Zombos' Closet

Roger Corman's World We Welcome It

ZC Rating 5 of 7: Excellent

"By mistake, he actually made a good picture once and awhile." -- Jack Nicholson, Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel

"Taste was out of the question." -- Martin Scorsese, Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel

Cinema Trash filmmaking is an art form--seriously, it is-- and its greatest ideologist and practicioner is Roger Corman. He didn't invent cheap sensational movies, but he knew how to make them highly profitable and when to kick-start a trend or exploit it to sell more theater seats (or drive-in car slots).  Soft-spoken but craftily articulate, Corman is the star of Alex Stapleton's no frills documentary, Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel, which highlights how Corman ignited the careers of actors and directors who embraced--more like succumbed to, really--his pragmatic, and unwavering, bottom-line focused, moviemaking eye.    

I first became acquainted with Corman's work through The Terror, a movie whose inexplicable mix of budget-friendly moments and left-over sets went unnoticed by my 7-year-old eyes as I ruined my parents night out. I couldn't help it. I refused to stay home with the babysitter so they had to take me along to the Loew's Oriental theater (this was in Brooklyn). I quietly sat between them as I watched Jack Nicholson, Dick Miller, Boris Karloff, and Sandra Knight chew up the gothic scenery, not really understanding what was happening. Of course, after the five or so directors got through with it, no one else did, either. I'm sure I had hit up the concession stand for treats, but I don't remember what I ate. What I do remember is that scene: Helene (Sandra Knight) melting away into brown goo after Andre (Jack Nicholson) rescues her. That I remember. I blame Corman for hooking me on horror movies because The Terror is the first one I saw on the big screen (or small, for that matter).

My father isn't much into horror movies, but my mom was. I'm sure she had forced him to see The Terror. What my dad did like back then were biker movies, so the next memorable Corman movie for me was seen at a New Jersey drive-in.  It was on a double bill (maybe triple, actually) that I saw The Wild Angels and Richard Rush's Hells Angels on Wheels (starring Jack Nicholson). I peetered out by the time the third movie started playing so we headed home. My dad forgot to unhitch the speaker from the car's window, so we took that home, too.

Biker movies always scared me more than the supernatural and monster ones. The odds of being beat up by a biker (my nose was broken by one) were greater than being attacked by a giant, head-eating crab with googly eyes or a giant plant noshing on my body parts. Between the bikers, the seafood, and the florist, Corman's cinema world percolates with its roughness, exploitation, hipness, and edgy cheapness, and all of this is revealed by Stapleton through movie clips, Corman's own words, and words from the notable creative people who brought us these independent--in attitude as well as production--movies.

Stapleton shows us the lean, iconoclastic, must-not-deviate-from-plan Corman machine with its output spanning nearly every genre: western, gangster, science fiction, horror, teenage angst, biker, psychedelic, and social commentary with his more daring--AIP didnt' want it, so he produced it himself--The Intruder, which starred William Shatner. For horror fans, it's the Poe cycle of the 1960s, with Vincent Price, that makes Corman a household name. House of Usher, Masque of the Red Death, The Raven (with Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre), The Haunted Palace (actually taken from H.P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward), The Pit and the Pendulum, and The Premature Burial (starring Ray Milland and Hazel Court instead of Price) are atmospheric. Aided by recognizable actors and stylish use (and re-use) of sets, costumes, and storylines, they remain clear examples of how artistic expression and commercial success can be achieved on a shoestring budget.

The Raven's sets, when Corman realized he had a few days left on the shooting schedule before they would be torn down, were used in The Terror. In turn, Peter Bogdanovich, who cut his teeth for Corman with Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, would utilize footage of The Terror in Targets, his disturbing movie that highlights the demarcation line between the old style monsters of Universal Studios and the  new, socially misfitted, psycho-killing monster living next door. (See my review: Targets: Is This What I Was Afraid Of?)

Bogdanovich had to use Boris Karloff in Targets because Karloff owed Corman a few days work, and Corman also insisted some twenty minutes of scenes from The Terror be incorporated by Bogdanovich (but in the final tally it was only a few). Given these requirements, Bogdanovich and Samuel Fuller wrote the screenplay, resulting in a movie that transcends its limitations by embracing them, making it a must-see movie for every horror fan as it presages the reality-terrors of the 1970s. It also earned a place in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.

I don't know how Stapleton coaxed the usually laconic Jack Nicholson to talk about his years with Corman, but he opens up in a way that invigorates this documentary through his simplicity and directness about the relationship. At one point Nicholson cries when he realizes how much his career gained by falling under Corman's spell. Film clips keep the documentary lively, while an on location shoot with Corman for Dinoshark provides a glimpse of him in action.

Like Svengali, Corman mesmerizes those who work under him into squeezing their talents through his production funnel to produce usually awful, often memorably awful, and sometimes even noteworthy movies. No drive-in needed.

