Film Journal Podcast
George (Film Journal) and Ryan (Cinecrisis) dig through film history one oddball pick at a time—hopping from cult horror to forgotten blockbusters, art house to trash fire (sometimes in the same episode). Whether it’s dissecting Hammer Horror, roasting the latest Studio Flop, or revisiting 70's exploration fare- they bring sharp takes, deep trivia, and the kind of banter only good pals can pull off!
No film school snobbery. No hot take clickbait. Just smart, funny conversations for people who like movies and think they actually matter.
Film Journal Podcast
Roger Corman's Star Students
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George & Ryan discuss four Roger Corman produced films directed by filmmakers who went on to do big things!
Martin Scorsese: Boxcar Bertha
Joe Dante: Piranha
Ron Howard: Grand Theft Auto
Francis Ford Coppola: Dementia 13
Hi everybody. We're back. Today we're discussing a real hero of cinema, a real hero of independent cinema Roger Corman Ryan. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2I'm doing very well. How are you, George?
Speaker 1How did we arrive at this show, the idea for this show and what's it about.
Speaker 2Well, we discussed a lot of different topics, but the Roger Corman filmography, not only as producer and director but as producer as well, has always been of interest, I think, to both you and me, and so we were talking about it, and it's common knowledge that a lot of big name Hollywood directors got their start with these very small budget independent films that he would produce, and it's quite interesting, if you kind of put them all together and take a look at them, about who came through this kind of wild west of filmmaking, and so it presents itself with a wide array of different genres and different filmmakers, and it's quite fascinating to take a look back.
Speaker 1And I think the thing too for me that's always been impressive about Roger Corman and the story of Corman as far as like what he means in Hollywood history is not just like the massive amount of films that he created. I think something like 700 movies in his career, producer career, maybe more.
Speaker 2I don't know that that number gets thrown around a lot. I it seems like 400 is probably the closer estimate. I don't know, maybe.
Speaker 1Maybe it varies depending on different things there's a lot to appreciate about corman his career, the way he worked his system and the amount of times that he restarted his career basically from scratch and continued to win and to traverse the changing landscape of film distribution. But the thing that I think he's most remembered for in the public and honestly a good entryway into his oeuvre for newbies is to talk about the amount of people who went on to be big stars in Hollywood, who got their start with Roger Corman. So that's our show for today is discussing four directors who initially made films for Corman, who went on to do big, big things. But there's plenty of actors and actresses as well that got their start with Corman De Niro, jack Nicholson, I mean the list goes on and on.
Speaker 2Charles Bronson.
Speaker 1Yeah, we're touching on four filmmakers today who got their start with Roger Corman In the Corman school, as people fondly refer to it, as Francis Ford Coppola, ron Howard, joe Dante and what's the last one?
Speaker 2Martin Scorsese.
Speaker 1Martin Scorsese. Yeah, how cool could forget. But we'll go in chronological order here and I think we'll first discuss a little bit of Cormanology. So, ryan, what's your overall impression of Roger Corman? What was your first experience with him as a producer or filmmaker?
Speaker 2I'm a big fan. This is someone who I caught on to very early on, I would say early teenage years. The main way that I figured out about who this guy was I kept seeing his name everywhere was you would go to like FYE, which was a DVD video store back in the day, and you would go to the dollar bin or the $5 bin and it would be filled with DVD double features of these very old independent low budget films and they would all you. If you started looking at them or watching them later you'd say they were all directed or produced by the same guy and you started wondering well, this is interesting, what's going on here? So that was probably my first exposure and that that's we're talking about.
Speaker 2Probably his very early stuff like the 50s and 60s output, um, the a lot of the um sci-fi monster movies like attack of the crab monsters and not of this earth or things like that war of the satellites you know stuff like that that's very, very cheesy and schlocky, but If it's, it's still it holds up because it's endearing and it's it's crafted with care and there's something that just as a you know, as a kid, as a teenager, you can definitely appreciate and, um, you know, um, recognize that there's something there. So that that's my exposure. How about you?
Speaker 1well, I think that it's, it's um best to think of carmen's career, I think in three phases, maybe four. He started out on his own as a filmmaker with, uh, his attack of the crab monsters movie, and there was another one beneath the surface of the earth or something, and he caught the attention.
Speaker 1The ocean floor I believe, monster from the ocean floor, his first directed movie, and so he caught the attention of samuel arcoff at american international pictures and he worked for him as, like his primary producer until the early 70s where he broke from them, became a true independent studio boss, essentially with American international pictures, which then and in the new world.
Speaker 1The new world no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. New world pictures which then, inexplicably, he he's sold off in the early 80s and he started um new horizon pictures um well, there's always an opportunity to make more money by selling off your company and then starting again, right? He sold the library off and then he started concord new horizons.
Speaker 2Oh, no, no, no I believe he kept the library, if I, if I recall correctly, he kept the library of pictures, but he sold the company oh, is that right?
Speaker 1yeah, what was to buy?
Speaker 2the, the production, I don't know.
The Corman Filmmaking Model
Speaker 1There was no production aspect to it, but there was something, the name, the title, I guess, I don't know there must have been some kind of assets there, but from what I was reading I thought he kept the library of films okay, that's that could be possibly true, because I but I know that, like um shot factory owns the new horizons pictures and that somebody else owns the concord or sorry, the new world pictures, and then somebody else owns the new horizons concord pictures, but basically under concord new Horizons in the 80s and 90s. That's when he made a successful transition to home video distribution. Once the drive-in kind of dried up for him, he was able to pivot and there are not many people in this kind of world that are able to pivot like that as a businessman, as a filmmaker, to know constantly what people want. And I think in a lot of these movies basically all of them, I think you'll find are movies that are aping current Hollywood trends of the time and I suppose, yeah, these are all trend chasers.
Speaker 2He was very adept and alert as to what was going on in the culture at the time and he was always looking for what was hot and what. What can we imitate to get more pictures out there? Excuse me for one second.
Speaker 1Yeah, please. But I you know, in a lot of ways though, he did pioneer certain genres like the motorcycle, hells, angels, motorcycle pictures. That was all him. I mean, that was an innovation of his. That then led to movies like easy rider, which happened to get turned down by AIP, which I think was a big impetus for him starting New Horizons because or New World sorry, I'm going to keep mixing that up New World because AIP wouldn't give him the money to fund Easy Rider, and then it went on to be the biggest, you know, one of the biggest independent movies of all time, with an entire graduating class of his people that he could have had. So I think he strived for and I think almost all the movies, except for Dementia 13, are going to be new world pictures that we talk about today, 70s, yes, the Dementia 13 is still in the AIP days, and you can't really talk about Roger Corman without talking about AIP in harmony.
Speaker 2Like you mentioned before, they were just starting up at the same time that roger was starting up in the what it says like mid to late 50s, early 60s, and so they found this perfect partner, partnership with each other whereby they were an independent distributor, they found an independent producer to make movies on the cheap for them, and it was. It was a match made in heaven and it's sad that it did.
Speaker 2You know, obviously all good things come to an end, but um the easy rider thing, I think, seemed to be one of the biggest, uh, final nails in the coffin, or the straw that broke the camel's back, because roger was all set to produce easy rider for aip with you know the, the people who were, who were designed to make it. But, uh, I think it was Sam Arcoff that said hey, listen, if this guy, um, uh, um, god, why Dennis, dennis Hopper, my bad, sorry, if Dennis Hopper falls behind on one day of filming, you're gone. You're gone, we're replacing you. And this was, like, not considered okay at all, and so they walked away.
Speaker 1Yeah, which you can appreciate. But well, I guess we can get started and we can sort of discuss Dementia 13 as a phase in Corman's career that I think parallels. Well, it's an AIP picture. That's a psycho ripoff, essentially right.
Speaker 2Oh, yes, 100%.
Speaker 1Hey, thank you to Parker Longbow for for the 10 super chat. That's very generous of you. Thank you very much. That's the first super chat I've ever got, so that's a big, you know, that's a huge one in the history of the channel here. Thank you, parker. But uh, corman also hired richard matheson to adapt several ed graham poe stories to film. That's how I found out about him. I was a huge matheson fan in high school, that's. I was about to talk about that, because this was sort of his ed graham poe period, um in which this sort of very trippy experimental movie, dementia 13, was made. Do you want to talk about dementia 13, ryan, and what you thought of it?
Speaker 2yeah, dementia 13 is francis ford coppola's directorial debut. It was a movie that they made with leftover money. That was leftover from a movie called the Young Racers which they were filming in Ireland. And Roger had a few thousand dollars left over so he gave it to Francis and he said, hey, got some money, write a script that's a psycho ripoff and film it here in Ireland. And you got a movie.
