Posts by Ken Begg

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…

Roger Corman got super lazy in 1959, directing only three films that year. What a slugabed. I mean, he directed 20 films in the four years prior to that. One of the 1959 films was one of his classics, though, A Bucket of Blood, starring Dick Miller and setting the making of the satirical…

1958 saw Corman expanding his range a bit, to sometimes dubious results. Aside from his Viking epic he made Teenage Caveman, with the weirdly suave Robert Vaughn (shades of George Hamilton playing Evel Kneivel) at 26 playing the titular hero. The film has a Rod Serling twist at the end. Was there a (presumably…

After producing / directing eight films in 1957, Roger Corman took a break. He only directed five films that year, and only also produced three of those. What a slacker. (Although he also produced Night of the Blood Beast, which he didn't direct.) I think he spent the time he wasn't directing two films…

The Devil you say. Is there a weirder indie genre film of the '50s than Roger Corman's The Undead? The fact that Corman knew he could make money with this film--because he wouldn't have made it otherwise--proves that he respected his audience more than most of those toiling in the same fields. We watched…

So here we get Corman's take on a giant monster movie. As you might expect from a Corman cheapie, the script is extremely weird. This is mostly remembered, of course, for Paul Blaisdell's fantastic giant crab prop. Happy Friday, everyone. Watch something stupid this weekend. Also, Watch Party tonight. Wheeee!

It's crazy that Corman produced eight movies in 1957, but that he produced and directed eight movies that year is insane. Obviously sci-fi and horror were working for him, because three of the eight films were sci-fi or horror. I'm counting the highly idiosyncratic The Undead, which, man, it's hard to see anyone but…

Roger Corman directed (and produced, although he produced more) three films in 1955, including The Day The World Ended, which we featured yesterday. In 1956, he direct four films (and produced more), including his second monster movie, the much loved It Conquered the World with Peter Graves and Lee Van Cleef and Beverly Garland.…