Sorceress | Die Mächte des Lichts:

It is said that the two sisters and leading actresses Leigh and Lynette Harris, who were seen shortly before with their charms in the US Playboy, were given the contract for the leading roles mainly for tax reasons – production subsidy from the USA.

Roger Corman & New World Pictures

Producer, actor, director, screenwriter: Roger William Corman was born on 5 April 1926 in Detroit, Michigan, and began his remarkable film career after studying engineering at Stanford, initially as a messenger at 20th Century Fox, but only a short time later went to Great Britain to study English literature at Oxford University. He eventually returned to Hollywood as a frahling and co-produced his first film, “Highway Dragnet” in 1953. Although he was not mentioned by name, Roger Corman also took over the production assistance under William F. Broidy for free in order to gain experience, Corman had written the script himself and sold it to Broidy for $ 2,000. This money motivated Corman to produce more films and laid the foundation of his producing career. With the money for the script in his pocket and thanks to the financial support of some friends, Roger Corman produced his first own film in 1954: “Monster from the Ocean Floor” was completed for just $ 30,000 and brought in a whopping $ 850,000 at the box office. His directorial debut followed a year later with the western “Five Guns Go West“, and especially in the 1950s and 1960s Roger Corman was extremely productive as a principal director at AIP. AIP first put him in the director’s chair for “Revolver Kelly” and “Teenage Caveman“, and Roger Corman also took over the direction of “Scream, Baby Killer“, in which Jack Nicholson played his first leading role.

Although established and successful as a director, producing remained his real passion, and so in 1959 he founded The Filmgroup, his first own production company, together with his brother Gene. Specialising in low-budget films for drive-in cinemas, the first three films “High School Big Shot“, “T-Bird Gang” and “Attack of the Giant Leeches” were made in the company’s founding year, as was “The Legacy of Prof. Bondi“, a black comedy produced for AIP. They then tried to persuade Roger Corman to direct two low-budget horror films, but Corman refused and convinced AIP to let him direct an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe‘s “The Fall of the House of Usher” instead. Vincent Price took the lead role in 1960’s “The Accursed” and the film became one of AIP‘s biggest successes.

Until the mid-1960s, Roger Corman continued to direct for various studios, also to finance further films for The Filmgroup. In 1970 he finally made his big breakthrough as an independent film producer: the first three films of his newly founded production company New World Pictures, “Hyenas of the Night” (1970), “The Student Nurses” (1970) and “The Big Doll House“, were enormously successful at the box office and brought the young company a turnover of $3.2 million. Roger Corman had copied AIP‘s recipe for success and focused on low-cost productions with fresh actors that were to be distributed internationally. At first, the focus was primarily on horror and (s)exploitation flicks, but every now and then a drama or a thriller was mixed into New World‘s portfolio and, from the mid-1970s, science fiction and fantasy films as well. During this time, Roger Corman and New World Pictures began to virtually flood the film world with B and C gems of film history, and Corman “shone” again and again with his own adaptations of major cinema successes such as “Star Wars” (“Planet of Terror” 1981) or “Conan – the Barbarian” (“Deathstalker – the Death Hunter” 1983) and was never too shy to take over sets and entire scenes from previous films.

At first, the international distribution of the films was limited until Roger Corman expanded his company in 1984 to include three additional divisions. From then on, New World International took care of worldwide distribution, New World Television specialised in TV productions and New World Video was to conquer the ever-growing home video market. In 1987, New World Pictures changed its name to New World Entertainment, bought Marvel Comics and wanted to buy the toy companies Kenner and Mattel, but this never happened. At the same time, the company was enjoying considerable success, especially with TV productions for Lorimar-Telepictures, but at the same time the company’s financial situation was strained, which led to the reorganisation, while Roger Corman himself continued to follow his passion and produce B-movies. Parts of the company went to the Andrews Group, Four Star Television and Sony Pictures until New World finally became part of 20th Century Fox and thus now belongs to the Disney Company.

Today, Roger Corman – at the age of 93 – is still shaking up the film world as a producer, which has earned him the honourable title of “Pope of Pop Cinema“. Moreover, in the course of his career, which so far comprises an incredible 415 film productions and 56 directorial works, he took dozens of filmmakers under his wing who today enjoy world fame. Whether Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Manahem Golan or James Horner, whether Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda or Dennis Hopper, they all owe their career to New World Pictures and Roger Corman.

Swords, Wizards, Barbarians – Fantasy Cult of the 1980s

In 1982, a genre emerged that would flood cinema screens with pure testosterone for a decade and into the 1990s: The barbarian film. Probably the best-known representative of the genre is “Conan the Barbarian” from 1982, which helped Arnold Schwarzenegger to his breakthrough, received a sequel two years later and was remade in 2011. And after Arnold Schwarzenegger took the sword of the god Krom to oppose the evil snake cult with thief Subotai and warrior Valeria, dozens of wild men and women, mostly scantily clad, masters in battle, merciless to the enemy, conquered cinema screens and TV screens. Alongside the barbarian film, the 1980s were to become the decade of the fantastic film in general, which had already been foreshadowed a year earlier with Terry Gilliam‘s “The Time Bandits” (1981) or “Excalibur” (1981) and continued with classics such as “The Last Unicorn” (1982), “Krull” (1983), “The Neverending Story” (1984), “The Day of the Falcon“, “Legend” (1985), “The Princess Bride” (1987) or “Willow” (1988). However, it was not only lavish and expensive productions that fans of the fantastic could enjoy, the decade also produced some gems of trash cinema, with which directors and producers like Jim Wynorksi or Roger Corman in particular made a name for themselves. Films such as “Ator – Lord of Fire” (1982), “The Powers of Light” (1982) or “Deathstalker” (1983) captivate with bad dialogue, lousy effects and clichéd fantasy presentation, but enjoy great popularity among trash fans precisely for this reason.

News