CULT HERO/Roger Corman:What wonderful cinema schlock mogul Roger Corman might have produced, if only he hadn't been feverishly obsessed with the bottom-line. Alas, Corman's allegiance to mammon was so absolute he could not countenance questions of taste or quality getting in the way of a healthy profit.
That Corman, now nudging 80 and drifting towards retirement, was a gifted film-maker is beyond dispute. Witness the taut, lustrous Edgar Allan Poe adaptations he shot in the mid 1960s, exquisitely macabre tableaux that usurped the quaint conventions of contemporary horror. Or thrill to his visceral - though never nastily excessive - 1970s output, hyper-kinetic low-budget romps that paved the way for modern hipsters such as Tarantino and Stone.
He famously nurtured future heavy hitters, including Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme and Ron Howard, hiring them for peanuts to work on his movies such as Dementia 13, Caged Heat and Grand Theft Auto. Corman even flogged art house to middle America, hawking cheap Herzog and Bergman reels to bargain-hungry drive-in owners.
Lamentably however, we shall remember him as the demon prince of exploitica, a penny pinching huckster who made millions by pandering to his audience's basest instincts.
Blame Corman for the 1960s bikini flick craze instincts (be thankful if you've never had to sit through The Wasp Women or Sorority Girl - irony won't save you). Bemoan his disdain for prissy conceits such as plot, dialogue and script. And pity those blossoming talents who fell into his clutches and didn't make it out the other side.
For all his oily charisma, Corman was a ruthless operator. Writers, actors and directors unwilling to cleave to his quick-fire schedules (he completed principal shooting on Little Shop of Horrors in two days) seldom worked in the business again.
Pulp writer Harry Adam Knight recalls with dismay the hammering inflicted upon his reputation when Corman reworked his well-regarded novel, Carnosaur into a clunky Jurassic Park rip off. The project almost derailed the young novelist's promising career.
Drawn by the Republic's generous tax breaks for movie makers, Corman opened a Galway studio in 1995. It churned out derivative sludge such as Detonator (Luc Besson's assassin thriller, Leon, as reimagined by Ed Wood, according to one critic) and The White Pony (a vehicle for kick-boxing star Olivier Grunner). They stank up the screen but, like everything touched by Corman, turned a tidy profit.
Edward Power