Roger Corman is well-known for being a director and producer of over 300 low-budget films, many of them in the horror category. He is probably most famous for his adaptations of nine different Edgar Allen Poe stories. Between 1960 and 1964, Corman directed House of Usher, Pit and the Pendulum, The Premature Burial, Tales of Terror, The Raven, The Terror, The Haunted Palace, The Masque of the Red Death, and The Tomb of Ligeia. Seven of these films also starred the late, great Vincent Price, and established both Corman and Price in the genre.

Even more impressive is the fact that he churned out five other films during those four years. He's a movie-making machine, folks. Even today Corman continues to produce tons of "schlock" films, and is king of that genre even though he has only directed two films since 1971. He was an enormous influence on directors like Quentin Tarantino, who thrived on the many "Roger Corman presents" films that came out while he was growing up. Tarantino even has his own line of "Quentin Tarantino presents" films, and the upcoming Grind House owes part of its lineage to Corman's own Death Race 2000.

The Drkrm Gallery in Los Angeles hosts a special exhibition celebrating Corman's Edgar Allen Poe films, and will be open October 21st through November 18th. As a fan of bad puns, I had to use the tagline from Drkrm's page about the event: "We pay tribute to them, the legendary Roger Corman and the late Vincent Price with this exhibition of their greatest work together, the likes of which we will see ... NEVERMORE!"

[Thanks John]


Related stories:

Roger Corman on Death Race Remake

Disney Awash in Corman

Roger Corman Honored in Hawaii

Odds and ends from Friday and the weekend:

• In finalizing the cast for his part of Grind House (titled Death Proof), Quentin Tarantino has brought on Michael Bacall, newcomer Omar Doom and Eli Roth. Labeled a "slasher flick" and currently shooting in Austin, the three will star alongside Kurt Russell, Zoe Bell, Rosario Dawson and Rose McGowan, among others. Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror wrapped its production recently and Grind House (as a whole) is expected to invade theaters on April 6, 2007.
• 20th Century Fox has gone ahead and snatched up Adam Sztykiel's spec script Matchbreaker, with Shawn Levy to produce the comedy through his 21 Laps Entertainment. Though the plot is being kept a secret for now, it's vaguely being described as a "high-concept comedy about two guys and a girl set against a vibrant cultural backdrop, which we haven't seen in a movie before."
• Looking to add a bit more funny to their repertoire, the Weinstein Co. has signed a one-year, first-look deal with Underground Films and acquired the comedy pitch Rising Son for Underground to produce. Pic revolves around a "young American who proposes to his Japanese-American girlfriend just as they are traveling to visit her estranged family." While there, he must compete in a bunch of challenges in order to win the respect of his future father-in-law, a la Meet The Parents.

I remember when Steven Spielberg's Jaws first hit DVD, and one of the supplemental materials was a fantastic one-hour "making of" documentary that all the shark nerds were trashing. Why trashing? Because the doco was originally over two hours in length, but was trimmed in half for the DVD release. And then, five years later, Universal unleashed a 30th Anniversary Edition of Jaws that contained the entire documentary ... and it was good. (Very good, actually.)

But apparently not good enough for one particularly passionate group of Jaws fanatics, so after spending some time at the 30th Anniversary celebration at Marth'a Vineyard last year, they went out and decided to make their own Jaws documentary. And not only is the flick almost finished, but it's reported to clock in at about 3 hours in length! Yowza! What could a bunch of Jaws junkies use to fill three whole doco hours?

The first posters for Grind House have been popping up around the web for the past week or so, and whether you like them or not, it's hard to deny that they fit perfectly into the pulpy tone that's been created around the movie. So far there are three posters in the wild, two for Planet Terror (the Robert Rodriguez, zombie half of the film) and one for Death Proof (Quentin Tarantino's killer-car extravaganza); nothing has yet surfaced that promotes Grind House as a whole.

