All is art. . .the rest is graham crackers. —from A Bucket of Blood

The constraining shoestring budget of the B-film usually forced a film director to confine himself to a minimal structure (i.e., H. G. Lewis’gore mania and Russ Meyer’s boob erotica). But Roger Corman, director of 45 films in 12 years, smiled at mere economic limitations and tackled nearly every genre imaginable. Although Corman worked with the speed of a prolific hack, his style of combining social statement with tongue-in-cheek candor, marks him as thegreatest filmmaker for teenagers in the entire history of drive-in cinema.

The story begins in 1954 when James Nicholson and Sam 2. Arkoff pooled their moolah together to form AIPKa film company designed to specialize in teen-oriented productions. The shrewd business angle of AIP was that its films would uphold America’s youths as decent kids instead of irresponsible hoods. That same year Roger Corman had produced his first film independently, Monster from the Ocean Floor (featuring a puppet octopus), and with this illustrious work to his credit, he then made a deal to produce one of AIP’s first releases, The Fast and the Furious, a road-racing movie. Now that $$’s were backing him, Corman began to direct.

Corman’s rough peripd covers his first dozen films, mostly westerns and' straight sci-fi. Grappling for a consistent style, Corman hadn’t yet surrendered himself to his Millennic Vision—destruction /rebirth as manifestations of the myth of the eternal return masquerading behind the facades of B-films. When his concept of obliteration of the old to make room for the new order developed into a conscious element in his style, Corman’s teen appeal would' begin. Meanwhile, Corman became less comfortable handling the physical action of westerns arid more at ease conveying the psychological tension inherent in fantastic situations. As basic sci-fi on a crass level, three of his early films stand out: It Conquered the World (a cucumber from Venus with its pet vampire bats attacks on Beverly Garland), and fittack of the Crab Monsters (H-bomb giant mutations devour human heads with loud munching noises).

Corman made Teenage Doll, the first of his teen movies, ip 1957, a pivotal year for his work. Teenage Doll: On a glistening rainy street at night, the Black Widows (a girl gang) are cornered by the glare of the squad cars’ headlights; most flee into the darkness, but a few walk into the glare with the rebellious spirit of the Shangri-Las.

Even through 1967, Corman’s sympathy for teenage alienation motivated a superb stab at this genre. ' Sorority Girl—Bitch Sabra makes life miserable for other girls in her sorority hotase. Disgusted with her inability to „ socialize, Sabra walks into the sea and drowns herself. Corman understands her tragedy: the film opens with an animated drawirig of a girl falling into a deep pit while hateful adult faces hover over the spot like Greek rates.

. Teenage Caveman—Robert Vaughn (the Man from UNK) plays a rebel in bearskin who seeks to break the taboos | of his tribal elders and cross the river to the forbidden land of the Monster That Kills With A Touch. To challenge adult culture, he investigates and discovers that the monster is an old man disguised in a fright suit. The man reveals to Vaughn that the tribe’s members are survivors from atomic war; this then is not pre-history but the immediate future (post-leather jackets). The Wild Angels—Peter Fondar Nancy Sinatra, Michael J. Pollard, and Bruce Dern in bike y \(ilmdom’s greatest moment. Dern as “The Loser” is shot by cops, heisted from the hospital by bikers, and honored with a church wake (Wild Youths Puke & Destroy!).. . Fonda, sulking, waits at the grave site while the rest of the Angels roar away. “There’s no place to go,” whimpers Fonda. The Trip—Those biker djays now only ' long-suppressed bloodlusts, Fonda & ; Dern & Hopper blow their minds on acid. Psycho-Delic Color!!

“All of my films have been concerned simply with man as a social animal,” Corman has said, a notion that not only inspired his teen movies but his gangster ones as well. Machine Gun Kelly, I, Mobster, St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, and Bloody Mama are violent depictions of criminal alienation, but they never glorify gore * the way Bonnie and Clyde does. For example, in Bloody Mama there’s a cold-blooded scene in which the gang shoots an alligator with a submachine-gun out of pure malice. Also, Machine Gunf Kelly is a criminal bio-pic in which the outlaw, after a series of notorious anti-social exploits, is eventually defeated by a responsible society. For Corman, one rebels not as a nihilist but within a social world (i.e. teenage subculture); the idea being that humanity must not be trampled irvthe mud.