Speaker 2And so when you mention that it's a psycho rip off, not only does it feature you know an axe murderer that goes around killing people with a villain who has you know a psychosis, if you will, or a dementia for this movie.
Speaker 2A lot of the characters are basically analog stand ins for all the characters in psycho, including the lead woman who is named Louise in this movie.
Speaker 2She is kind of the ne'er-do-well wife of one of the members of one of the brothers of a family that is very wealthy and unexpectedly her husband dies, not through anything that she does on her own, but she is a very suspicious character.
Speaker 2She is a considered like a gold digger, essentially, and her husband dies from a heart attack. Realizing that she will get nothing because of his death, the way he died, the circumstances, she decides to cover it up and pretend that he's still alive. And so she is a stand in for the Marion Crane Janet Leigh character in Psycho, because she's kind of doing this conspiracy, if you will, or doing something shady, and is the first one to die at the hands of our maniac who is Billy in this movie. He's our Norman stand-in. We also have a Lila Crane stand-in with the other brother's wife and we have an Arbogast-like character who is the doctor here. So it's very clever that they just kind of aped all the characters in the basic story and made their own movie Not as good as Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho by any means, but it's an interesting curiosity.
Speaker 1That's part of the fun part of watching these movies that are made by directors who are generally known for having a very hard directorial stamp. I would say arguably Ron Howard excluded from that list but they're within the constraints of having to make a rip-off movie, but their personalities as an auteur and the things that would become hallmarks of their work tend to show up. You might be hard-pressed to identify that with Coppola in Dementia 13, but I felt like the movie had a lot of magical realism of the kind that we ended up seeing in megalopolis. Think about when the flower falls on the grave and it dies. You know it's like very symbolic, you know very, but um, it actually reminded me a little bit of like some of the giallo movies we watched last summer yes, a lot, a lot it's almost like sort of a nascent giallo effort, with all of these conflicting, rich characters, a secret murderer that we don't see, and then there's a lot of underwater things.
Speaker 1That reminded me a little bit of night of the hunter, and that famous moment where the mother is under underwater broke to the car by robert mitchum. But overall I can't say that I love this movie, but I found it to be somewhat compelling and, um, I get it within the lexicon of the corman verse I liked it.
Speaker 2I actually liked it more the second time I watched it, because the first time you watch it you're kind of like. You're like what the hell's going on? It's it's kind of confusing and muddled and you're getting confused about who is who and what's going on. Um, I liked it much more the second time as you start picking up, as like the first time you watch it, you're like, yeah, I see the psycho elements here. But then when you fully watch the entire thing and then go back and watch it again, you're like, oh, I see completely what they're doing also felt a lot of uh, did you notice? Or feel it was a little bit like diabolique, a little bit too in here.
Speaker 1The french film yeah, absolutely because, yeah, the underwater drowning in the bathtub and things yes, I did feel like it had a little bit of diabolique and it's got a really nice looking black and white quality to it. That feels sort of unreal, like when they're on the boat, they're obviously not on water, so it has this kind of like weird remove yes, cheapness, but also makes it feel kind of ethereal, you know yes, absolutely great castle exteriors.
Speaker 2I mean, clearly they're, they're making the most out of what they've got to use, uh, for, for you know, established sets. So there's that. Um, let's see what else. Oh also, none of the actors here are anyone memorable that you would really notice offhand. But I noticed the lead brother, richard, who I didn't mention earlier. He looked very familiar to me and so I looked him up. He was on the classic Star Trek episode, the Squire of Gothos. He plays Trelane, who is the kind of omnipotent Mixleplick-like character who torments the Enterprise crew. So that was kind of cool too.
Speaker 1Okay, interesting, interesting. I did admire the movie. I thought it was cool. Coppola only made one film officially for Corman. I did admire the movie. I thought it was cool. Coppola only made one film officially for Corman. Other than that he directed pieces of the Terror. But there were Monty Hellman also directed pieces of the Terror, and Corman himself and Jack Nicholson which the Terror? To give you an idea of kind of how Corman worked.
Speaker 1It was a movie that was made on the same set as the Raven, one of the famous Edgargar allen poe adaptions, which are all quite good, uh, mask of the red death being my favorite but they had the castle set for a weekend for free, so they invented a script. They filmed it using the set. It doesn't make any sense. It's a very disjointed and wild movie. I've seen it once, but it was a long time ago, and then that movie was reused as the 10 plus minute opening credit sequence of a movie that we both enjoy, peter mcdonough, which is targets um, that we talked about on this show in one of our early episodes yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2The terror is a wild movie. I remember seeing that as a teenager for the first time and I thought it was the most amazing thing I've ever seen, because because I love boris karloff so much and seeing him in this movie and then then you watch it again later, you're like this, this movie is absolute garbage because there's nothing in it, it's all, it's all nonsense. But what's, um, what's also interesting about that the part you didn't mention is that they also the key to it was they had boris karloff for like an extra day or two, and that was the impetus too is he had Boris for extra two days after the Raven. And so they're like, make use of this time, just film him wandering around the castle looking at stuff, and we'll fill in the gaps later.
Speaker 1Yep, yep, that's interesting. And then I love the piece too which was in the documentary we watched it which was very good and very well done.
Speaker 2Oh, the cormon's world documentary, yeah there's a lot of cormon documentaries.
Speaker 1I've watched a few of them, that's. That's by far the best. They have the best interviews. They got jack nicholson to sit for it and he actually tears up and cries at the end, which is interesting.
Speaker 2You know a lot of that is what's directly in this book, which is a great read how I made 100 movies in hollywood and never lost a dime. So a lot of it is like almost verbatim um of the transcripts from here, which is really good book which which I should read, and the one I read was by beverly gray, who was a former um.
Speaker 1it's a roger corman, the unauthorized biography by beverly gray, who was a former assistant to roger, who, when she started to get too expensive, she was replaced by somebody else. But she holds no grudges because that's just how Roger was he was a cheap guy.
Speaker 2One of Roger's big major producers was his wife, julie which is kind of cool too that his wife got into the act too and she was a great producer. She really came into her own in the 70s. A lot of those women in prison pictures she was the producer on which one of the movies that we didn't include today because you know we only have room for four is we could have done. Jonathan Demme's caged heat was another big directorial debut for a for an up and coming director.
Speaker 2Of course, jonathan Demme did silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia, among many other movies.
Speaker 1And Roger Corman is in Silence of the Lambs. He plays the head of the FBI.
Speaker 2Oh, yes, yes, and also in the Godfather 2, correct?
Speaker 1Yes, he is Yep.
Speaker 2All of his, you know, former proteges, if you want to call them that, or people who worked with him and he gave them their start as directors, because I mean, obviously, to get your foot in the door as the credited as the director for a feature film was. It was.
Speaker 2You know, it still is, but I'm sure even back then it was a much, much more um you know, insurmountable um task, and so he was willing to take a chance on people that he either worked with in other capacities, like Coppola being the sound editor, the sound director on his films, or Joe Dante being the trailer editor. Scorsese, I think he had seen a student film, and Ron Howard obviously was one of the biggest stars on TV with Happy Days. So he used this to his advantage because these were cheap. These were, but they were also young and fresh and innovative and they were hungry to make movies that were not being made in the studio system absolutely.
Speaker 1Yeah, a lot of these movies were not just cheap rip-offs, they were different or you couldn't have gotten them done otherwise, you know, yeah, you would not see, you would not see a movie like any of these, produced by one of the major studios at the time especially. These are all movies oh sorry, go ahead especially the early AIP stuff, like the trip, you know. Oh yeah, the Hells Angels movies, the biker movies, um or even the Edgar Allan Poe movies, for that matter.
Dementia 13: Coppola's Directorial Debut
Speaker 2Because there was no, there was not a really big horror output from any of the major studios in that time period. I mean, we had stuff coming from international releases, from like Hammer Studios for instance, but you know we weren't really getting many American made horror films, big budget horror films. So you know, there there's, there's definitely um, an area that was being neglected, especially for the younger audiences. That's also. We implied this, but we didn't really explicitly say it is that these are all movies made not only by young people, but they were made for young people at the drive in. That's kind of like a youthful rebellion, if you want to go in that direction or not, but it's. It's definitely a market that was not being exploited by the majors and now is the dominant market in hollywood where all movies are made for this particular audience. You know, for better or for worse, yeah, you're right, that's correct.
