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.
William Shatner turns in one of his finest performances as the charming villain, a political agent who has arrived in town for one purpose only: To incite racially motivated violence so as to sway the vote in favor of his segregationist employers. He enjoys doing this, and he uses his boyish good looks and innocent charm to deliver a villainous performance that really crawls under your skin.
The concept may have begun with Adolf Hitler. It seems odd that Corman would cast such a charismatic young man in such a seedy, nasty role as villain, but as Hitler made clear, you need charisma, you need charm, and you need a handsome face to sell ugly ideas. Shatner is just incredible in the film, and you can see exactly how he scams and cons the people of the small town to believe what they know in their hearts is not true.
Corman and his crew were actually run out of town when the local police got wise to what sort of a movie he was doing, and the last few shots he grabbed were literally filmed with the police only a few blocks away and closing in. Literally, the police were walking towards Corman at the time he was filming the last few shots, and he had to hurry up and wrap the shoot, and then pack everything in the truck and vamoose.
Corman is earning a lifetime achievement award at the Oscars in 2010, but there has been sadly little coverage of his life and times in cinema. For as much as he's contributed, Corman's Oscar is long overdue.
It's true that Corman is primarily remembered as the maker of some truly cheap B films, but that's only one aspect of what he's done for American film. Besides making some true classics like Shame, he also launched the careers of Dennis Hopper, Martin Scorsese and Jack Nicholson, to name only a few of his many efforts and gifts to the modern cinematic landscape.
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.
William Shatner turns in one of his finest performances as the charming villain, a political agent who has arrived in town for one purpose only: To incite racially motivated violence so as to sway the vote in favor of his segregationist employers. He enjoys doing this, and he uses his boyish good looks and innocent charm to deliver a villainous performance that really crawls under your skin.
The concept may have begun with Adolf Hitler. It seems odd that Corman would cast such a charismatic young man in such a seedy, nasty role as villain, but as Hitler made clear, you need charisma, you need charm, and you need a handsome face to sell ugly ideas. Shatner is just incredible in the film, and you can see exactly how he scams and cons the people of the small town to believe what they know in their hearts is not true.
Corman and his crew were actually run out of town when the local police got wise to what sort of a movie he was doing, and the last few shots he grabbed were literally filmed with the police only a few blocks away and closing in. Literally, the police were walking towards Corman at the time he was filming the last few shots, and he had to hurry up and wrap the shoot, and then pack everything in the truck and vamoose.
Corman is earning a lifetime achievement award at the Oscars in 2010, but there has been sadly little coverage of his life and times in cinema. For as much as he's contributed, Corman's Oscar is long overdue.
It's true that Corman is primarily remembered as the maker of some truly cheap B films, but that's only one aspect of what he's done for American film. Besides making some true classics like Shame, he also launched the careers of Dennis Hopper, Martin Scorsese and Jack Nicholson, to name only a few of his many efforts and gifts to the modern cinematic landscape.
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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