Corman’s Poe cycle, from House of Usher through The Tomb ofLigeia, centers not around any societal clash but around the idea of destruction and rebirth. Most of the Poe films are tedious, but as a whole they do perform a symbolic function. Basically, the Poe cycle is about the destruction of the old through raging conflagration and the start of life anew. Vincent Price representative aged, dead spirits of the past buried in tradition, trying to affefct the living young. The method of purging musty influences (e.g. the ancestral home) is to burn them out. Corman’s system became so ritualized that the Poe filrps utilize stock fdotage of burning exteriors. House of Usher exemplifies this Poe formula, while Masque of the Red Death (inspired by Bergmania) remains the most symbolic of the Poe adaptations. Yet in the entire Poe cycle it is only The Raven that sustains any vivacity. A trio of black magicians (Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Vincent Price) compete in an elaborate duel, allowing each actor to ham it up. Given this opportunity to ridicule the genre that made them famous, these horror veterans camp up their roles with outlandish enthusiasm. The { Raven works as horrdr comedy because of its loose impromptu nature, and it is this kind of filmmaking—spoof and satire—in which Corman particularly excels.

Some of Corman’s least familiar genre spoofs are The Wasp Woman (a WASP cosmetics manufacturer becomes transformed into a genuine wasp , stinging the male ego while pursuing the perfect youth preservative), Atlas (cardboard parody of the Italian Hercules spectacles), and Creature From the Haunted Sea (Latino gangsters rip off revolutionaries’ loot by devising a fake sea monster. .. only a real creature is lurking in the water and eats everybody). However, Corman’s rep as a black humorist tests primarily upon A Bucket of Blood, shof in five days, and Little Shop of Horrors, in two. These films use TV techniques in that the movements are designed to make visually interesting shots of rather long duration, the lengthy takes planned not so much for aesthetic value as sheer economy.

In Bucket of Blood, Walter Paisley (a Jerry Lewis schlemiel) attemptsto attract beat groupie Carla by sculpting art for the beat generation. Walter lacks artistic know-how though, so he covers a cat with clay and exhibits it. “O wow!” sez the beatniks. Next Walt snuffs a narc, immortalizes the stiff in clay, and calls the sculpture Murdered Man. The culture junkies demand more, and the mad artist kills others for a public exhibition > But Carla discovers the secret behind Walt’s master works. Faced with inevitable exposure as a sham, Walter creates his ultimate work by covering himself with clay andtheri hanging himself, a conceptualist until the very end.

In Little Shop of Horrors, not only did Corman satirize Dragnet, he also kidded around with Jewish humor; Seymour Krelboin (another Jerry ^ Lewis jerk) works for the greedy florist ) Mushnik, whose retarded daughter Audrey he loves. One night Seymour cuts his finger, and his blood is slurped by a withering plant. The plant grows rapidly, but Seymour’s hemoglobin supply is limited so he feedsthe ravenous weed a dead bum. The man-eating weed sprouts uncontrollably, screaming—“FEEEd meee, I’m HUNNNgreee!” To satisfy the plant, Seymour knocks off various neighbors. The green carnivore develops so lushly that proud Mushnik dubs it Audrey, Jr. Finally, during a photo session for a horticultural mag, the plant’s huge flowers bloom, exposing the terrified faces of Seymour’s victims. As a last resort, Seymour feeds himself to his hungry pet.

Whereas these two black comedies share similar themes and motifs, Corman’s Gas-s-s-s remains unique among his humorous works as a left-wing social satire. The film begins with an apocalyptic cartoon: the U S. Army Chemical Warfare Testing Center accidently uses a bottle of nerve gas instead of a champagne bottle to christen a new chemical warfare unit, and the gas kills everybody over 25 years of age. “To you it may be death but to us it’s really a gas!” Wild youths take over the planet in a metaphysical odyssey that includes characters like Billy the Kid, Marshall McLuhan, God and Edgar Allan Poe (played by Corman) and locations like the Kennedy assassination route, a New Mexico commune, and the Route 66 Drive-In (where a rock festival is held w/Country Joe &the Fish as the superstars). Gas-s-s-s, apolitical allegory, exposes fascism in youth culture in the manner of Barry Shear’s Wild in the Streets, but unlike that exploitative AIP flick, Gas-s-s-s recognizes fascisrri as a potential force in any society (i.e. the Hell’s Angels becomethe middle-class silent majority; Jason and the Warriors, a football tecim, rape an d pillage the South). Ais Billy the Kid says, “See, you go along the highway picking daisies and .. . pow .. . small print comes out of nowhere and gits ya.” A satirical masterpiece, Gas-s-$-s is positive proof that Gorman’s befet WQrk occurs within a comedic context. 1

