Review for Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel

Introduction

Would you watch a Roger Corman movie? There was a brief period in my mid to late teens when my answer would have been no. I was for a moment, a movie snob, eschewing anything that didn't come from mainstream Hollywood and didn't have a multi-million dollar budget. But the thing about movies is that most people note the director, and they note the stars, but rarely do they remember the producers. If you look at Roger Corman's filmography on IMDB, he has a staggering 400 producer credits. Even when I was sticking to the mainstream, I had still seen Battle Beyond the Stars and Space Raiders.


The thing with Roger Corman is that he quickly became synonymous with cheap and cheerful, low budget exploitation films. Even today he's producing films like Dinoshark and Sharktopus for Sy-fy, while back in the fifties he was making films like The Brain-Eaters and Attack of the Crab Monsters. It's a trend that has perhaps unfairly labelled him the King of the Bs, or the Master of Schlock. It's unfair because early on, he found and targeted an audience that mainstream Hollywood at the time was ignoring, the teenager, and he fed their appetites for rebellion, exploitation and anarchy.


More importantly, he brings films in on a low budget, efficiently, and quickly, and very few of his films have failed to make a profit. That kind of work ethic has to be admired, and even more important than the legacy of the films that he has made, there is the legacy of people that he has worked with, has mentored, and who have subsequently gone on to become big in Hollywood. Many of these luminaries come together in Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel to pay tribute to the producer, who was finally recognised by the mainstream when he received a lifetime achievement Academy Award in 2009.


This documentary recounts Roger Corman's amazing career from the moment he walked away from mainstream Hollywood, disillusioned with the studio system, to the current day. It explores how he invented and constantly reinvented independent cinema, explores some of his better known films, as well as some the hidden gems, and how he championed the distribution of foreign and art house cinema. It features recent and archive interviews with Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Joe Dante, Quentin Tarantino, Jonathan Demme, Peter Fonda, Peter Bogdanovich, William Shatner and many more.

The Disc

Corman's World is presented on a dual layer DVD with animated menus, where the sole extra is the film's trailer. The 1.78:1 anamorphic image is clear and sharp enough for the modern interviews, although the quality of the image is dependent on the state of the archive material, some of it of VHS quality. Audio comes in DD 5.1 and DD 2.0 flavour, although there aren't any subtitles.

There is also a Blu-ray release of the film on the same day.

Conclusion

This is a gem of a documentary that all film fans need to see. It's both educational and entertaining, taking us on a breakneck tour of Roger Corman's amazing career, with highlights from some of his remarkable films, and interviews with many of the countless personalities that he has influenced and helped over the years in their own careers. It also makes you want to re-evaluate his filmography. As Jack Nicholson states in the film, most of the Corman films were forgettable, but every now and again there would be a pearl. It's also a reminder that there's a reason why there is an audience for cheap, schlocky exploitation films, and that before you turn your nose up at something like Sharktopus, you should take a look at Corman's films as producer to see just what guilty pleasure of yours may lurk there. Mine is Death Race 2000.


It's also educational in just how important Corman has been for the film industry. As well as championing the cause of independent cinema, he discovered and catered to the teenage demographic in the fifties and sixties, and with the coming of the ratings system, he sated the public's desire for exploitation films. Perhaps more important even than the box office, is his work ethic. Low budget films brought in on time, and on budget, where not a second, not a metre of film is wasted, is an admirable talent, especially when most of his films turn a profit. It's when you see the list of names that got their breaks on Corman pictures that the mind begins to boggle. Actors like Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, David Carradine, William Shatner, Pam Grier, directors like Jonathan Demme, Peter Bogdanovich, Francis Ford Copolla, Jim Cameron, Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese... No Apollo 13, no Godfather movies, no Terminator, no Silence of the Lambs. The history of Hollywood would be markedly different.


What was also news to me was just how Corman championed foreign cinema when mainstream Hollywood was turning away from it in the seventies. It was his company that distributed the films of Kurosawa, Bergman, Fellini, and Truffaut, and scanning his filmography I was surprised, and delighted to find a producer credit for him on Galaxy Express 999. Years before anyone else did it, Corman brought an anime feature film to the US, dubbed it into English, and released it theatrically.


If there is one thing to take away from Corman's World, it's that we need more filmmakers like Roger Corman, now more than ever. It's almost obscene the amount of money mainstream Hollywood pours into movies these days, and the most horrific irony of it all is that they are making 'Roger Corman' movies, and they've been doing so ever since 1976, with the advent of Jaws and Star Wars. These 'Roger Corman' films have big stars, bigger production values, and biggest of all are the budgets. Hollywood as it is now is just like the financial services industry before the crash, too big to fail. They spend hundreds of millions of dollars making a movie, and even more promoting it. They whack 3D on it to eke more money out, and because they can't afford for it to fail, they fill up the multiplexes, they market aggressively, and they drive out the competition. US Independent cinema may as well be dead; it's become US Independent straight to DVD, straight to cable, or straight to online streaming. But it's the independent filmmakers that can afford to experiment, can afford to innovate, and more importantly will become the backbone of Hollywood in years to come. Without more Roger Cormans to nurture these talents, the future for Hollywood looks bleak.