In the pantheon of directors and producers, in all the history of American cinema, very few have made contributions on the level of Roger Corman. Sure, he's primarily known as a schlockmeister, but let's not forget that he didn't just direct B movies, he defined them. Schlocky B movies were his bread and butter, how he supported his production house, and he owned that genre. Additionally, he used the money he made from these monster flicks and girly shows and used it to produce some real American classics. Shame is one of them, and belongs on your queue the next time you login to your movie download service.
The film is shockingly courageous when you take the context into consideration. Shame is about racial relations and tensions in small southern towns. Now, when people were making movies like this in the eighties and nineties, decades after the success of the civil rights movement, that's one thing. Corman took a crew down to a real small southern town during the civil rights era and actually filmed on location, where he and his team were constantly subjected to harassment and threats from the local populace.
The real star of the film is William Shatner as a villainous political agent. He's currently working for a segregationist running for office, and he moves into this town with one purpose in mind: Stir up racially motivated violence. It's a dark, disturbing character, and Shatner is incredible in the role. He usually plays the sort of roles that play off of his boyish charm and good looks, his uniquely friendly sense of machismo and his humor. To see this reversed in this early role is something like seeing Henry Fonda as the villain in Once Upon a Time in the West.
The idea of casting Shatner as a vile, disgusting villain may have been inspired by the charisma of Adolf Hitler: You need a charming man to sell evil ideas.
The final shots of the film were literally grabbed on the run. The shots used at the start of the film were actually recorded while the police were literally, physically closing in and chasing Corman out of town, forcing him to hurry up and wrap the shoot, throw all the equipment in the trucks, and get the heck out of there.
Corman may have his lifetime achievement Oscar by the time you read this. It's about time. Corman's reputation as a schlockmeister has always seemed to invalidate the immense contributions he's made to the world of American film.
Corman primarily made his name producing and directing schlocky monster movies, girly flicks and so on, but he also directed some real classics, and launched the careers of many cinematic legends, including Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese and Dennis Hopper. His studio taught many young actors, writers and directors the ropes, showing them how to produce a good movie on a limited budget and schedule, and he truly was one of the key figures in shaping the world of the modern American cinema.
If you still haven't seen any of Corman's good movies, start with this one, then check out X: The Man With The X-Ray Eyes. Yes, he made a lot of cheap monster movies, he made the sort of sci-fi flicks where you could see the zippers on the alien's suit, but he also made some true classics both in the horror and sci-fi genres, and outside of his familiar territory, and Shame is an example of what gifts the man has when he can step away from the marketable genres and really put his heart and daring into a project.
The film is shockingly courageous when you take the context into consideration. Shame is about racial relations and tensions in small southern towns. Now, when people were making movies like this in the eighties and nineties, decades after the success of the civil rights movement, that's one thing. Corman took a crew down to a real small southern town during the civil rights era and actually filmed on location, where he and his team were constantly subjected to harassment and threats from the local populace.
The real star of the film is William Shatner as a villainous political agent. He's currently working for a segregationist running for office, and he moves into this town with one purpose in mind: Stir up racially motivated violence. It's a dark, disturbing character, and Shatner is incredible in the role. He usually plays the sort of roles that play off of his boyish charm and good looks, his uniquely friendly sense of machismo and his humor. To see this reversed in this early role is something like seeing Henry Fonda as the villain in Once Upon a Time in the West.
The idea of casting Shatner as a vile, disgusting villain may have been inspired by the charisma of Adolf Hitler: You need a charming man to sell evil ideas.
The final shots of the film were literally grabbed on the run. The shots used at the start of the film were actually recorded while the police were literally, physically closing in and chasing Corman out of town, forcing him to hurry up and wrap the shoot, throw all the equipment in the trucks, and get the heck out of there.
Corman may have his lifetime achievement Oscar by the time you read this. It's about time. Corman's reputation as a schlockmeister has always seemed to invalidate the immense contributions he's made to the world of American film.
Corman primarily made his name producing and directing schlocky monster movies, girly flicks and so on, but he also directed some real classics, and launched the careers of many cinematic legends, including Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese and Dennis Hopper. His studio taught many young actors, writers and directors the ropes, showing them how to produce a good movie on a limited budget and schedule, and he truly was one of the key figures in shaping the world of the modern American cinema.
If you still haven't seen any of Corman's good movies, start with this one, then check out X: The Man With The X-Ray Eyes. Yes, he made a lot of cheap monster movies, he made the sort of sci-fi flicks where you could see the zippers on the alien's suit, but he also made some true classics both in the horror and sci-fi genres, and outside of his familiar territory, and Shame is an example of what gifts the man has when he can step away from the marketable genres and really put his heart and daring into a project.
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