{"id":2660,"date":"2011-04-05T12:32:56","date_gmt":"2011-04-05T16:32:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mondomark.com\/wordpress\/?p=1831"},"modified":"2011-04-05T12:32:56","modified_gmt":"2011-04-05T16:32:56","slug":"the-corman-touch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=2660","title":{"rendered":"The Corman Touch"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After a delicious Eric Roberts sandwich, Sharktopus homicidus is ready for a nice aftynoon nap.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Roger Corman’s built a career making economical quickies, but there was a period when he was poised to move into the low A-realm, after building an increasingly respectable reputation as a director of Edgar Allan Poe shockers such as The House of Usher<\/strong> (1960) and The Masque of the Red Death<\/strong> (1964).<\/p>\n

Von Richthofen and Brown<\/strong> (1971) was supposed to be the career maker, but UA’s mishandling of the film soured Corman from directing for practically 20 years, during which time he set up a new company, New World Pictures, producing and releasing native and international products.<\/p>\n

During that time, Corman went back to being a businessman and mentor, and he continues to be involved with low budget productions, such as Sharktopus <\/a><\/strong>[M<\/a>] (Anchor Bay), reportedly the highest rated TV movie on the SyFy network thus far.<\/p>\n

From the Blu-ray’s \u00a0commentary track, one gets the impression he’d like to work with more money, but technology’s allowed him to animate almost anything – including a half-shark, half octopus, with decapitations and elaborate explosions.<\/p>\n

Now, few attempts to make a deliberately good-bad, bug-eyed monster movie work (Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus<\/a> <\/strong>has its share of flaws, but came close, even tough all the money shots are in the trailer),\u00a0but there is a special fromage <\/em>factor in Sharktopus<\/strong>, which should please fans of no-budget monster movies cut from the Corman cloth.<\/p>\n

To the other end, there’s Philippe Resonnances <\/a><\/strong>[M<\/a>] (Synapse Films), which comes pretty close to transcending the major limitations of its DV production values. Not unlike Sharktopus<\/strong>, the giant bug\u00a0effects and attack sequences generally work in what’s a decent riff on Ron Underwood’s Tremors <\/strong>(1990). Shot on DV, this French film took some time getting to Region 1 land, but it’s a good work sampler from a director who just needs a bit more cash and extra time to refine the script into something less overtly derivative.<\/p>\n

Coming next: Marlon Brando’s mumbling bubberesque <\/em>performance in Arthur Penn’s The Chase<\/strong> (1966), a film whose tension is derived not from whether ‘Bubber’ Reeves (shiny-faced Robert Redford) lives through a conflagration of small town hate, but exactly how does the salmon dress worn by actress Janice Rule (The Swimmer<\/strong>) maintain an unbearable level of cleavage in spite of gravity, and a persistent, southern summer breeze.<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mark R. Hasan<\/strong>, Editor
\nKQEK.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviews of Roger Corman’s Sharktopus (Anchor Bay), and Philippe Robert’s surprisingly fun no-budget shocker Resonnances (Synapse Films)…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[387,395,392,390,4212],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-GU","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2660"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2660\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}