The elemental style of Corman, his primitive force, stems from a desire to absolve the world of old values and traditions. The images of fire and eyes, symbolizing this cleansing through destruction (e.g. fire consumes Usher’s cobwebs), are among the most recurrent figures in Gorman’s cinema. In X, The Man With X-Ray Eyes, Corman’s most profound moment occurs. Surgeon Dr. Xavier (Ray Milland), using drugs, develops X-ray vision, which enables him to operate more skillfully. But this special vision also leads to the decay of his eyes, eventually forcing him to seek refuge as a blind faith healer in a slum basement. Hassled by cops, ex-Dr. Xavier escapes to the desert and staggers into a tent show revival meeting where a demented evangelist exhorts his audience, “If thy eye offend thee, pluck it out.” Turning his blind eyes, rotted black, up to the hysterical preacher, Xavier tears them out. And like Dr. X, filmmaker Roger Corman stares into space with his super-sensitive eyes and sees a flaring world of crimson and gold, of destruction and rebirth, whirling in an insane universe under the watchful gaze of some mad gdd.

(As we go to press, our own Billy Altman is in Hollywood, appearing in the Corman-produced Rock ’n’ Roll High School, starring the Ramones. Projected release date is April. He’s even got lines!—Ed.)

ROGER CORMAN FILMOGRAPHY

(Leading cast in parentheses)

1955 Five Guns West (Dorothy Malone, Mike j Connors)

Apache Woman (Lloyd Bridges, Joan ' Taylor)

1956 The Day the World Ended (Richard Denning, Lori Nelson)

Swamp Woman (Beverly Garland, Marie Windsor)

The Oklahoma Woman.(Richard Denning,: Peggy Castle)

Gunslinger (John Ireland, Beverly Garland)

It Conquered the World (Peter Graves, Beverly Garland)

1957 Naked Paradise (Richard Denning, Beverly Garland)

Attack of the Crab Monsters (Richard Garland, Pamela Duncan)

Not of This Earth (Paul Birch, Beverly Garland)

The Undead (Pamela Duncan, Richard Garland)

Rock All Night (Dick Miller, Abby Dalton) Carnival Rock (Susan Cabot, Brian Hutjton)

TeenbgeDoll (June Kenney i-Fay Spain) Sorority Girl (Susan Cabot, Dick Miller) The Viking Women and the Sea Serpent , (Abby Dalton, Susan Cabot),

1958 She-Gods of Shark Reef (Don Durant, -Lisa Montell)

War of the Satellites (Susan Qabot, Dick Miller)

Machine Gun Kelly (Charles Bronson, Morey Amsterdam)

t Teenage Caveman (Robert Vaughn, ■ Leslie Bradley)

I, Mobster (Steve Cochran, Lita Milan)

1959 The Wasp Woman (Susan Cabot, Fred Eisley)

A Bucket of Bipod (Dick Miller, Barboura Morris)

1960 Ski Troop Attack (Frank Wolff, Michael Forest)

House of Usher (Vincent Price, Mark Damon)

The Little Shop of Horrors (Jonathan \ Haze, Jackie Joseph)

The Last WomanonEarth (Antony Carbone, Betsy Jones-Moreland) Creature from the Haunted Sea (Antony Carbone, Betsy Jones-Moreland)

Atlas (Michael Forest, Frank Wolff)

1961 The Pit and the Pendulum (Vincent Price, Barbara Steele)

196i2 * The Premature Burial (Ray Milland, Hazel Court)

I Hate Your Guts (The Intruder) (William / Shatner, Frank Maxwell)

Tales of Terror (Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone)

Tower of London (Vincent Price, Joan Freeman) _

1963 The Raven (Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff)

The Terror (Boris Karloff, Jack Nicholson) The Haunted Palace (Vincent Price, Lon Chaney)

The Young Racers (Mark Damon, Luana Anders)

X, The Man with X-Ray Eyes (Ray Milland, Diana Van der Vlis)

1964 The Secreklnvasion (Stewart Granger, Mickey Rooney)

The Masque of the Red Death (Vincent Price, Hazel Court)

1965 The Tomb ofLigeia (Vincent Price, Elizabeth Shepherd)

1966 The Wild Angels (Peter Fonda, Nancy Sinatra, -Bruce Dern)

1967 The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (Jason Robards, George Segal)

The Trip (PeterFonda, Bruce Dern)

1969 pioody Mama (Shelley Winters, Pat Hingle)

1970 Gas-s-s-s! (Robert Corff, Elaine Giftos).

1971 Von Richtofen and Brown (John P. Law, Don Stroud)