--

how he can do what he does

on a budget.

Roger always said, you know,

"you could make 'Lawrence of Arabia'

for a half a million dollars.

You just don't leave the tent."

Balfour:

If you could imagine

knows Berry farm set on a beach,

but the only people in the park

were senior citizens,

no rides, but it had

a theme-park-like atmosphere,

that is what we have

affectionately dubbed

paradise prison.

Who is two minutes

from being ready for what?

Balfour:
At first I thought

it was maybe some kind of

electromagnetic field that doesn't

allow the walkie-talkie service.

Man:
I need a radio

that works.

But it turns out

that we just bought,

you know,

children's walkie-talkies.

This is full-on

guerilla-style filmmaking.

I mean, you know, we're sort of

running and gunning

and stealing locations

and driving boats

- where they shouldn't be driven.

- Man:
Go, go, go, get out!

Oh, my god.

At one point they wanted

somebody to get in this water...

- Man:
Action!

- ...To get attacked by something.

Well, it turns out there was actually

things to get attacked by.

Not that this wasn't obvious.

There was a giant sign

that said "crocodiles."

Should she be there?

Well, that's where she was

in the wide shot.

- The way this will be cut, it'll work.

- Okay. All right.

You wouldn't think of the movies,

if you met him,

that he'd have done

all these movies--

very polite, very--

almost British.

He really came across, I felt,

as more like an English

film professor, you know.

I expected him to be teaching

at Oxford or Cambridge

rather than kind of making

all of these

kind of violent exploitation movies

that he had made.

I thought he'd be more like

Lee j. Cobb, let's say,

or somebody a little--

where they're smoking a cigar

and pounding

on the desk and--

"you kids get in there

and do that work," and, you know--

and actually

he's very eloquent,

elegant and precise,

cool-headed,

from what I saw,

and very, very different

from the type of person

you'd think would be behind

these pictures like "teenage cave man."

Corman:

The difference between

the image you present

to the world

and what is going on inside,

in your unconscious mind,

is significant.

I've been told

that my image is

I'm just sort of an ordinary

straight guy.

Clearly my unconscious mind

is some sort of

a boiling inferno there.

Like most kids,

i was interested in films

essentially all my life.

I graduated from Stanford university

in California in engineering.

I worked four days

as an engineer and quit.

The only job I could get in films

was a messenger

at 20th century fox.

And I worked my way up from that

to become a story analyst.

I read scripts,

commented on them,

and handed in a synopsis

of the script or the novel

or whatever had been proposed

with my opinion.

As the youngest reader,

i was given

frankly the most hopeless

scripts to cover.

And the story editor said,

"Roger, you have never

recommended one script."

And I said, "you've never given me

a script that's worth recommending."

So they sent me a script

which was the first thing

I'd ever read at fox

that I thought was really

any good at all.

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