The two for Planet Terror are pretty fantastic, in an over-the-top sort of way. One features the previous-discussed image of Rose McGowan with a machine gun for a leg, and proclaims her "Fully loaded."; the other offers a shot of Marley Shelton with runny eye-liner, holding one of those scary-looking, old-school syringes by its metal grip, accompanied by the tagline "You might feel a little prick." On the other hand, rather than actually featuring imagery from the film, The Death Proof poster is a mock advertisement for a screening of ... itself (Oooh, meta!) at Austin's now-defunct Burnet Rd. Drive-In.

While I think all three posters are cool and all, they're really just another indication of how good Tarantino is with hype, and building expectations. As I've said in earlier posts on Grind House, the longer we go on with the vaguely troubled rumors, and without seeing any actual footage from the movie, the more worried I get about its quality. I'm hopeful, understand, just concerned.

According to Quentin Tarantino himself, Kurt Russell signed a contract last night to replace the AWOL Mickey Rourke (Word on the street is that he simply failed to show up for the shoot -- that's sure to help the career, Mick.) as Stunt Man Mike in Death Proof, QT's killer-car laden half of Grind House. (While this is certainly big news, imagine the movie for a second with Russell Simmons in the role. Because that's what my brain pictured when I first saw the headline -- tell me that wouldn't kick all kinds of bizarre ass.) Tarantino, not surprisingly, is characteristically excited about the deal, telling the assembled ComicCon masses, "Snake Plissken is one of the most iconic characters in the last 20 years, it's f*ckin' balls man. I think Stunt Man Mike is one of the best characters I've ever written." Balls, man! Balls.

In further Grind House news, fans were shown a clip of Planet Terror (for the two of you hearing about this for the first time, that's the Robert Rodriguez half of the movie) featuring, and I quote, "Rose McGowan wearing a machine gun leg." Needless to say, the crowd went bonkers.

Former Cinematical editor Karina Longworth is on the ground at ComicCon with her Netscape cohorts and, in addition to her posts from the event, she'll also be passing along interesting tidbits she picks up from the mouths of various horses. What follows are the bits and pieces from day one.

• As was rumored, Sin City 2 was, in fact, on hold, awaiting the birth of the sainted Jolie spawn. Now that little Shiloh has arrived, a start date of early 2007 has been penciled in.
• Planet Terror, the Robert Rodriguez-helmed half of Grind House, has wrapped; Quentin Tarantino's section, Death Proof, will start shooting in October. As expected, Rosario Dawson is appearing in both parts.
• In further Dawson news, in addition to a movie based on her comic books appearing about 12 months from now, we can also expect a video game within three years. Fanboys, commence the freak-out.
  

Stay tuned here for more updates, geek and otherwise; a Dawson interview will go up at Netscape tomorrow night.

Seven years ago, I showed up to my first day of work at a brand new job with sh*t smeared up and down the back of my clothing. Yes, sh*t. The real kind. The smelly kind. Till this day, I have no idea how it found its way onto my clothes. Did I lean up against something on the train? Did someone smear it on me as part of an elaborate practical joke? I don't know. However, I didn't notice it until five minutes before the start of the work day. In five minutes, the office would be filled with people I had never met in my life. In five minutes, my new boss would arrive to show me around and introduce me to the staff. In five minutes, life as I knew it could come to an end.

Everyone has an embarrassing story to tell. More often than not, these stories end with you brainstorming several different excuses to somehow justify whatever humiliating event just slapped you across the face. Yes, it sucks. And for a brief period of time, you want to hide. You want to disappear. You want so badly for a time machine to exist -- rewind the clock, avoid everything. However, life doesn't work out that way. We have to accept things. We have to move on. Sh*t happens.

In an instant, I ran to the bathroom. There I was, on my first day of work right out of college, standing over a sink in my boxer shorts, feverishly trying to wipe sh*t off my clothes. I wouldn't wish this situation upon even my worst enemies. So, I did the best I could do and used a lot of soap. I spent the remainder of the day meeting several managers and employees, with the first words out of mouth being, "Oh, by the way -- if you smell sh*t, it's me." True story.

