Corman has made hundreds of films, anticipating major shifts in the cultural zeitgeist with atomic powered creature features, rebellious teenager melodramas, biker movies, and blaxploitation cult classics. He always brought his films in on-time and under-budget. The one exception came in 1962 with The Intruder, a moody issue-driven drama about school integration and white supremacy filmed on-location in the Deep South. Now hailed as a milestone of independent filmmaking (by those hip enough to hail), Intruder was Corman’s only film to lose money. Appropriately, a special screening of a young intense Bill Shatner’s debut feature will follow Exploits.
However, after the experience of Intruder, Corman resolved to return to his low budget genre roots, subtly insinuating his political statements into his films, rather than trumpet them from the get go. Corman always was a trailblazer for the rest of Hollywood.
Corman has appeared in several documentaries in recent years, including Mark Hartley’s Machete Maidens Unleashed!, which documented Corman’s love affair with the authentic locations and bargain basement production costs offered by the Philippines in the 1970’s. Yet, there is very little overlap between the films. Indeed, with literally hundreds of outrageous movies to chose from, Corman documentarians need not fight over material.
