ROGER CORMAN: METAPHYSICS ON A SHOESTRING

Legendary producer/director Roger Corman is of course legendary for being a world-renowned cheapskate – he would wrap up a movie a few days ahead of schedule for instance, and then tell his screenwriter to quickly write a screenplay for another movie so that he can keep on using the rented sets for those remaining few days. 

Famously Corman once paid Sylvester Stallone’s salary for Death Race 2000 with T-shirts. Spaceship models and sets for his most expensive movie, Battle Beyond the Stars were re-used endlessly in other movies afterwards; in fact as long as the glue on the models probably lasted! His 1960 Black & White Little Shop of Horrors starring an as-yet-unknown Jack Nicholson (not to be confused with the 1980s expensive musical remake) was filmed in two days flat!

Despite being infamously cheap Corman also made some dreadfully bad movies; something you wouldn’t guess from this selection of descriptive essays though: authors Alain Silver and James Ursini considers Corman to be quite a serious film-maker and read all kinds of feminist and religious symbolism into his movies.

Authors Silver and Ursini make some thoughtful arguments and some of their statements are confirmed by Corman’s paragraph-long comments that follow each chapter, but overall it is rather difficult to swallow the concept that the guy who practically singe-handedly invented the exploitation B-movie and were only in it for the money had some social statement in mind while making his movies.

Still, Metaphysics on a Shoestring is so well-argued that I actually went to the bother of checking out some of the movies discussed in the book. Sure, they were bad and Silver and Ursini had it wrong, but making one check out some of Corman’s rotten movies is quite an accomplishment and attests as to how well-written the book is.
 

Roger Corman: Metaphysics On A Shoestring
by Alain Silver & James Ursini
Paperback: 332 pages
Language: English
ISBN: 1879505428
Silman James Press Los Angeles