Almost any documentary on Roger Corman would be fascinating, and Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel, directed by Alex Stapleton, is certainly that. It has three things going for it: the most important is that the soft-spoken, authoritative Corman is still alive at age 85, and he's an excellent, captivating storyteller. The second is that most of the people Corman worked with love him and volunteered to be interviewed here, including such slippery characters as Jack Nicholson (who actually chokes up while talking about his old pal). The third is an awesome collection of clips from a wide range of "B" movies, encompassing horror, blaxploitation, sci-fi, Westerns, comedies, dramas, black-and-white, and color, with big stars and no-names.
If that's not enough it includes footage of Corman at work, producing one of his more recent movies, Dinoshark. And it ends with footage of Corman's honorary Oscar win in 2009. It's journalistically satisfying, more than competent, and very lucky. For any movie fan, it's compulsively watchable. But it could have been still more.
After an unsuccessful military stint, Corman began producing movies in 1954 and to date he has produced over 400 movies, videos, and TV shows. In 1955, he also began directing -- probably as a way to save money -- and racked up a list of over 50 movies. Many of these are among the worst movies ever made, but some are amazing, and the list is still fascinating. It starts with Westerns, racecar movies, rock 'n' roll movies, and monster movies, but it gets more interesting. There's Charles Bronson's first starring role, then The Intruder, the Poe films, the black comedies, The Trip, and others.
It's true that Corman's ultimate achievements will be historical rather than artistic. He established a business model that has yet to be emulated or equaled. He hired an astonishing series of young artists and launched enough talent into the stratosphere to populate the entire industry: Francis Ford Coppola, Monte Hellman, Jack Hill, Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson (who also worked as a writer), Jonathan Demme, Peter Bogdanovich, Joe Dante, Robert Towne, and many others.
But this underestimates the movies, and a more critical approach to Corman's 50+ films -- not to mention the masterpieces he produced for others -- could have been useful. The documentary celebrates The Intruder as Corman's most socially conscious movie, but doesn't go into why it's an artistic or a personal success. And it talks a little about the advances he made on the Poe movies, but it could have gone deeper into their creative use of widescreen and color to depict dread and loss.
These complaints are small, however. Corman's World is meant for mainstream viewers and newcomers, and any passionate movie fan will love it. Anchor Bay released the Blu-Ray, and it comes with extended interview footage (for some reason Eli Roth wormed his way into this production), and "special messages" to Corman, as well as a trailer. It might have been fun to include one of Corman's actual movies as a bonus feature -- especially one of the ones that are hard to find -- but you can't have everything.
Arriving in conjunction with the documentary, Camel Spiders is unfortunately not one of Corman's more notable movies.
It's yet another in a series of monster hybrid movies made for the Syfy Channel, but this one lacks even the benefit of a silly title. It's actually focused on a real creature, a huge spider-like creature that has been hassling soldiers in the Middle East. An army captain (Brian Krause) returns to the U.S. with the body of his fallen comrade. Unbeknownst to anyone, a couple of spiders have hitched a ride on the corpse. Within hours, they have multiplied and spread across the southwest, killing random batches of teens.
The captain and a local sheriff (C. Thomas Howell), accompanied by several travelers and waitresses, try to find places to hide and attack the beasties the best they can.
Co-written and directed by Jim Wynorski -- under one of his pseudonyms "Jay Andrews" -- the movie mostly suffers from insipid dialogue and paper-thin characters. The two big draws would otherwise have been the women and the beasts. While there are cute girls onscreen, there's no real sexuality or nudity, and the visual effects are incredibly cheap looking.
It's too bad Camel Spiders couldn't have been more fun, but at least it does contain some factoids about this real-life monster.
Anchor Bay released the Blu-Ray. Quality is excellent, but no extras.
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