Thanks to everyone for sending in shorts for this week! Without your help, I'd feel so alone and scared. Oh, and speaking of feeling scared, next week I am going to focus on the horror genre. Your assignment: Find me some spooky scary short film, tell me why you think it rocks and send all links to shorts at cinematical dot com. If I sh*t my pants, perhaps I'll throw it into next week's edition of Eat My Shorts. Got it? Good. Let's go watch some shorts ...

According to a couple of recent stories over at Moviehole, casting for Grind House is undergoing a bit of a shake-up. The big news is that Mickey Rourke, previously expected to star as Stuntman Mike (he drives a killer car, you may recall) in Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino's half of the film, is now off the project. In addition, there's word that QT himself will bring his acting "talent" to a small role in Planet Terror, Robert Rodriguez's zombie-fied segment of the movie. The rumor is that his character is "The Rapist," a moniker that I'm sure has the shock-loving QT salivating. (It has me thinking about the SNL sketch in which Sean Connery thinks "Therapists" is "The rapists," but then I'm a sucker for those Jeopardy! sketches.)

I don't know about you, but I'm starting to wonder about Grind House. I know some of the rumors -- particularly those about the whole thing shutting down -- have turned out to be false, but it's nevertheless starting to look like a huge mess. It's one thing for a couple of guys who love genre films to get together and decide to make a cool-sounding collaboration. It's quite another, however, to actually bring the thing to fruition with any degree of success. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm increasingly of the opinion that the sucker has disaster written all over it.

Looks like some people are so stoked about their film that the word 'sequel' keeps spitting out of their mouth even though production on the first film isn't done yet. While speaking to MTV, Robert Rodriguez claimed there was enough coolness in Grind House to sport a part two and he's already got plenty of ideas running around his head.

With shooting finally taking place on his half of Grind House (titled Planet Terror), Rodriguez seemed fixated on the small, fake trailers supposedly placed in between his film and Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof. Funny, we've heard more about these trailers than the actual films themselves. Why do I feel like that's a bad thing? Anyway, Rodriguez thinks the trailers are so good, they may even be used for the sequel -- meaning, I imagine, that the fake film will ultimately become real. Not much is known about these trailers, only that Danny Trejo appears in one of them. According to the Sin City director, along with the Trejo one, there's another trailer that's "huge." With shooting almost done on Planet Terror, Death Proof will probably begin its production this fall with Grind House reportedly hitting theaters in the spring. However, I'd think more along the lines of early summer.

[via JoBlo]

Although Robert Rodriguez has a somewhat ... tenuous reputation with certain elements of Hollywood, it's hard to find anything but praise coming from those who have worked with him. Particularly, it seems like nearly everyone who worked on Sin City with Rodriguez and his power-player buddy Frank Miller is anxious to return for a second try. Those who aren't in the new script have expressed regret, and those who are generally bubble with excitement. The latest to chime in on the "can't wait to get back to it" list is Michael Clarke Duncan, who played Manute in Sin City.

In an interview with Empire, Duncan was asked about returning, and he explained the whole "Sin City novels don't really go in chronological order and neither will the movies, which means dying in movie one does not prevent being in movie two" deal, which we've heard from practically everyone involved with the movies. Is there really anyone out there who doesn't get it at this point? If so, hopefully Duncan cleared it up for you. His reaction to being asked about Rodriguez was "I love the way Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez direct. They're like the coolest guys you'd wanna meet, so I gotta go back to that."

Ok, you know those rumors about Arnold Schwarzenegger returning for the latest Conan the Barbarian sequel? And how it's going to be called King Conan: Crown of Iron, and might be directed by the Wachowski brothers? Well, the people at Warner Brothers are now talking on the record about the project, but the only mention of the above rumors in their release is a debunking of the Wachowski thing -- they're officially not involved (and neither, for that matter, is Robert Rodriguez, whose brief stint in the Conan-rumor spotlight we shamefully missed).

