31 Days of Horror: The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)

31 Days of Horror: The Shining

Against the Crowd Blogathon 2019: A Guest Post from Joel

Thursday Movie Picks: Museum

Thursday Movie Picks: Good Remakes

In with the New Blogathon: The Departed

Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel

Directed by Alex Stapleton.

2011. Rated R, 95 minutes.

Cast:

Roger Corman

Julie Corman

Jack Nicholson

Martin Scorsese

Peter Bogdanovich

Ron Howard

Peter Fonda

David Carridine

Robert De Niro

Jonathan Demme

William Shatner

Bruce Dern

Pam Grier

Eli Roth

Quentin Tarantino

With good reason, Roger Corman is known as the king of the B's, as in B movies. After all, he's had his hands on close to four hundred pictures as director and/or producer. It adds up to about fifty years of movies so bad they're awesome. Most of these were made on the cheap, filmed entirely in a handful of days or less. All but one, The Intruder turned a profit. The man knows what his audience wants and gives it to them. That's the easy assessment of Corman, the schlock-meister making money off a never ending succession of cinematic turds. However, as this documentary shows, that is an off-handed dismissal of a career that is immensely important to cinematic history.

True, Corman is a shrewd businessman who, to this day, is still churning out cheapos. Also true, his infamous guerilla-style filmmaking served as proving grounds for a number of Hollywood legends. Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorcese, Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme, James Cameron and Ron Howard all cut their teeth on his sets. Others he didn't technically "discover", but worked for him very early in their careers include Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Robert De Niro. There are many others, but you get the idea. In addition, he was instrumental in bringing the work of foreign masters such as Truffaut, Kurosawa and Fellini to the United States. Thereore, his legacy is much more about perseverance and the spirit of the auteur than it is about the types of movies he made. Corman's World is about a man who has taken a most unusual path to greatness.

Ranking the Batman Movies: #2

2. Batman

(1989)

Directed by Tim Burton

Batman…Michael Keaton

James Gordon…Pat Hingle 

Alfred…Michael Gough 

Vicki Vale…Kim Basinger 

Alexander Knox…Robert Wuhl 

Harvey Dent…Billy Dee Williams 

The Joker…Jack Nicholson 

Carl Grissom…Jack Palance 

Believe it or not, the prevailing thought in Hollywood was once that comic book movies don’t work. Sure, there were the Superman movies but they were the exceptions. Anything not involving the man of steel flopped at the box office. Worse yet, any studios interested in making a Batman movie wanted to make it along the lines of the 1966 movie. Eventually, in the early 80s it was agreed upon that The Caped Crusader deserved a big screen treatment more in line with the way the character was initially conceived by Bob Kane way back in 1939. By the end of the decade, director Tim Burton brought it all to life. Heading into theaters we were skeptical of noted comic actor Michael Keaton getting the lead role. Thankfully, he nailed it. However, as seems often to be the case, The Joker is really the star of the show. It’s pretty obvious he would be since he’s played by the world’s greatest Lakers’ fan, Jack Nicholson. The old pro gives us a Joker that’s part Cesar Romero and part Jack Torrance (his character in The Shining). Batman himself was appropriately humorless, as was the overall tone whenever Joker wasn’t on-screen. The most enduring part of this movie’s legacy is that it forever changed the way studios, critics and the public viewed comic book movies. Not only was it an event before it ever hit theaters, it lived up to the hype earned massive amounts of money and was generally praised by critics. The fact that superhero movies dominate the theaters every summer can be traced back to this film. By the way, it’s also given us what I consider to be the coolest Batmobile (if a bit impractically designed) and the best soundtrack (courtesy of Prince).