Quite possibly the most successful producer Hollywood has ever known as his autobiography, How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime, attests, Roger Corman is a legend in the business. His name is synonymous with low-budget B-movies, most notably Little Shop of Horrors (1960), which is rumored to have been shot over two days.
Even though most of his work doesn’t do much to raise the art form, he deserves a place in film history solely for providing apprenticeships to many who have, including Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Peter Bogdanovich, Jonathan Demme, Gale Ann Hurd, Joe Dante, James Cameron, and John Sayles. Aside from the hundreds of films he has produced, Corman directed over 50 films from 1955 to 1971. The Roger Corman Collection presents eight of them, which are thematically paired up, on four discs.
The first disc presents a double feature of films that looks at the hippie culture. Gas-s-s-s (1971) was Corman's antepenultimate directing job and his final film for distributor American International Pictures before leaving to found New World Pictures. The premise is a great idea for the counterculture youth market of the time as a gas created by the government is accidentally released and kills everyone over 25. With no adults, chaos inevitably ensues. The two leads, Coel and Cilla, try to find a peaceful way of life, but they run into odd groups like a town run by football jocks, and a group of bikers, led by a guy named Marshal McLuhan, that live on a county club golf course.
While the story is very weird, the film is well shot. Corman makes a lot of good choices as director that keep the movie interesting. The music was by Country Joe and the Fish and some future famous faces appear in supporting roles: Ben Vereen, Cindy Williams, Talia Shire, and Bud Cort
The flipside is The Trip (1967) written by Jack Nicholson. Based on Corman and Nicholson’s experiences with the drug, it is one of the better attempts to portray an acid trip on film in its depiction of discovery and exploration as well as paranoia. It made me wish I had taken something a couple of hours beforehand.
Commercial director Paul Groves, played by Peter Fonda, starring in his second film for Corman, is going through a divorce. While I can’t imagine that being a good mindset to start the proceedings, his friend John, played by Bruce Dern (in a role Nicholson was hoping to get), guides him until he runs away. Dennis Hooper appears as Max, the drug dealer, and Dick Miller makes one of his many appearances in the set.
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