Speaker 1But you know, when he was at the drive-ins it at least gave him sort of an appearance of propriety because you could be a roger corman film and be at the drive-in just like any other movie, right, it was only when you came in to see it that you saw that the monster looked cheap or the monster looked fake. But the thing about Corman is that he gets lambasted as this cheap b-movie guy and I've seen enough of his movies to know that it's not just the influence of these like brilliant directors that made these movies look good and feel like they're of quality. Um, I don't find any of the stuff at at new world to be laughably cheap. Now, obviously I haven't seen everything, but the films we're going to continue to talk about, which are boxcar bertha, um could have fooled me that that was some cheap, you know slop effort to rip off bonnie and clyde. It's fabulous absolutely.
Speaker 2Yeah, no, I mean, if you talk about the early days, we're talking about the 50s and early 60s stuff, like, like we mentioned, attack of the crab monsters. You know movies like that. Yes, they look cheap, they look fake, they look phony, but there's still. There's still something there. There's still some spark of magic there. The movies that we're talking about today there's nothing here. That's still something there. There's still some spark of magic there. The movies that we're talking about today there's nothing here that's outlandishly ridiculous or laugh out loud.
Speaker 1Nothing that looks like corner cutting or no.
Speaker 2You know, there's nothing amateurish here, that is like oh you know, that's pathetic.
Speaker 1Yeah, absolutely. Well, are we done with dementia 13?
Speaker 2Do you have any? Yeah, absolutely. Are we done with Dementia 13? Yeah, one final thought is for all the exploitative talk that we mentioned about these movies, and Dementia 13 in particular, which features some very gruesome axe murders, one thing that they didn't rip off of Psycho was they didn't include the element of transvestitism, which you'd think would be one of the areas that you'd want to exploit the most if you're making an exploitation movie, but they didn't do that.
Speaker 1Yeah, that you could do.
Speaker 2Oh, absolutely yeah, so that was just kind of interesting point there.
Speaker 1That is one thing that you do see creep in, which reminds you that you're watching somewhat of an exploitation film. There's a little bit of gratuitous nudity and Corman was famous, obviously for circling parts in a script and saying nudity possible. Here and in the book I read by Beverly Gray there were women. Often it was her job to inspect new leading ladies to see if their breasts were camera ready or not, because that was part of the gig. Probably wouldn't fly today, of course not.
Speaker 2no, how barbaric.
Speaker 1Anyway, Boxcar Bertha, Martin Scorsese's first film. It reminded me a lot of Bonnie and Clyde. This idea of being the gangster outlaw in the early 20s, a rebel against the system, was very hot. Corman also made another movie, Dillinger, with Warren Oates. That was an early directorial effort of John Milius. It's also very good and it wouldn't surprise me if they reuse some of the sets from that movie for this. They were made very much in a very similar time frame. This is Martin Scorsese's first film. He worked on a few internet AIP pictures, including editing Holy Rollers Unholy Rollers, sorry, which is a female roller skate derby movie which I was planning on watching for the purposes of this show but did not get around to. But this is Scorsese's first effort and I thought it was just exceptional. I thought it was fantastic. Your thoughts?
Speaker 2Oh, I really liked it a lot. It was great. This feels the most professional and the most kind of artsy out of all the films that we're talking about. You just can't contain Scorsese Like right. He's an animal, Like it's just.
Speaker 1He's going to do it. But the best stuff, the ending of the movie, the last 20 minutes, are just like phenomenal. There's a moment where we have what's her name? The actress.
Speaker 2Barbara Hershey.
Speaker 1Barbara Hershey. You see her through the screen window with water in the screen and light reflecting when she's working in the brothel, and then the ending when they're walking down the train tracks with the sunset. I mean, it's just phenomenal.
Speaker 2It's a beautiful movie and I mean when I'm saying it it feels very artsy, not only because of what you just mentioned, but the material feels much heavier than what we're used to and, in fact, ending with the kind of the crucifixion scene of David Carradine's character.
Speaker 1I can't believe it, so very heavy. Yeah, it's very heavy.
Speaker 2So you mentioned Bonnie and Clyde, and that's immediately. What I thought of when watching this movie is that they're aping Bonnie and Clyde, which is very apparent. This was also a sequel, though, to the film Bloody Mama, which itself was also a Bonnie and Clyde ripoff and which was one of De Niro's first movies.
Speaker 1So there's that. Is it literally a sequel or sort of a thematic?
Speaker 2They call it a quote sequel. That was what they wanted. They wanted a quote sequel to Bloody Mama, which was with. Shelley Winters and Robert De Niro. What's also interesting is this time period. Have you noticed that there's this kind of um? In the early 70s there was this nostalgia for the 30s which is kind of. I didn't realize this, but I had heard about this in another commentary track when I was watching actually murder on the orion express, apparently there was a a big desire to kind of have nostalgia for the 1930s at this time.
Speaker 2So I mean, you think about it. It makes sense even in movies. Like we have chinatown, a murder on the orion express, uh, and, and this is another good example, um, you know, it seems weird for us. We have, we're out of that time period completely. You know, we have no experience.
Speaker 2You know from our own lives, but you know it was only uh, 40 years, you know, prior, and we're still mining stuff from older than that now for quote, nostalgia yeah, true and definitely you gotta love the, uh, the score here which goes full, full, um, you know full monty on the fiddle and the harmonica, so can't, can't deny that folk music was cool.
Speaker 1But the thing about the movie to me was just how visceral it was. I mean, you can tell that it was made quickly. There are certain moments that don't cut together correctly or perhaps somebody should have held this take longer or we didn't get the stunt we wanted. But it really is a fun movie to watch. It's a great little caper about well, not so much a caper, but it's like this montage of these friends a sort of trio. It's like this montage of these friends sort of trio. And then we have Barbara Hershey and she gets dragged along on a bank robbery scheme. That's sort of born of the Does she get dragged along?
Speaker 2Would you really say that she gets dragged along? She is actually-.
Speaker 1No, never mind.
Speaker 2She's the leader. She's the leader. She drags David Carradine along.
Speaker 1That's true, because he's just a humble sort of like labor movement kind of like uh, uh, you know, early 20th century, you know yeah, like a union leader, yeah, labor union.
Speaker 2He's like an up and down style.
Speaker 1Yeah, like you know, liberal, socialist, right, yes and um, yeah they. This sort of a frustration of not being able to get their, their unions through legally ends up just in this kind of cross country quest to try to bankrupt the railroad which fails because you can't. You can't get the man.
Speaker 2Yeah, you can't fight city hall.
Speaker 1You can't fight city hall.
Speaker 2You're going down, but ironically, the bad guy in the movie is played by David Carradine's father, john Carradine, so it was a nice little touch there where you get to see them act together in a movie. I don't recall if there's other films where they're they're on screen together, but this was. This was one of the few that I've ever seen.
Speaker 1Our second father and son duo, because, uh, ron Howard's dad is in Grand Theft Auto as well.
Speaker 2Yep, um, what else about this movie? Um it kind, what else about this movie? It kind of feels weird for Scorsese who you normally think about, you know kind of New York City urban landscape films to be doing this deep south rural picture, but he really makes it work. I think it's completely, completely believable. All everything that we see here is it feels very real. Um, the the whole thing, though, the whole boxcar bertha thing, it it uh comes up in the credits at the beginning of the movie. It is based on the autobiography of boxcar bertha. Well, there is no such person actually. Did you, did you know that?
Speaker 2there's no person in boxcar bertha, it was a character oh, it was big boss.
Speaker 1Uh, was john carradine's character or david carradine's character. Was that a real guy?
Speaker 2I don't think any of these people were real. They're kind of like amalgamations or hybrids of multiple people who existed at different times. So I found that kind of interesting. But also I love the opening montage of the movie. That is a great, great addition. As we're doing the credits, you see that black and white newsreel footage kind of intermixed with footage from the actual movie. You see a lot of stock footage with FDR and depression era bread lines and stuff like that. So that was a great touch there. That feels very, very Scorsese to me.
Speaker 1Oh, there's so many touches in this that make it Scorsese you think about. No, he doesn't pull off the gunfight as well as he does in something like Taxi Driver, as he would a few years later with taxi driver, this onslaught of one guy coming in and shooting a bunch of people, and every time someone gets shot he's trying something new. Let me zoom the cam, dolly the camera in really, really fast. Let me have this guy flying backwards in a way that would anticipate, like you know, a hong kong action gunfight movies of the 80s and 90eties that Scorsese was really doing. He was ahead of his time with that kind of stuff. He just couldn't quite pull it off.
