10. ‘Rock All Night’ (1957) Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection A memorable early film from Corman, ‘Rock All Night’ sets a hardboiled crime drama to a bopping rock n’ roll score. Dick Miller, Corman’s most frequent collaborator, stars as the unnamed hero, a short man with an inferiority complex who becomes the unexpected hero when he’s forced to save a teen bar from two convicted killers who hold the place hostage. At a mere 61 minutes, it’s not exactly the most substantive of Corman’s films, but it has verve and excitement between its great music and Miller’s great embittered performance. The film’s also notable as one of the projects Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez would later cite as an inspiration for ‘Grindhouse.’
9. ‘The Trip’ (1967) Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection An early precursor to ‘Easy Rider,’ ‘The Trip’ is, as you might expect from a movie released during the late ’60s, not about a vacation; it’s about an LSD trip, starring Peter Fonda as a man who takes his first dose of acid after separating from his wife. The film, which features a Jack Nicholson script, is an extended look at his wandering journey during the trip across all of Los Angeles. Corman did research by taking LSD for the first time himself, and his experiences are reflected in the film’s hazy, volatile atmosphere, which oscillates between sunny and nightmarish. Like ‘The Wild Angels,’ ‘The Trip’ also serves as a precursor to ‘Easy Rider,’ with Dennis Hopper appearing in the movie alongside Fonda.
8. ‘The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre’ (1967) Image Credit: ©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection With a budget hovering around $2 million and a seven-week shoot, ‘The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre’ wasn’t exactly an epic. But compared to most Corman films, greenlit by 20th Century Fox after the success of ‘The Wild Angels,’ the project was practically extravagant, to the degree that Corman expressed discontent at the ‘wastefulness’ of the major studios and delivered the film early and about $400,000 below budget. The film tells the story of the infamous 1929 mass murder of Chicago’s Northside gang, orchestrated by Al Capone (played excellently by an over-the-top Jason Robards). Corman shoots the film in a near-documentary style, resulting in an intriguing and unusually historically accurate dive into the circumstances surrounding the mob violence.
7. ‘The Little Shop of Horrors’ (1960) Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection At this point, ‘The Little Shop of Horrors’ has been upstaged thoroughly in the public consciousness by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s beloved musical adaptation, which spawned a popular film, enjoys a long-running off-Broadway production, and remains a favorite for high school and community theaters everywhere. But while the musical is definitively better, that doesn’t take away from how much of a vicious delight the original is. Anyone who’s seen the musical knows the story of nebbish Seymour (Jonathan Haze) and his man-eating plant Audrey II, but Corman’s film — shot in just two days — is a considerably meaner and edgier take on the story, giving little reason to empathize with Seymour as he sinks lower and lower as a result of maintaining his devil plant. Like a lot of Corman films though, the highlight is Nicholson, who has a scene-stealing role as a sadomasochist who loves going to the dentist.
6. ‘X: The Man With the X-Ray Eyes’ (1963) Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection Sure, ‘X: The Man With the X-Ray Eyes’ has a ridiculous title, ridiculous special effects, and just a ridiculous premise, but that’s just all part of its charm, isn’t it? The story of a mad scientist who invents eye drops that give x-ray vision, ‘X’ is a surprisingly psychological tale, following the foolish inventor at the center as he slowly descends into madness. What really makes the film stand out from Corman’s other projects is that this mad scientist is played by Ray Milland, best known today for winning an Oscar for ‘The Lost Weekend.’ Milland is an excellent actor, and he provides some pathos and grandeur that makes for an absorbing tragedy.
5. ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ (1961) Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection Corman’s most famous films nowadays are probably his Poe cycle, which faithfully adapted short stories from horror pioneer Edgar Allan Poe. ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ is the second and, like most of the films, features a delicious performance from Vincent Price at the center. He plays mysterious Spanish nobleman Nicholas, who entertains his brother-in-law Francis (John Kerr) at his lavish castle shortly after the death of his wife. Francis is convinced that Nicholas was responsible for his sister’s death, and his poking around unearths shocking horror in the castle. Shot in visually sumptuous color, ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ personifies most of the high points of the Poe films, between its rich gothic atmosphere, genuine scares, and the deft camp that Price brings to the proceedings.
4. ‘The Wild Angels’ (1966) Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection Imagine, if you will, Peter Fonda clad in leather, zipping along a long stretch of highway in a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Yes, you’re probably thinking of ‘Easy Rider.’ But before ‘Easy Rider,’ there was Corman’s ‘The Wild Angels,’ the film that kicked off the biker film trend three years before ‘Easy Rider’ came out. Fonda is cast as the president of the Heavenly Blues biker gang as they track down the stolen vehicle of one of their members, and the film is unusually starry for a Corman production: Nancy Sinatra, Bruce Dern, and Diane Ladd all costar, while behind the scenes Peter Bogdanovich contributed to the script. But the film still feels deeply rooted in the subculture it was birthed from, with real Hell’s Angels members serving as extras on the quest for justice.
3. ‘A Bucket of Blood’ (1959) Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection One of Corman’s earliest breakout films, ‘A Bucket of Blood’ features a razor-sharp satirical script from Charles B. Griffith that lampoons beatnik culture and the creative struggle. Dick Miller plays a kind but dim busboy who accidentally kills his landlady’s cat and covers the body in clay to hide his tracks. The clay sculpture earns him unexpected rave reviews from the artsy clientele at his bar, and when he feels the pressure to make some new work, he turns to a life of bloodshed and murder. Featuring one of the sharpest scripts of any Corman film, ‘A Bucket of Blood’ is a fiendishly funny dark comedy, and features perhaps Miller’s best, most open-hearted performance.
2. ‘The Intruder’ (1962) Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection Possibly the most somber film in the entire Corman canon, ‘The Intruder’ doesn’t feature any overt horror elements, but it is easily the director’s most frightening film. William Shatner, pre-James T. Kirk, plays charismatic outsider Cramer, who arrives in the Southern town of Caxton, where the local high school will soon admit Black students into their halls. Quickly hooking his claws into the town residents, Cramer manipulates the white population to protest the upcoming desegregation, stirring up racist sentiment in the hopes of inciting violence. While some of the film’s messaging does err towards the heavy-handed side, ‘The Intruder’ could not be more relevant during the height of school desegregation, and its depiction of one man’s ability to whip the populace into a frenzy still feels deeply resonant today. Corman draws a powerful performance out of Shatner, whose charming front barely hides the deeply hateful heart at his core.
1. ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ (1964) Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH, Hazel Court, 1964