CREEMEDIA

Some people might wonder what all the fuss is about. Certainly, after catching Attack Of The Crab Monsters (’56) or War Of The Satellites (’58) on the tube, the idea that their director, Roger Corman, might be the focus of cultish admiration and in certain circles nonchalantly referred to as a genius may seem too ludicrous to believe. But it’s true. To understand this it helps, a little, to have seen Corman’s movies when they were first released, to have experienced them in the full innocence of a 50’s childhood when the sight of a paper mach£ crab monster could excite seemingly profound emotions, or in the full confusion of a 60’s adolescence when bcith Edgar Allan Poe and the Hell’s Angels yielded sympathetic icons—profound and sympathetic enough, anyway, for one to look back years later and, in an effort at justification, find a deliberate artist at work. It helps even more to be familiar with the entire Corman oeuvre, since even if you can’t quite discern the hand of genius in such dismal entertainments as She Gods Of Shark Reef (’56) or Ski Troop Attack (’60), you have to cop the brilliance of his career.. .a career which represents not so much the triumph of art over commerce, as of spunky individualism over economic prohibitions. A classic American success story.