Speaker 2Oh absolutely.
Speaker 2And Barbara Hershey is very good, as as Bertha. This is a very it's a character who goes on a real journey, both figuratively and literally, throughout the movie, including her sexual awakening, if you want to say, at the beginning of the movie, which kind of transforms her from childhood to adulthood and then becomes, who starts off as this very innocent um character who is, you know, taken by the hand, so to speak, by david carradine and then becomes kind of the leader and the chief instigator behind the bank robberies and it's kind of a transformational journey and then gets the tables turned on her and is reduced to, forced, to becoming a prostitute by the end.
Speaker 1Which is I thought the ending was just fabulous. You know, I thought it was beautiful. She's good. Barbara Hershey, I know she became a bigger actress in the late 80s and early 90s. She had like kind of a rough patch in her career. She married David Carradine in the late 80s and early 90s. She had kind of a rough patch in her career, she married David Carradine and I guess they were somewhat of a foil for the tabloids for a long time.
Speaker 2She sure did. They were dating at the time the movie was made, though.
Speaker 1Okay. Do you know anything about that? Why their marriage?
Speaker 2They were together when they made this movie. Yeah, okay I, I don't recall now okay david caradine's an interesting guy though, you know, and, of course, the way.
Speaker 1He died very much. So quite yeah, scandalous, yeah, but he was killed by a, so maybe there's something, maybe there was something about that.
Speaker 2Maybe there's something to that in, maybe why their relationship didn't didn't work out. I don't know. Possible, uh, if we're not coming across.
Speaker 1Well, I think we're off a little bit on our signals. I'm hearing you talk and I think there's a delay.
Speaker 2Okay, I don't know. Yeah, Are we okay?
Speaker 1Yeah, I think everything's cool, but no, I don't know why I haven't seen this movie until now. I love Martin Scorsese. I've always put it off and I've preferred to think of Mean Streets as his first movie and I just kind of thought, well, I made it for Roger Corman Probably doesn't have much of a directorial stamp, it was probably just a work for hire job, plus this whole idea of this boxcar birth. That doesn't appeal too much to me. But I thought it was going to be much more like I'm a badass, sassy woman kind kind of thing. And it's very much not that, you know, and it is very much a scorsese movie. I mean it's, um, it's got this kind of violence that's sort of wanton and and messy and um, really affecting.
Speaker 2but it's also a very tender movie at times too and I really enjoyed it the characters are definitely very multifaceted, they're not one-dimensional at all and that goes for all all the leads here. So, like I mentioned, I mentioned bertha's journey and her development and changes throughout the film. But the other two male leads who are basically in this love triangle with her one, david Carradine, is very much the alpha male, as we said. He's the union instigator but also the card shark kind of confidence man that they pick up along the way, who she kind of gets as the fall, not the fall guy, the rebound guy after she loses David Carradine. Then he immediately kind of gives her up in order to be in a subservient position in this group dynamic, which is quite fascinating there, and they all kind of stay together and they, they all kind of stay together.
Speaker 1So they all kind of go on their their own emotional journey no, I I would recommend everyone get out there and watch it, because I I was quite taken with it and I felt the same way too, when I remember when I I first heard about this movie.
Speaker 2I'm like, oh, it's probably good, but I don't know, not really, not really interested, or this it's probably like okay. And um, then when I actually saw it, I was like, wow, this is a, this is a great movie that everyone really should see.
Speaker 1It's, it's, it's quite good it should be talked about more, and it's really not I I don't. I mean, I hear people mention it in passing.
Speaker 2It's kind of like a curio, but um and what's also good is that all of the people that we, all of the directors that we are talking about in the films we're talking about, they're not ashamed of these movies by any means in which you would think. Sometimes people would be like, oh that movie, I had to make that one just to get started. But no, they're all very proud of these movies and as they should be, they're, they're very good.
Speaker 1Well, it's, of course, as he talks about what a what a help it was to learn from Corman, where I can't imagine the nightmare. He talks explicitly about the timing of trains moving and having to coordinate scenes with that which sounds like a nightmare, right and first of all a low budget movie.
Speaker 1I mean a low budget period piece couldn't have been that cheap, right, I know we don't have big names in it or anything, but mean it looks great, they have great sets, great locations. They were able to crash trains so or, you know, have trains hit cars and things, I mean, and so I was yeah, I wonder.
Speaker 2I don't recall seeing the actual budget for this movie, but I feel like this has to be one of the most more expensive films that they did. I would imagine his most like the train, the train crashing into the car being one of the biggest ones. I mean, I know they only had one. They could only do that in one take, so they only did that, had one shot for that, but you know, but still, the costume design, the it was filmed on location. You know there's a lot, a lot going on here I, I would.
Speaker 1I would say, I think that his most expensive movie ever was Battle Beyond the Stars, which I believe cost him $2 million. Hmm, okay, his Star Wars ripoff.
Speaker 2That was in the 80s, though, correct, early 80s.
Speaker 1Early 80s, I think 1980 he came out.
Speaker 2Yeah, I've seen that one. That's pretty good. I enjoyed it. I enjoy a lot of those Star Wars ripoff movies from that time.
Speaker 1I was actually talking about that maybe being a topic for a show. I think that would be kind of a fun show. And a lot of those movies are where James Cameron gets his start working for Corman. Supposedly, james Cameron saved somebody from being electrocuted on the set of Battle Beyond the Stars Because the New World studio had a bunch of leaks in the roof that never got fixed and the guy almost electrocuted himself.
Speaker 2Oh, you know, both Siskel and Ebert reviewed these movies when they were working at the newspaper. Obviously, it predates the television show incarnation, but what do you think they thought of this movie of Boxcar Brown?
Speaker 1I bet they thought it was amazing, I bet they thought it was great, I bet they praised it heavily 're, you're part right, it was split.
Speaker 1didn't like it, of course, of course, of course would not like this movie too violent too, sleazy ebert thumbs up why does barbara hershey have to be naked so much, and naked not really even in a tasteful way at all, like she'll just be like naked in odd positions on the floor or like you know what I mean naked standing up, like you know it's very, um, all right, we gotta do it for roger. He needs the nudity very beautiful.
Boxcar Bertha: Scorsese's First Film
Speaker 2Uh, have you seen? Uh, after he made the film, I guess marty showed it to john cassavetes and he told him it was a great movie, but you just spent the last year of your life working on a piece of shit, really. And he told him it was a great movie, but you just spent the last year of your life working on a piece of shit, really.
Speaker 1And he told him you need to get out, make real movies I would have preferred to see more scorsese corman productions, honestly because scorsese is so inventive, he's so inventive and his brain moves a mile, a mile a minute. I mean he could. He could have thrived. Now I'm glad that he broke out, because in the documentary watch they talk about um scorsese gave mean streets and offered mean streets to cormorant. He goes oh, can you do it with black people instead?
Speaker 1right, because that's what's hot right now is black exploitation yeah yeah, yeah, and he was like um, I guess, but it won't have me in it.
Speaker 2You know it won't be about my yeah, I think he made the right call on that, on that, on doing what he felt was right for the movie. But I do agree. I think when you have these very talented directors working with limited resources, you get a much better product in the end, because they have to innovate and they have to use what they have to tell a good story. It's all about the story man, totally totally.
Speaker 1It's all about the story, totally. What's next?
Speaker 2A favorite other YouTuber. It's all about.
Speaker 1We don't have good stories and characters anymore.
Speaker 2It's about the stories.
Speaker 1We don't have strong female leads anymore, like Ripley.
Speaker 2Anything else on Boxcar Bertha. It's a great movie. Definitely recommend it for everyone.
Speaker 1It's sort of this period of Corman's in when in these, in these new world days, he was doing a lot of uh exploitation, uh movies, like the nurses. There's four nurse movies which maybe we. I thought that would be a fun one to talk about.
Speaker 2That would be a really fun one to do. I have not seen those. Have you seen any of those?
Speaker 1no, but they're. They're available all four of them on dvd for like eight dollars.
Speaker 2So I thought, oh, there's like a quadruple feature. There's a quadruple pack or something.
Speaker 1Yeah, exactly a quadruple pack. So I thought roger corman's women in prison I bet they're great.
Speaker 2I'm sure they're great I mean julie corman's also producing them. I love hearing her perspective and her talking about she's. I mean, she adores, obviously adores her husband and and was very, um, you know, instrumental in in producing all these films. So I love hearing her talk about it too, you know, and you get to hear the woman's perspective on this and it's, it's very interesting yeah, she jumped right in man yeah so, uh, ron howard, already a big tv star.
