Roger Corman

Angels Hard as They Come

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Scott Glenn as Long John

Hippies! Bikers! Bikers! Hippies! They’re not really the same thing but 1971’s Angels Hard as They Come (aka Angel Warriors) doesn’t care. Get the women to take their clothes off now and again, add in some yowling rock boogie. Long hair! Marijuana! Yay – we got ourselves an exploitationer. Of course it’s a Roger Corman movie, since he specialised in vibe-adjacent movies designed to squeeze a dollar from the latest fad. Here he’s working off the back of Easy Rider and, as was Corman’s trick, he’s got some good people in to assist. This was the first movie Jonathan Demme wrote, along with his mate from advertising Joe Viola, who took on directing … Read more

Last Woman on Earth

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Betsey Jones-Moreland aka the last woman on earth

Chinatown is what the writer Robert Towne will be remembered for, rather than Last Woman on Earth, a cheap and short B movie cranked out by one-man movie-making machine Roger Corman in 1960. But it’s worth a look, not just because it was Towne’s first screenplay but also because he acts in it, under the alias Edward Wain. The screenplay is credited to Towne, though, which says a lot about where his priorities lie. Corman and Towne open the action at a cock fight in Puerto Rico, where rich but dodgy businessman Harold Gern and bored trophy wife Evelyn meet Harold’s accountant, Martin Joyce (Towne). While the men chat, Corman’s camera lingers on … Read more

Dementia 13

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Luana Anders as interloper Louise

So, a Francis Ford Coppola movie with significant action taking place on a boat. That would be Dementia 13 (aka The Haunted and the Hunted), the director’s first mainstream movie (if we’re ignoring sexploitationers The Bellboy and the Playgirls and Tonight for Sure). Make me something that’s a bit Psycho-esque was producer Roger Corman’s instruction to Coppola, who had already been working with Corman in Ireland on 1963’s The Young Racers. There was money left over from that film, so Corman gave it to Coppola, and lent him the cast and crew from The Young Racers to make his film. The only significant other instruction was that the finished movie needed to have … Read more

The Raven

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Artwork for the original poster of The Raven

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 23 November Boris Karloff born, 1887 On this day in 1887, the great horror actor Boris Karloff was born. Disappointingly, his birth name was William Henry Pratt and he wasn’t born in some Carpathian cave but in the inner suburb of Lewisham, South London. A well educated young man with a lisp and a stutter, he dropped out while training to become a functionary of the British Empire and instead took to farm labouring before becoming an actor. He took the name Boris Karloff while in travelling repertory theatre in Canada, and after arriving in Hollywood he played a number of … Read more