Melbourne Cinematheque June Round-up: Fast And Cheap With Roger Corman

Stupendously prolific, Corman has directed more than 50 movies and produced over 300 - his distinctive voice was recognized early by progressive critics. His most acclaimed films may be his cycle of eight Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, but he brought to all his films a unique visual style, a knowing playfulness towards genre conventions, and a critical vigour in his use of subversive themes and charged symbolic schemata.

Corman has had, in critic David Thomson's words, "an admirable record as a sponsor of new talent". Directors who worked for him include Peter Bogdanovich, Francis Ford Coppola, Monte Hellman, Ron Howard and Martin Scorsese.

This disquieting look at American race relations sees a charismatic young man resplendent in white (William Shatner) stride into a sleepy town just as desegregation is spreading through the South. Using calculated appeal to stir up a hornet's nest of small-town tension.

Scientific hubris, leading to severe punishment as Ray Milland plays the scientist bent on attaining knowledge beyond human reckoning, driving the film to its intense, Sophoclean conclusion. "Milland grows through his debasement, and the production offers plenty of it", wrote critic Dave Kehr.

This cult classic is an ultra low budget, high-camp thrill. Corman paid extras $1 per hour, shot the film in Puerto Rico in under a week after completing Last Woman on Earth, and crafted a creature from Brillo pads, pipe cleaners and ping-pong balls.

Don't let the name fool you, this is an affectionate satire of the late 1950s Southern Californian Beatnik scene. A mediocre artist working in a cafe accidentally kills a cat and subsequently discovers that his lifelike "sculptures" make him a celebrated figure on the local art scene. His struggle for new material quickly leads to murder.

Corman's wildly exploitative initial entry in the 1960s motorcycle-gang cycle is one of his most influential works. Peter Fonda leads a California chapter of the Hells Angels on an odyssey that incorporates beatings, orgies, rapes, drug taking and numerous other antisocial and countercultural activities.

Corman's most infamous foray into the world of LSD is an early experiment in the use of a baroque, psychedelic filming style to simulate the wildly euphoric and hallucinatory effects of drug taking. The film's bizarre blend of sensorial urgency and hypnotic intensity is accompanied by an improvisational jazz and blues-infused score (The Electric Flag).