Speaker 1He made made a movie for Corbin Biggest.
Speaker 2TV show in the country at the time. Happy Days was number one at this time.
Speaker 1I didn't get a chance to watch Eat my Dust, which I think was his first effort with Corbin as a big star in the movies right, and I think it was a little. People don't appreciate how much more difficult it was to break out of television and into the movies back then. So nowadays if you're the star of a hit show they probably give you a movie offer in Hollywood. But he got one from Roger Corman and then he made it struck a deal with him where I'll star in one more picture for you, roger, but you don't have to pay me any more money, but I want to direct. And he gave him the shot and he made the movie Grand Theft Auto. What did you think?
Speaker 2Really good movie, really enjoyed it. I'm a big fan of Ron Howard. I know some of his directorial features are, you know, hit and miss, especially in the later, later years, but I think there's a lot to enjoy here. This is basically, if we're, if we're picking movies that these are aping this one is. It's a mad, mad, mad world, I would say, is what this movie is more more than anything else. I also really liked that Ron made this movie with his dad. It's really cool.
Speaker 2His dad was a huge part of shepherding Ron along from the early days. It was one of the few Hollywood child success stories where the parent was actually a positive influence in their child's career. It was not exploitative at all. It was actually a very caring, loving relationship between father and son, which is nice. Even in the, you know, teenage adult years they were still working together. So his dad, rance howard, was the co-producer, co-producer, co-writer and cameos in the movie as well. So that's nice. Um, also, brother clint howard is in the movie, which is also nice, keeping everything in the family here.
Speaker 1He's insufferable.
Speaker 2You think so?
Speaker 1Yeah, oh, come on, it's okay Every time those two came on.
Speaker 2So, anyway, what this movie is is basically a complete farce from start to finish. A teenage couple want to get married. The girl comes from a very, very wealthy family. The guy is from average middle class working class. The parents don't approve, so they go on the run to go to las vegas and get married and along the way they steal their father, her father's rolls royce, and now there's a bounty out on their heads to bring them back, including her supposed other fiancee, who she never agreed to marry, whose mother is also played by happy days co-star, marion ross a very nice funny cameo there, yeah, from uh richie's, uh ron's, mother on the show, marion ross okay, okay.
Speaker 2So you know that, that all this kind of little things where you kind of like, hey, anyone from happy days want to come on and be in my movie and help me out. You know it's, it's. I like stuff like that, it's it, it's fun. So along the way, everyone starts getting into the act of trying to capture these guys because there's, I think, a $25,000 bounty out on on them, plus on the other goofus, doofus fiance, who's after them too. So everyone starts stealing. They start stealing police cars, they steal city buses, they steal ice cream trucks, they steal everything. That's why it's called Grand Theft Auto and at the end it climaxes in a demolition derby which is worth the price of admission itself.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's a lot of fun. I have to say I did get a little After a while. I could only watch so many cars crash into each other before I had sort of like brain overload you can never see enough cars crash into each other.
Speaker 1I wouldn't. When cars drive up a ramp and flip and things then, yes, or go off a cliff, which they do in this movie, that's always welcome, but just the like oh boy. But the thing that I liked the most about this movie was the idea of the radio announcer who is, uh, broadcasting this story to the entire nation. And the nation is on the edge of their seat to see if these two lovebirds will make it to las vegas and evade the wrath of their parents and all sorts of other pursuers.
Speaker 1Um, it's got a lot of heart and I was surprised, you know, for a teen movie it was very safe and family friendly. I mean, there's not a lot of bad language, you know, there's no nudity, um, and it's, um, it was really kind of cute and fun and it reminded me a lot of. You know, corbin is not necessarily known for his teen movies. Um, I would say, do you know? I mean he didn't make very many movies that were like teen exploitation films, not like crown international pictures oh no, and not like aip doing the beach party movies and stuff like that he was not interested in that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1No, he wasn't at all, which is interesting because he probably would have made a mint because this is one of his most successful movies. It was also one that got bought by CBS for a million dollars to be the movie of the week on TV and you know it was a big success for him. And, um, it showcases Ron Howard's talent as a director, I think. And if you look at Ron Howard's filmography, he can basically make anything which he does. He's very much a workman-style director who has repeatedly delivered success. I think he's underrated.
Speaker 1I think he's an underrated director, but in this I thought that his part was a little bit lacking. Obviously, he was very busy with directorial duties, so his role is basically to be in a car and react to things. I mean, he's in that car about the entire time. There's a nice moment where they get out and have a little bit of a um you know lovers quarrel, which is cute, where they discuss whether or not they really love each other and if they can make it in the cold world without her dad's money, etc. But um, overall I found to be very charming oh, I agree.
Speaker 2Yeah, and I mean you can criticize that part where he's basically stuck in the car for the entire movie, but it's done out of necessity and I think it works rather well. That gives him enough screen time to be in the movie, so you don't feel you know cheap changed by. Oh, you're going to see ron howard in this movie and he's in it for five minutes. No, he's, he's in a vast majority of the movie, but under the acknowledgement that he's also directing the movie. So he needs to focus elsewhere and not be running around doing outrageous stunts or anything like that. So he's just kind of sitting around for most of it, which I think is totally fine.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's fine because the mayhem and the chaos that ensues is a lot of fun. We have a lot of wacky racer style characters. Yes, um, I was. I was thinking to myself that it reminded me a lot of the blues brothers, but when you mentioned it's a mad, mad mad world, I was like, ah yes, I knew it had to have some precedence and some kind of zany comedy of the 60s which that.
Speaker 2That's what it felt like most to me. It's just, it's a mad farce, uh of everyone chasing each other for no real, just for money, for money, basically.
Speaker 1Yeah, there's a bounty on them from her dad, the legality of which, I think, is up for debate, and then, of course, true love conquers all in the end.
Speaker 2Even the parents, even the stuffy, uptight parents, realize that Ron Howard is not a gold digger. He has good intentions for their daughter and he is the right guy to marry her. Not this laughable you know, egotistical snob of a brat you know weakling yeah, who goes around with his polo hat and uh lance writing prop and everything yeah, it's uh which.
Speaker 1You know what I have to say. I thought a lot of little, the little side characters who were the pursuers they're sort of one note antics kind of wore thin on me after a while. I thought the movie was good about the preacher.
Speaker 2The preacher is one of the best the shows preacher was good.
Speaker 1I like the radio dj guy and I liked how he inexplicably drove through a house in slow motion from six different angles at the very end, just to make sure you got your money's worth, even if you weren't satisfied by the fact that our heroes are married at the church and are going off happily ever after we have to have the dj guy from the radio, who's been a constant nuisance, drive through a house in slow motion and into a pool, which was fun well, it also ties into like radio culture.
Speaker 2You know um the c CB kind of culture at that time, too right.
Speaker 1Well, I like this idea, too, about the unifying radio narrative. We see this in movies like the Warriors, where the narrator of the movie is the radio DJ, and they're keeping everybody abreast of what's going on, both in the world of the movie and as a voiceover, as a narrator for the audience.
Speaker 2It's been a while but is a vanishing point, kind of have a narrative hook like that too.
Speaker 1I can't, I don't remember. I don't remember that.
Speaker 2Yeah, but I think the warriors was just a year later, and that's very much regarding the title, this is not the only Roger Corman film where the title has taken on new life and new meaning in the modern age. The title has taken on new life and new meaning in the modern age?
Speaker 2Obviously Grand Theft Auto. If you told anyone now you mentioned Grand Theft Auto, they're not going to say, oh, of course, the 1977 Ron Howard film. They're going to say the video game the Fast and the Furious also another Roger Corman film from the 50s, that he sold the title to Universal when they made their mega franchise years later. So he's always got something in his pocket to make more money selling titles.
Speaker 1He had some great ideas. We got a nice comment here from Cobra Malibu Unlimited who said he quotes Ron Howard, pops the clutch and tells the world to eat my dust, which is the announcer from the Eat my Dust trailer, which was conceived by Joe Dante and Alan Arkish. So Joe Dante and Alan Arkish Joe Dante and Alan Arkish were quite the dynamic duo for Corman, where they worked for pennies to cut all of his trailers, and they did a phenomenal job of doing it. I sent you a trailer a while back for a New World effort that was a Blaxploitation cash-in, which was called oh boy, what's it called? It's a karate movie with some gal boy. What's it called? It's a karate movie with some gal.
Speaker 2That was it called but it's just a movie no, it's not Pam Greer, it's somebody else.
