-
Roger Corman: Better to Be on the Set than in the Office
- University Press of Mississippi
- Chapter
- Additional Information
117 Roger Corman: Better to Be on the Set than in the Office David Del Valle / 1984 From Films and Filming, November 1984, 15–20. Reprinted by permission of David Del Valle, Del Valle Archives. David Del Valle: What was the concept of the Poe series? Did you initially just plan to make one film with The House of Usher, or did you see it as a series at the time? Roger Corman: My original thought was simply to make The Fall of the House of Usher. I had been a great admirer of Poe since I’d been in school, and I’d always wanted to make that particular film and at that time I was making a series of low-budget pictures, generally black and white, on ten-day schedules, for about $100,000 or less for AIP (American International Pictures). Their policy at the time was to release two of these pictures together as a double-bill, two science fiction pictures, two horror pictures, whatever, sometimes two gangster films. They wanted me to do it again, and I felt we had been repeating ourselves too much, so I said “Instead of doing two black and white horror films for $100,000 each, let me do one fifteen-day color film for $200,000”—and it eventually became $250,000—and they agreed to do that, and that’s how The Fall of the House of Usher was made. DDV: Did you decide on Vincent Price from the outset? RC: No. My original thought simply was to The Fall of the House of Usher. Once we had the script, I had several meetings with Jim Nicholson. We discussed a number of actors and we felt that Vincent Price would be the best; he was our first choice, the first man to whom we sent the script, and he accepted. 118 roger corman: inter views DDV: Was Daniel Haller the art director on that? RC: Yes. DDV: He did an incredible job, because the film has the look of a more expensive film. What was it like when that film first opened, and you started getting what for AIP must have been unusual critical attention. RC: It was exciting. It truly was a wonderful moment. It was one of those rare films where we had both the critical acclaim and the box-office success , so we could kind of sit back and see it coming from all directions. DDV: Sam Arkoff tells me that he was a bit reluctant at first to do a film that didn’t have a monster in it, but legend has it you told him that the house would suffice. RC: Right. The house would be the monster. DDV: Did he go for that? RC: He did. He knew—but Sam is very bright, I mean, you don’t really put anything over on Sam. He knew that I was slightly conning him when I said that, but he also knew that it was kind of correct. Psychologically , or subtextually, the house is the monster, so it could be considered to be a correct statement. DDV: How soon after The Fall of the House of Usher did you decide to make another Poe film? RC: Very quickly. The film came out, it did well, I had a continuing relationship with AIP—I’d done a number of films with them—and Sam and Jim and I were having lunch and we simply decided over this lunch to do the next one and I suggested The Pit and the Pendulum. I had two choices. It was really interesting, because they asked me what I thought for the second one and I said, “Either The Pit and the Pendulum or Masque of the Red Death,” and I think it was Jim who chose The Pit and the Pendulum or a joint choice at any rate. Each picture afterward, they would say, “What do you think?” and each time I would give them two choices, and one of them would be Masque of the Red Death and we kept staying away from it and staying away from it until late in the cycle, we finally did do it. DDV: Did you have a hand in the script at the point that you did The Pit and the Pendulum? RC: Yes, always. [3.140.242.165] Project MUSE (2024-04-19 13:11 GMT) david del valle / 1984 119 DDV: So a script would be submitted to you...