I've been mulling over this bit of news all morning and I think you can now put me in the 'cautiously optimistic' pile: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (28 Weeks Later, Intacto) has just signed a deal with MGM to develop a remake of Roger Corman's X: The Man With X-Ray Eyes. I actually had the chance to catch a screening of the original film on the big screen from a nicely restored print about six months back and it's one odd beast, one that I think Fresnadillo could do interesting things with.
Now, here's why I'm on the positive side with this one. First, Fresnadillo - who is a very talented writer and director - is not being brought in as a hired gun. He's on board right at the beginning and - if I'm reading the trades right - may have actually been the motivating force in all of this. That means we've got a smart, film savvy man pushing the buttons here rather than a focus group in a board room. This is good. Second, for all the potential for lurid exploitation, the original film actually plays very much as a serious minded character study, a surprising choice for a Corman film and one that I think lends itself well to our current oversaturated media culture. It is, after all, the story of a man who see too much.
Now, I'm not a Corman expert by any means so I'd be curious to hear what hardcore fans out there may think about this. And I'm also hankering for some quality Corman recommendations? Any favorites? Where should a relative neophyte like myself start?
A good place to start their Corman diet would be with his Poe adaptions which he directed himself. MGM put out nice DVDs with a couple of them under the Midnight Movies banner, great looking prints and a good commentary with Corman. Then I would venture in to his produced stuff that he did in the 70's after that it pretty much goes down hill.
As for X, I think it's a film with a more famous title than the film itself. I have it sitting on my shelf but have never popped it in the player. Might have to rectify that.
Swarez: You should. It's one of his better films.
The Haunted Palace is the best of the Poe/Lovecraft films IMHOP.
Agree with Swarez on the Poe adaptations.
"The Man With the X-Ray Eyes" is a bit of an inbetween film: it's still close to his no-budget exploitation fare, but it also shows the promise of his later lavish horror productions, like "Masque of the Red Death" (which isn't a Poe-adaptation, but DAMN does it look like one!!).
My favorite Corman movie is "The Raven".
Especially the wizarding duel between Vincent Price and Boris Karloff is so funny and well-done.
Read that sentence again: a wizarding duel between Vincent Price and Boris Karloff! Watch as the two throw old-school special effects and rampant sarcasm at each other! Price being the good one! Garish technicolor! Two of the best voices in the history of cinema hamming each other to death!
I still suspect THIS was the movie that warped Tim Burton into his original creative state. I want a kick-ass BluRay of it and I want it NOW...
Corman really knew how to maximise his productions. Watch Masque of the Red Death, The Raven and Fall of the House of Usher and you will see the same sets used over and over again. One of his most successful films, Little Shop of Horrors, was made using a set that had just been used for an early-wrapped movie and he was given permission to use it for the remaining three days. Genius.
Corman's THE INTRUDER (aka SHAME & I HATE YOUR GUTS, with William Shatner as a rabble-rousing white supremacist stirring up trouble in the US South, warrants a view; it takes great big brass ones to make a film like that on the actual locations in the early 1960s. The production was run out of several towns under less than friendly circumstances. Corman calls it the only film he directed that ever lost money.
BLOODY MAMA is a rather different look at a earlier time in the South. Where INTRUDER was intended as a serious look at a serious problem, BLOODY MAMA is gratuitous, very sleazy & magnificent exploitation all the way. Shelly Winters goes utterly mad leading her hopelessly broken sons on a Southern crime spree, among them a very young Robert DeNiro who mostly shoots dope and huffs glue, which is itself reason enough to watch this.