Introduction to Roger Corman: King of the B's

Hi everyone and welcome to the Chauvel Cinematheque for this Roger Corman double feature. Roger Corman began his career as a director reknown for delivering fast, cheap B-movies for American International Pictures and his own company Filmgroup, before largely retiring from directing to establish New World Pictures and later New Horizons.

Corman is best known as a producer and mentor to what became known as the film school generation of American cinema. By equal parts accident and acumen, Corman became a sort of Godfather of the American independent cinema. The role call of talent Corman mentored is well known (Coppola, Scorsese, Bogdanovich, etc.), but it wasn’t until they escaped from Corman’s monsters/bikinis/rock 'n' roll aesthetic that they could make truly personal and interesting films.
First up today is a rare screening of Hollywood’s Wild Angel, a 1978 documentary that features extensive clips from Corman's films as well as testimonials from his many and various better known proteges, including a very wired looking Martin Scorsese.

Following this is the 1957 film, Rock All Night, directed by Corman, written by Charles B. Griffith and starring Dick Miller, Jonathan Haze and Mel Welles. This team together comprised a sort of ensemble behind Corman’s best films, The Little Shop of Horrors and Bucket of Blood.

Corman regular Dick Miller (above) was hardly leading man material, however his range as an actor made him a key figure in Corman's repertory. As adept at playing a tough guy as he was an ordinary schlub, his work with Corman made him a cult star. After this turn in Rock All Night, Miller was so impressed with his own performance, he took out a full page ad in trade paper Variety touting his acting chops, but outside of Corman’s films, his appearances were largely confined to bit parts in Joe Dante’s films, Gremlins, The Howling etc.

Jonathan Haze, who appears here as a thug, was also a versatile actor, and is best known for his role as the nebbish in Corman’s best known film Little Shop of Horrors. Mel Welles, who also appeared in Little Shop... as Haze’s boss and nemesis, Gravis Mushnik, here plays beatnik impressario Sir Bop, a part originally written by Griffith for his friend, jazz eccentric Lord Buckley, which accounts for the almost non-stop hep-talk. When Buckley became unavailable, Welles took on the part. Griffiths called Welles the most inventive actor he’d worked with – on a par with Jack Nicholson.

While Corman is widely praised for his abilities as a mentor and a producer, his skill as a director is his ability to keep the story moving and the action interesting. Apart from his knack for pacing and a bare-bones but effective visual style, his reputation as a director is largely based on the qualities that made him a great producer – his ability to put together an interesting cast and crew. The real genius behind his best films is neglected sidekick Charles B. Griffith, who wrote all of Corman’s best films – Little Shop of Horrors, Bucket of Blood, Creature from the Haunted Sea, Not of this Earth, It Conquered the World, and later The Trip, Wild Angels and Death Race 2000. The off-beat wit and jazzy dialogue of Griffith’s scripts combined with the verve of Corman's direction transcended the low budget limitations of these films and made them the classics they are today.

When Quentin Tarantino was asked who his favourite screenwiriter was, he replied without hesitation, Charles B. Griffith. The hip talk and jazz like perambulations of Griffith's work in Rock All Night and the other films I mentioned are echoed in Tarantino’s acclaimed work. In the famous Jack Rabbit Slims sequence in Pulp Fiction, Tarantino pays homage to his inspiration by having a poster for Rock All Night featured prominently in the background, while the title page of his screenplay for Kill Bill carries a dedication to Griffith.

Like many of Corman’s films, Rock All Night is a patchwork of ideas and even other films. Always on the lookout for the fastest and cheapest way to make a film, Corman often used footage from other people's movies, added some outtakes and/or reused scenes from his own back catalogue, then shot new footage to try and make sense of it all. This Frankensteinian approach, or sampling if you like, creates a marvellously disorientating and delirious effect on the viewer.

For Rock All Night, Corman bought an hour of musical footage of The Platters, who had just had a big hit with Only You, The Blockbusters and Norah Hayes. Needing some way to recontextualise the footage, Corman bought the remake rights to an Emmy award winning TV drama, The Little Guy, and had Griffith rewrite the script to acommodate the music footage. The results await you today in Rock All Night.