Speaker 1It's some girl who won some karate championship and she happened to be black and a decent actress and she could jump on a you know trampoline and do flips. So TNT Jackson. I believe it was okay, really, really a phenomenal trailer and but, yeah, alan Arkish and Ron Howard would go. I believe it was really, really a phenomenal trailer and, but, yeah, alan Arkish and Ron Howard would go on to be directors of note, especially Joe Dante, and they made a lot of great movies in the late 70s for Corman, including Hollywood Boulevard, which I watched as well, which I was, yeah, which is incredibly entertaining. It stars a very compelling actress.
Speaker 2Uh, hold on one second, I'm gonna find the her name I'm pleased to hear you say that, because I have not watched it and I was. When I was hearing about it I thought um, this is probably very dreadful in terms of no, it's not compilation stock footage oh, it's quite fun it's.
Speaker 1I mean, they work it in all very, very well and it's very clever and it's a great take on both the culture of hollywood and roger corman especially, which is really what they're doing, and um, it's a really terrific little movie. I thought was a lot of fun. Of course you know when all the stock footage is coming in, but it's really kind of entertaining to see how they integrate it right and it's. It's uh stars, candace r realson, who was one of the. She was one of the nurses. She was in candy stripe, nurses 74. She was in the film pets, uh, which is sort of a movie about sex slavery, and then she's also in a movie called chatterbox which is somewhat notorious as an early kind of uh porn curio movie where a woman's vagina develops the ability to talk. Um. But she's in this. It's quite fun, she's quite beautiful, has a lot of great presence on screen.
Speaker 1But that was directed by Joe Dante and Alan Arkish. It was one of their first efforts because it was very cheap, because they promised Roger they could use almost half of it as stock footage. But then Dante went on to direct Piranha and Arkish did Rock and Roll, high School, which I think is somewhat of a little bit of a classic in its own right, but Piranha 1978, a clear Jaws ripoff written by John Sayles, a noted filmmaker who directed a movie that is very near and dear to my heart, lone Star I don't know if you've seen that I'm not. Sayles is a really great, interesting director, but he wrote the script and Joe Dante directed it. And what did you think?
Speaker 2Loved it. It was a great movie. This is actually the first time that I've ever seen it, though, which I'm a little embarrassed and ashamed to say. Same you know why, though? Actually, I remember when the remake came out I think it was in 2010, which was a very funny and engaging 3D kind of horror movie, and I remember reading about the old one, and I remember just people kept saying and I remember reading about the old one, and I remember just people kept saying, oh, it's very campy and it's very silly and it's very funny, and I'm like well, I'm not really interested in that, not at all. This movie is very serious and very well done, very tense, scary, hits all the right marks. It's a Jaws rip off, and it's proud of it, and I love, I love that aspect to it.
Speaker 1I don't know how you could say that it's campy and sort of like the piranha sequels, like these new ones, like went for the campiness they went for the laughs completely.
Speaker 2Yeah, laughs, I don't know. Full on nudity.
Speaker 1You know big boobs everywhere exactly, and there's a little bit of that in this.
Speaker 2Obviously I mean yeah, nowhere near what we're talking in the, in the new ones, which I I mean, those are fun, but this was a really good movie in and of itself yeah and uh, and you know, I listened to Joe Dante's audio commentary, which is really tremendous.
Speaker 1Every time Joe Dante does an audio commentary, it's always very good, it's not like where is that on?
Speaker 2Because I don't think the you have the yeah, where oh?
Speaker 1there's audio commentary on there.
Speaker 2Okay, I don't know where, I guess I don't know where, I guess I couldn't. I'm low tech here. I couldn't figure out how to get it on the menu. It's on there. Yeah, it's there.
Speaker 1Full boomer here. Yeah, you really have. It's on there. I ripped it and listened to it as an MP3. But, like Dante's, audio commentaries are always very good. No-transcript. Remember heather menzies? Do you remember what other film we've watched with her in it? She was the co-lead in captain america 1978, the tv film she no way.
Speaker 2Yes, yes, I had no recollection of that whatsoever yes, she was.
Speaker 1So there's a moment in the movie where they were her and um, the lead, uh, bradford Dillman. Uh, noted cowboy television actor of the 50s and 60s. He's uh, uh, they have to escape from they're under military. You know, the military has locked them down in a tent and so she flashes her tits to one of the soldiers who's played by john sales in his cameo. Uh, but it's, they're not hers. Because she came to joe dante and she goes hey look, I know, I said in the contract I'd do this, but like I don't really want to do this anymore, can we find somebody else? So joe dante had went to the waffle house and paid a waitress and they set the camera up outside and just said all right, do it Go. All right, because one of the more humiliating moments of my life really just not a great experience.
Speaker 2Oh my God, that's hilarious, yeah, but that moment in the film is also one of the funniest moments in an otherwise very serious movie, where A movie where kids are getting eaten by piranhas. That's also great about this movie is it has the balls to put kids in danger and actually have them be eaten by piranhas, which is would be unheard of nowadays. You wouldn't.
Speaker 1You wouldn't have the temerity to do that and you don't want, yeah, you don't want them to be eaten.
Speaker 2You know, of course you don't want them to be eaten, but it ups the stakes a lot to have this, you know yeah, absolutely, it's um and there's part I was. The point I was trying to make before was that when they're, they're trapped in the tent and the guy tells her go ahead and distract the guard, well, she asks what if he's gay? And he goes, well, I'll distract him.
Speaker 1Then yeah, yeah, but the movie has a lot of great funny moments. But, yeah, there's, there's. There's a part at the summer camp where the summer camp is set up. Bradford dillman's daughter is at the summer camp, right? So there's a little bit of stakes there. And they're on the river and the and the piranhas have been released through happenstance into the river and they're super military grade piranhas that were developed to eat people in vietnam and, um, they're in the water supply and, uh, paul bartell plays this sort of overbearing, strict camp counselor guy and I'm thinking, I'm thinking, okay, this guy's going to get totally chopped to bits by these piranhas, cause they're setting him up to be such a villain. Quote unquote right, because in these movies that's what you expect, right, you? It sort of devolved into this, this, this type of thing in in these slasher films and then these, you know you get your comeuppance, you get your character that you, you're waiting for them to get their comeuppance from, from the killer but he doesn't die.
Speaker 1Instead, the final shot of him in the film is him weeping over like a a body bag of a small child that's been eaten by the piranha, and I was thinking to myself wow, this is a lot that's a little heavier than uh.
Speaker 2We realized and he's giving off some kind of really creepy vibes too, you know he was.
Speaker 1He's also in hollywood boulevard. He is a corman regular and he played a cameo in uh. He was in uh grand theft auto as the newlyweds that are in this sort of house trailer that gets stolen by uh clint howard oh okay, yeah, he's in a lot of the carmen pictures, but uh, can we?
Speaker 2talk about someone who we have not talked about yet, who is a Corman regular Corman star. Yet out of the four movies that we chose, to talk about today, he's only in this one, which is crazy is.
Speaker 1Dick Miller, of course he's absolutely phenomenal.
Speaker 2Love Dick Miller a lot A great guy and he is one of the best characters in this movie as the analog for the mayor of Amityville, or of Amity in Jaws.
Speaker 1There's no gray area here, though he's the bad guy. He's terrible.
Grand Theft Auto: Ron Howard Directs
Speaker 2He's the bad guy here. He does not give two craps about what's going on to the people until someone finally interrupts his important phone call and tells him what's wrong with the guests.
Speaker 1And he's like they're, they're being eaten by piranhas. And he's like, oh, you get the. He goes. I don't want to hear one more word about fucking piranhas. I told you now do I hear it? He goes, they're eating the guests, they're eating. And then dick miller look at his face. It's just perfect, um, but you know it's fun to watch the piranhas. It's a a very easy effect. I mean it sounds tougher than what it looks like on screen, but it's basically they have a repeated shot of like a plate of like piranhas that swim, yeah, and then people kind of writhe around and we throw blood in the water.
Speaker 2And then we hear over and over again yeah, this is the cheesiest one of the lot we're talking about today, only because the Piranha effects are not really up to par.
Speaker 1I was never amazed by it.
Speaker 2It doesn't take anything out of it for me, but I think if you were showing these movies to people who are not as into older films, I think you could get away with the other three completely. There's nothing in there that's very hokey. Other three like completely, there's nothing in there that's it's very hokey. But this one people may. Oh, you know, special effects aren't up to par with 2025 standards, you know but there's plenty of entertainment. I mean when oh, absolutely I think it's phenomenal yeah, he has to open up this.