According to this morning's Variety, WB have hired long-time Conan fan Boaz Yakin (sure, he directed Remember the Titans, but he also wrote Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, and that's what really matters) to write the screenplay for the apparently unnamed sequel, and the thought it is that he will direct, as well. The latest word on the movie is that it will actually mark a return to the way creator Robert E. Howard envisioned Conan in his 1930s stories, rather than a revival of the character Schwarzenegger made famous in the 1980s. Even though the plot is now apparently totally different than had been rumored, the release goal of late 2007 remains the same.

Since most of us know Conan entirely from the movies, it's be great to hear from any of you who are familiar with Howard's original character concept -- how different is he from Ahnold's musclebound beast?

Lost star Naveen Andrews, who hasn't had a good movie role since he was the best thing about The English Patient (unless, of course, you count his star turn in TV movie The Chippendales Murder, which I'm sure was stellar), has signed on to appear in Planet Terror, the Robert Rodriguez-helmed half of Grind House. Whether that will break his streak of unmemorable roles is anyone's guess, but it will give him a chance to hang out with zombies, something every honest actor will tell you is a career goal. According to a Grind House producer (tracked down and interrogated by Variety), Andrews will play "a badass military scientist," so he might actually get to kill some zombies, too! Also, I'd like to officially guess right now that he's going to come to a grisly end, possibly involving the eating of his flesh. Just a wild guess, of course, but come on -- scientists in zombie movies always bite it.

The movie, which is due to start shooting (again) in Texas this summer, is due out next April.

The 1984 film Silent Night, Deadly Night is a typical Eighties horror movie, considered controversial upon release because the killer dressed up as Santa Claus. The first 10 minutes of the film are truly the best part, and this is due almost entirely to character actor Will Hare, today's featured scene stealer.

It's Christmas Eve, and little Billy is accompanying his parents to visit Grandpa (Hare), who is in a nursing home and never speaks or seems to move. Grandpa is so harmless that the parents leave Billy alone in the room with him while they discuss matters with the doctor. Suddenly Grandpa springs to life. He warns the boy that Santa Claus doesn't just bring presents to good children -- he punishes the naughty ones. "You see Santa Claus tonight, you better run for your life, boy!" Little Billy is terrified ... and by the time the parents return, Grandpa has reverted to his catatonic state.

So, it turns out that reports of Grind House's demise were greatly exaggerated. Either that, or Robert Rodriguez and Dimension Films are in complete denial, because they've just officially announced the cast (much of which has already been revealed by glorious internet rumors) for Planet Terror, Rodriguez's segment of the film -- guess he didn't quit, huh? According to Variety, in addition to Rose McGowan and Michael Biehn (both of whom we already knew about), the movie will star Freddy Rodríguez, Josh Brolin, Jeff Fahey, and that great thespian Fergie, from Black Eyed Peas (who knew a roll in an epic bomb would lead to more work?).

Just to review, Rodriguez's film is scary and involves zombies. And that's pretty much all we know -- but hey, who doesn't like zombies? If all goes well and no more directors "quit" or anything, Dimension plans to release Grind House next April, during the long Easter Weekend.

Why did Robert Rodriguez quit Grindhouse? The latest rumor on the block says its because the man is (finally) interested in making action happen on his movie adaptation of the comic Madman. Rodriguez has possessed movie rights to the property since the dawn of time (or at least the late nineties), and periodically rumors begin to circulate about him getting behind the camera for a Madman flick. These rumors surface every year or so, and thus far have always proven false -- but they are back again, this time with the help of Madman's comic creator Mike Allred. Allred recently mentioned to a large convention crowd that Rodriguez is set to start filming this very month, and that he (Allred) himself has been busily at work on "hundreds of storyboards."

Exciting news? Yes. I, like most comic geeks, love the Madman property and have been eagerly awaiting the film since it first entered the rumor realm several years ago. Rodriguez's success with Sin City gave his comic book credentials real legitimacy, and it has been said he plans on doing the co-director deal with Allred just like he did with Miller. We can only hope the union will prove as glorious.