Cropsey (2009) There Are Terrors By Night

ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good

We all like to play in the discarded places, the abandoned buildings, the dark forests, pretending the devil is calling for his due, or imagining the dark shadows hide dangerous things that can't reach long enough to catch us. All this play exhilarates us, and let's us experience evils that hold no power over us. We scare ourselves with urban legends and thrice-told folktales of dreaded things, and play even harder to outrace the Boogeymen.

In 1987, the Boogeyman reached long enough to snatch 12-year-old Jennifer Schweiger into the darkness. She wasn't the first. From the 1970s to the 1980s, six mentally disabled children and one older one went missing. Jennifer would be the only one found, partially visible in a shallow grave, in a place, strangely enough, already searched extensively, in the Staten Island Greenbelt woods surrounding the Willowbrook State School's abandoned and dilapidated buildings. Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio's investigative documentary, Cropsey, takes us into those discarded places of Willowbrook and the darkness radiating from them into a mystery, at the center of which lies a drifter, Andre Rand. Sometimes the Boogeyman is real.

Through old newspaper clippings, interviews, black and white photographs, and archival news footage, Zeman and Brancaccio begin with Jennifer's disappearance, which leads to Rand, a former orderly at Willowbrook, which leads to his eerie presence at locales where other mentally-disabled children have disappeared over the years.

In videotape of Rand being taken into custody he appears entranced and wild-eyed, like Charles Milles Manson, and drools as he stumbles along in handcuffs. In the hand-written letters he writes from jail to Zeman and Brancaccio, in response to their interview requests, he mentions how "evil sells," his legal concerns, and what's-in-it-for-him in-between the sentences where his thoughts drift into quotations from scripture. It's noted how his handwriting changes through the course of his correspondence. Rand's mother was committed to Pilgrim State Hospital, but the documentary does not delve deeper into Rand's past. It doesn't provide answers, so don't look for them. What it does provide is a sense of how urban legends like Cropsey (the slasher killer at camp, on the road, who lurks nearby) spring up in communities. This horror-veneer makes the documentary appear at first glance like a mockumentary. But as each disappearance is added, and Rand is shown, the reality sets in and you wind up wishing it weren't true.

Zeman and Brancaccio slowly move the camera through the abandoned, graffiti-sprayed buildings, interview the aged detectives, the still grieving families, the defense and prosecution lawyers, and the community without getting in the way of what anyone has to say or feel, then bring us back to the 1970s and 1980s by showing us the historical videos from Channel 7 and Staten Island's local news. There's Geraldo Rivera's investigation of Willowbrook, the shocking videos of neglect, filth, the warehousing of human beings no one else wanted; the trajedy seems to stem from those buildings and what took place there.

Slowly zooming into news articles from various New York and Staten Island newspapers hammers you even more with apparent connections between disappearences . A chilling synchronicity comes when 22-year old Hank Gafforio is seen standing in the background of a news video shot a few years before he went missing; the news video was about Holly Ann Hughes disappearance and its lack of clues. The documetary's morose pace, not cheered by the sombre, horror movie-style background music, lays out the details, the coincidences, the suppositions, and the guesses, but connecting them provides tantalizing questions and a template for creating an urban legend.

Did Rand work alone? If he did, how did Jennifer's body wind up in an area of ground already searched after he was encarcerated? From somebody trying to frame him? Is he guilty of the disappearences?  Is he guilty of murder? Did his time as an orderly at Willowbrook unhinge his sanity? Why did he live on the grounds and in the tunnels of Willowbrook State School after it closed? What do the rumors of devil worship and the Farm Colony have to do with the disappearences? Are they just more urban mythmaking by the community's bored teenagers.

Those teenagers show up on a walk-through at night, playfully looking for the boogeyman, leading to a lighter moment as Zeman and Brancaccio prowl around looking for the possible occult activity rumored to be happening in the area. Maybe the urban legends are there to warn us; to tell us some places must be avoided because the Boogeyman lives there. And he's real.

A History of Horror with Mark GatissAn Essential Documentary You Must See

This is a splendidly insightful documentary because Mark Gatiss shares his favorite fears with us as he explores the screen's stellar frights and their directors and actors. Beginning with Universal's pivotal horrors, he continues his exploration with the genre-making works of Romero, Cronenberg, Carpenter, and many others.

Don't miss this documentary. It's heavenly for horror fans and movie aficionados. With a peek into Lon Chaney's makeup kit here, and a closeup look at the bat that flapped its wings in Bela Lugosi's Dracula there,  this documentary is really Mark Gatiss' affectionate journal illustrating the best and most influencial movies in horror cinema.

Here's Episode 1, Part 1 of 4. You can see the other parts, and later episodes, on YouTube. 

Vampira: The Movie (2006)

Vampira's persona was a strange combination of sex and death.
--David J. Skal, Vampira: The Movie

ZC Rating 3 of 7: Good

The year is 1954. It's midnight on a KABC-TV Saturday night. A striking, impossibly wasp-waisted woman in a torn black dress glides down a long, dry ice misty, cobwebbed corridor toward the camera, past unlit candelabras. She stops. Suddenly she screams, then looks at the camera with a devilish gleam in her eyes and says "Screaming relaxes me so."