Speaker 1he has to kill all the piranhas by releasing sewage into the river because it'll destroy them. And he goes down to this sunken um control room it's fantastic the sets they made underwater in a big, olympic sized pool. And then when he he told you know the co-star, his, his, heather Menzies he goes hey, pull me out of here in in two minutes Cause I'll be out of breath. And when she yanks him on the boat with the rope and he flies free of the piranhas trying to eat him and crashes through the window underwater.
Speaker 2It device. Um, really enjoyed just something very weird in this movie. That that that I couldn't get my mind off of is when they go to the lab in the beginning of the movie, heather menzies and the guy they see in the in or they don't see it, but we see it there's a weird stop motion creature that is just crawling around and we never hear about it again or see it again. There's nothing. And what was that? What was going on there?
Speaker 1that that was a Phil Tippett creation. They had a lot of great people on this, or not? Phil Tippett, sorry. Yes, a Phil Tippett creation. He was on the set for this and I'm like Phil Tippett worked on this movie. He fucking just got done doing Star Wars. It must have coincided at the same time because also Pino D'Onozio does the score and then Rob Bottin did some of the makeup work.
Speaker 2Did they talk about it in the commentary what that creature was supposed to be?
Speaker 1Oh yeah, it was a field-typic creation, and the idea, though it doesn't really come across, is that this is a really weird science laboratory and there's a lot of weird things going on, and at the end they were trying to convince Roger to give them extra money to shoot an end stinger, where that thing had grown to enormous size and was attacking the city.
Speaker 2Okay, but I just thought it very strange that I figured it. Maybe that makes the most sense, but I just thought it was very strange that they they show it just for that. One scene, brief few seconds, and then twice, nothing commented on again. It doesn't not that they interact with it, for instance and say, oh, there's weird little creatures.
Speaker 1We only as the audience see it yeah, it just kind of appears, but I don't know. The movie was was very well done and they were supposed to get a lot more money and roger cut the budget like three days before they shot they dropped the cup budge like four hundred thousand dollars. So they had to scramble but they did a great job. It's a great little little fun movie.
Speaker 2Also a lot of fun cameos. Kenan Wynn is in the movie as a drunk who gets his legs chewed off by piranhas. Kevin McCarthy from Invasion of the Body Snatchers is the scientist guy that they find at the research facility.
Speaker 1A guy who's also great in Joe Dante's Inner Space, which is probably his most underrated movie. Inner Space is incredible.
Speaker 2And Kevin.
Speaker 1McCarthy is the villain. You should watch it right away. It's really fun.
Speaker 2And also Richard Deacon from the Dick Van Dyke show. It shows up at the beginning of the movie as the head of the agency that Heather Menzies works for, and I was like, oh, it's Mel Cooley from the Dick Van Dyke show Fun stuff works for and I was like oh, it's Mel Cooley from the Dick Van Dyke show fun stuff, okay, interesting.
Speaker 1No, I thought it was a lot of fun yeah, really enjoyed it a lot.
Speaker 2I was sorry that this took us so long to get to see that. You know, I regret not having watched this one earlier.
Speaker 1I'm 100%. I felt the way about almost all these movies. You know I could have lived without seeing Dementia 13 or Grand Theft Auto. I get the gist, but Boxcar Bertha and Piranha are both terrific.
Speaker 2Yeah, so if you had to rate these in order, which is your favorite, my most enjoyable viewing experience was Piranha, but the best movie is Boxcar Bertha.
Speaker 2I agree, I agree Boxcar Bertha at the top of my list, for for me it's just there's so much, there's so much there and it's it is the highest quality film for for all of these, in terms of, like the effort put in before the movie is even made. You know what I mean. Like grand theft auto, you can tell ron is giving it his all, but he also like doesn't give a shit that it's just a piece of crap. You know a piece of junk that he's making and he knows that he wants it to be good, but he, you know, doesn't really care.
Speaker 1Marty is making like a passionate work, putting his soul into Boxcar Bertha, and he's probably digging out depth of emotion that weren't perhaps there originally, where the movie ends on such a dour, brutal note. Yeah, you know, I mean, I can't imagine that some other director in their hands would have made it a lot more exploitative and not as shocking.
Speaker 2You know, yes, I mean, I think it's plenty exploitive enough. But it definitely feels on the caliber of a quote, real movie.
Speaker 1Absolutely yeah, and Piranha, I think.
Speaker 2Close second for me Piranha yeah it looks good to me.
Speaker 1You know Dante was talking about. You know some of the locations, the houses which they just, you know Bradford Dillman, like his character's home, was just some guy that lived there. And they go, hey, can we film in your house? Didn't touch a thing, you know what I mean. So there's no set decoration or anything like that, but, boy, not, not bad. But then I did watch joe dante's the howling, which he was offered humanoids from the deep as a follow-up picture by corman, but he was already getting more offers based on the strength of piranha. And the howling is a movie that is sort of night and day, like cinematography wise. It just looks spectacular. It's so well lit, the Howling, and it kind of puts you in perspective of what a big budget back in the 80s would look like compared to a Corman movie. But they have so much charm and I think we could probably, though we sort of exhausted our discussion of these four movies in a relatively short amount of time. I'm surprised that we thought we would go longer.
Speaker 2Well, that's what I was. I was, you know, as we were leading up to this live stream today, I was thinking, yeah, there, there's a lot to talk about, but at the same time, there really isn't, because the depth of the film themselves there's. There's not a whole lot there, there's a, there's a lot more. It's, I think, more the behind the scenes or the making of the film or the context of the film is much more interesting than talking about the films themselves.
Speaker 1For, for a lot, of things like Grand Theft Auto.
Speaker 2How much can you really talk about Grand Theft Auto?
Speaker 1There's not a whole lot there. Ron Howard's directorial style, you know, as it pertains to Grand Theft. Auto. No, he made a very slick piece of entertainment, you know, and it was on a cheap budget and it works.
Speaker 2When you mentioned about Ron Howard being literally able to make anything, I think that was exemplified when he made solo, where he literally had to step into a movie that was half made and then just finished the job, as a contract player, so to speak.
Speaker 1Yep, Yep, which is surprising.
Speaker 2but I mean he'll just he'll do it, you know he's but what's, what's also kind of sad about his career is that he was making you know, big blockbuster type movies for a long time and then it kind of just he just fizzled out and then he started making kind of less interesting films or Well, I just hear people say that.
Speaker 1they say that that Ron Howard is is having a tough time and you, and for a while there in the early 2000s, late 90s, he was making movies like Apollo 13 or Beautiful Mind that were-.
Speaker 2Well, yeah, that's what I'm talking about the era where he was making really, really good stuff and then probably culminated with the Da Vinci Code, which is you know-.
Speaker 1I have a soft spot for the Da Vinci Code. I know everybody likes to dog on that movie. The two sequ a.
Speaker 2I'm talking about him making a Hollywood blockbuster type movie, like on a Spielberg level, which is what he was doing before he was making movies like how the Grinch stole Christmas or Apollo 13, that were like on that level, and then he kind of slowed down. You can make personal small films that are still culturally.
Speaker 1I haven't seen In the Heart of the Sea, though I heard it was tremendous. I have not seen it. Rush was good. I really enjoyed 13 Lives.
Speaker 2Hillbilly Elegy was really good.
Speaker 1I thought it was good. I thought it was fine. Everyone hated it, really Everyone hated him, that movie. I thought it was fine.
Speaker 2Really Everyone hated it.
Speaker 1Everyone hated it. It's got like 10% of Rotten Tomatoes. It got horrible.
Speaker 2You know what that's all about I know a little bit it got trashed.
Speaker 1I thought it was. You know that was well done, even though it's a direct streaming kind of a procedural. But I enjoyed it and I like ron howard seems like a genuinely interesting kind of guy. I mean, what a great career he's had absolutely over the decades.
Speaker 1But boy roger, roger died earlier this year and we, we or last year and we last year, this, passing by, uh, by talking about targets. But I think that roger has a lot more we could mine. If we were to watch the Nurse movies and just have a hoot about it, I think that'd be fun.
Speaker 2I would like to do the Edgar Allan Poe films for Halloween.
Speaker 1I agree that would be really cool.
Speaker 2Mask of the Red Death is one of my all-time favorite movies of all time. I even have the original movie poster in the other room on the wall oh do you yeah in the other room on the wall yeah, you want to open it up beautifully um horrific work of art with vincent price's head. Oh yeah, all of these writhing and tortured souls. It's very demonic and creepy and it's it's wonderful piece for my living room, sorry I agree with you.
