Oh, well, back to work today.
Roger Corman, following having directed (not even counting films he produced) 23 movies in six years, moved into the futuristic new decade of the 1960s. Sensing the market was shifting, he went to AIP, who was generally spending two hundred thousand for a pair of black and white movies at this point. However, signs were starting to appear that the tastes of the drive-in / teen audience were starting to change.
Corman, with his record of success, was able to convince them to let him spend that SUPER HUGE two hundred grand on one film, a color one with an actual star. He proposed to make an Edgar Allan Poe adaptation of The Fall of the House of Usher starring Vincent Price. AIP was mostly convinced, if nervous, but asked the obvious question (one Corman himself learned with the original cut of The Beast with a Million Eyes), “Where’s the monster?”
Corman, ready for the question, quickly responded, “The House is the monster.”
Anyway, he got their approval and history was changed.
Watch Party on Friday.