Vampira's short-lived television show--where, in-between showing gems like White Zombie and forgettable B-fare, she would mix a foaming cocktail to "absolutely kill you," or search for her always lost pet spider, Rollo--opened the door for the many male and female horror hosts that followed, and set the tongue-in-cheek, ghoul-cool standard for hosting still seen today. With her phallic-looking nails, plunging v-neck exposed bosom, and sardonic wit, she presented quite the picture of the succubus every straight guy would love to meet in a darkened room.

Lugosi: Hollywood's Dracula (1997)

ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good

In spite of a disheartened director, and a greatly reduced budget, the 1931 film, Dracula, remains a classic for various reasons. For one thing, it was the first speaking horror film, although music was not used except for the opening credits. For another, it had indelible performances by skillful actors.

One performance stands out above the rest, and has left its mark on subsequent impersonations of the aristocrat of the undead, and ushered in an era of monsters that continues to this day.

Perhaps it was the oddly-inflected voice, with the thick accent, that hinted of wolves baying in the moonlight and fear-inducing evils-by-night, living in dark forests; or  maybe it was the slow, determined mannerisms of a person, undead for centuries, for whom the urgencies of mortal time held little meaning; or it could have been those eyes that pierced right through you from under that furrowed brow. For whatever reasons, Bela Lugosi's performance of Dracula is the image of the vampire count that has stood the test of time.

In Lugosi: Hollywood's Dracula, writer and director Gary Rhodes explores Lugosi's amazing career using rare film clips and onscreen interviews with Lugosi's son, and others that knew Lugosi. What makes this documentary stand above the rest is its use of living history — people — to talk about the man and actor, providing us with an insightful glimpse into this iconic actor's professional and personal life. Combined with previously unseen footage and stills of Lugosi's early silent work, this two-disc DVD set clearly shows the broad range of talent and indomitableness of Lugosi as Hollywood ignored him, and squandered his acting in films well beneath his abilities.

Clever additions to the set are some of Lugosi's Old Time Radio 'appearances,' including the creepy, The Thirsty Death from Mystery House, 1944, and an Easter Egg! The funny mockumentary of Gary Rhodes' quest to sit in Bela Lugosi's chair can be viewed by going to the last page in the DVD Notes section until "Back" is highlighted, then pressing the Up arrow on your remote (or keyboard, if watching on a PC), followed by pressing "Enter."

In the Deleted Scenes section, you will find more film footage and discussion on White Zombie (one of his creepiest performances) and Lugosi's Poverty Row films of the 1930s.  From Murder Legendre in White Zombie, to Ygor in Son of Frankenstein, Lugosi's performances were always masterful and uniquely different, and created memorable characters in horror cinema.

Director Gary Rhodes steps into the closet for an interview.

John McCarty's Fearmakers

I met author John McCarty (Splatter Movies) at the recent Fangoria Weekend of Horrors Convention in New Jersey, where he showed clips from his documentary, Fearmakers.

I was interested by his determination to chronicle the  creative people who have made horror cinema a passion for horrorheads everywhere and asked him about it.

What led you to create the documentary, Fearmakers?

Around 1994 or so an editor at St. Martin’s Press approached me to do a book on the directors behind the cinema’s most enduring – i.e., classic – horror, SF, and suspense films. I called the book The Fearmakers and it profiled around twenty of them, from Benjamin Christensen to Stuart Gordon.

A year or so after The Fearmakers was published a Texas-based filmmaker with whom I was working on another book called The Sleaze Merchants suggested turning The Fearmakers into a television series. He got a Texas-based production company interested and we selected a baker’s dozen of the filmmakers profiled in the book for the episodes, and taped the series in 1996, interviewing actors, directors, film technicians, and so forth on both coasts. I served as on-camera host (a mistake I always believed) and narrator.

When the series was completed, it was shopped around, and sold well overseas, to Japan, the Middle East, France, Britain, etc, where each territory was able to substitute me with an on-camera host of their own speaking their own language. The series never received any domestic play in the States, and was never released on DVD here, probably because it lacked a “name” as host, even though the shows themselves were filled with name interviewees, from John Carpenter and Richard Matheson to Joe Dante and Stuart Gordon.

About a year ago, I contacted the production company in Texas and made a deal with them to take over the show and re-do it on my own, cutting them in on any domestic distribution deal I might make. I retained myself as narrator, but eliminated myself as on-camera host so as not to have a host at all. I’d always had a fondness for making films and not just writing about them, so I was not unfamiliar with the filmmaking and editing process. The digital realm had opened up a whole new world of possibilities for us would-be auteurs so I acquired some heavy-duty movie editing software programs and went to work, completely re-fashioning the baker’s dozen original episodes into the package of ten half-hour programs available now, which I am taking to market. It’s a labor of love, aimed squarely at us fans of the genre.