Speaker 1No, I think it's. Uh, we had trembling colors say that ron howard is a middle-of-the-road crowd-pleaser guy. Yeah, eh, yo, you know what? Have you ever seen? Night Shift, his follow-up film to Grand Theft Auto.
Speaker 2I have not.
Speaker 1Oh, terrific early 80s comedy with Henry Winkler and Michael Keaton One of Michael Keaton's funniest performances, in my opinion. It's about two guys that run a run a morgue and they turn it into a brothel. Uh, very funny, uh, very genuine movie. But I would say apollo 13 is a genuinely good film oh yeah, backdraft as well yeah, yeah. Well, you want to open up to a q a with the audience? Yeah, what's that?
Speaker 2beautiful mind beautiful mind.
Speaker 1Anybody have any questions for us? Because I've sort of exhausted my, my uh. Even though I read a whole book on roger corwin which was very interesting, by the way, the one I read I I can't attest to the one you read, which is his autobiography it's really good, excellent, excellent, excellent book.
Speaker 2I mean just the production and financial aspect of his career and how he did things was it's probably one of the more fascinating things for me about how getting started. You know he talks about other independent producers how you make a movie and you have to wait in order to get the money back, in order to finance the next film. So you have to wait for the returns and on your investment and all that. Well, he got around that by getting advances from the distributor based on the. He had to put up the money for like the first one or two movies, but then, after the success of those, he was able to convince people To give him enough advance money To make more movies and to keep that cycle going, because if you stop production, basically you're dead. So by keeping in perpetuity the wheels turning the press is running, so to speak he was able to get going and make the monumental success that he became.
Speaker 2And I love hearing about how stingy and cheap he is, just even on a personal level, like not wanting to do long distance phone calls, like even when he got engaged to his wife. He proposed to her and then he had to leave town to go to the Philippines for for something for shooting. And he never called her for like a week and she finally called him or he called her and they're like are we still getting married? And he's like yeah, yeah, of course, did you pick a date?
Speaker 1And he, yeah, so so they didn't want to make a long distance.
Speaker 2He didn't want to make a long distance phone call from the Philippines. He didn't want to spend the money on that.
Speaker 1Oh boy, and he's.
Speaker 2He's an Irish Catholic to the cheapest guy in Hollywood, so you wouldn't think, but uh and also, um, the only he loves to talk about, the only movie he ever lost money on. You are With. William Shatner, the Intruder, which was a racial politics movie from the Deep South. Looks fascinating, looks great. I would love to watch that.
Speaker 1Yeah, it looks like a well-done movie. It just seems a little A little heavy-handed. Yeah, he was a liberal, so it meant something.
Speaker 2It's a lofty movie. It sounds like a lofty movie, good, good premise, you know, with societal benefit. I would say.
Piranha: Joe Dante's Jaws-Inspired Horror
Speaker 1On the note about cheapness, in the Beverly Gray book, which is quite good, I would recommend you guys read it if you're interested in Corman talks about his daughter who was also somewhat involved in the business. They went and visited Canon Pictures back when they were really rocking and rolling in the 80s and they had a beautiful office and his daughter mentioned to him boy, we make more money than these guys we're doing. Well, we can't. We have an office. He would have art students. If he liked to paint her, he would have art students make up like a forgery of like a high art piece or something that was very similar and he would hang those all on the wall. And his wife actually got him a real painting of his favorite artist and he made her turn, give it away.
Speaker 2He didn't want it. He was like no, don't spend any money on that. So, yeah, man, he uh. They love to ask him about like what would you do if you had the hollywood budget to make? You know, if you had 100 million dollars to make a movie? And his answer is just so perfect for for everything about him. He's like no, you know, if they gave me $100 million to make a movie, I would split it in half and I would make one $50 million movie. And then I would take the other 50 million and I would make, you know, either two $25 million movies or four $10 million movies or five $10 million movies. And he's like we could stretch that money out to make the 50 million look like 100 million.
Speaker 1Yep, no, that's.
Speaker 2Maybe we need that nowadays because we're seeing you know ballooning budgets out of control and the end product looks like trash.
Speaker 1Well, and I'm not Mr Communist either, but he does make a point where, in one of his interviews, he gave where he goes. You know, I frankly I think it's obscene to be spending this much money on some of these things. $200 million, Everything costs $200, $300 million, and they're you know forgot.
Speaker 2Do we really? Is it? Is it really worth society that we spend 150 to $200 million on Thunderbolts? You know right, just saying.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's just, that's incredible. You know it's uh's, uh, but yeah, I think we should talk about next time, if we continue down the carmen path, which I think we should. I think it'd be fun to watch some of his nurse movies. But uh, his 80s efforts like uh he, he got to working with jim winorski, which many people are familiar with, on movies like chopping mall and and the um, what is it? The slumber party massacre, massacre series, when he started making more and more movies direct-to-video, which was fun to hear that he was able to pivot. I mean, his business model was so heavy in drive-ins and he was able to make that move to videocassette and then, still to this day or until the day he died, making things like Sharktopus or whatever, that were kind of For the Sci-Fi Channel.
Speaker 1Yeah, sad that he started kind of like aping like the asylum you know, towards the asylum still around.
Speaker 2Is that still a thing? I don't know.
Speaker 2It was big for a while with uh sharknado and all that stuff, but yeah, when they hit sci-fi channel on their team that they were doing well well, what's also fascinating during all this research and watching these movies is, you know, you you kind of have a preconceived notion about what genre he really dabbled in. You think horror, science fiction, and it's like that is just the tip of the iceberg here. There is so much more to it beyond that. We're talking about, you know, biker gang movies. We're talking about women in prison movies, nurses movies. You know the range youth on the run, car movies, everything. There's so much. He was basically whatever was hot at the time. Let's make that and we'll milk it till it's dry, until it's no longer commercially viable. Just keep making them, keep cranking them out and it's it's. You know, it's impressive, that is impressive.
Speaker 1What would be really cool, I think, also as a show, would be the why the the wild angels with the trip and then easy rider and like five easy pieces because the connection is, you know, very apparent when you're going back absolutely those guys that went on to graduate as you, if you will, from the roger carman school. But and the the stories about the wild angels and and doing working with the Roger Carman school.
Speaker 2But and the, the stories about the wild angels and and doing working with the hell's angels are also just some of the most fascinating and and wild stories. And you know it's like what? What an interesting life for someone to have to do all this stuff. You know he had a hit put out, put out on him by the hell.
Speaker 1And he was such a sort of well-mannered and mild-mannered dude.
Speaker 2Yes, very stoic, very mild-mannered guy. I mean he looks like a total square in all the right ways. I don't mean that with any disrespect but great memory too, and sharp as a tack up until his late 90s, up until he died. Did I say anything?
Speaker 1where he was with Joe Bob briggs on stage at the drive-in no, I should watch that though, but I should have sent you also when he was on conan o'brien show, probably in like 2014 or 15 okay, I may have seen that a while ago I was watching the one with him on letterman in like the 80s or 90s oh, it was
Speaker 1also quite good okay, maybe I'll stick some of those in here on the audio version of the show, which you can find anywhere. You find audio podcasts iTunes, spotify. If you enjoy this show right now, go out to iTunes or Spotify. Find the Film Journal podcast, where you can watch these live streams or listen to them rather as an MP3. And please like or give us five stars or write a review. That would be huge to help us grow on the podcast platform. Lots of people like to tune in for the live streams, but most people just want to listen to these in audio form, and often I go back and edit music and little clips in for your listening pleasure. So be sure to do that please, Ryan.
Speaker 1It's been a pleasure, as always yeah, that was fun, that was fun. Uh, I have a few ideas, but oh, barbarian flicks right. Yeah, there were some of those death stalker right death stalker there's four of those at least we could just do this all year, just different corpsman cycles, different things I'd be down for that I would too.
Speaker 1Maybe we should just return to it every once in a while. This was a good place to start, though. I think this was a good place to start, so thank you, nice shirt, appreciate it very much. That's why you have to tune into the live streams, cause you can't see this on on.
Speaker 2Yeah, you don't get this with just the audio.
Speaker 1You don't get this with for tuning in Really appreciate it. Check out my new review on Small Soldiers and my newest video on Cartrovision. They need some help. They're really flops, Boy. It's been tough out there.
Speaker 2The algorithm it's killer.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's been tough on me. Alright, ryan, it's been cool. Thank you guys for tuning in. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 2Bye.
