Roger Corman Movies

Angie Dickinson returns as a sexy Depression-era mother who joins forces with her equally attractive daughters for a crime spree through the South as they seek to avenge the death of her husband. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Former Green Beret Martin Fierro (Erik Estrada) is hired to kill the president of a mythical South American country in this thrilling political feature. The president was responsible for the death of Martin's father, the publisher of a left-wing newspaper. Sam Merrick (Robert Vaughn) is the CIA agent out to stop the killing to avoid further political chaos. Requisite car chases and gunplay are included, and the production quality along with Vaughn's performance help to overcome a thin storyline. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Although the title would indicate that female college students are the targets, this is an equal-opportunity slasher film, as both sexes are victims of gruesome murders. From her hospital bed, Beth (Angela O'Neill) is the lone survivor of the butchery in a sorority house that was home to her family 13 years earlier. Her brother has killed the entire family, with Beth the only one who escaped death. The repressed memories, along with her most recent weekend nightmare, are retold through a series of flashbacks and horrible hallucinations. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Offering an updated take on William Golding's Lord of the Flies, complete with anti-fascist metaphors, this drama is set at a summer camp where the kids rise up against their counselors and start running things themselves. It is based on a novel by William Butler, The Butterfly Revolution. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In a sex-and-violence film that emphasizes the physical abuse of young women, director Joan Freeman may raise the shackles as well as the hackles of her distaff viewing audience. Cookie (Melissa Leo) is a young runaway who arrives in New York City with her brother in tow and ends up working as a prostitute for the apparently easy-going Duke (Dale Midkiff). Everything seems fine, at least as much as can be expected, until one of Duke's streetwalkers threatens to quit, and he nearly beats her to death. Sickened and shocked, Cookie runs away with an infuriated Duke hot in pursuit and unsparing of anyone who gets in his way. The murders, the beatings, the stabbings, and other forms of mayhem weigh heavily in the plot's sequences. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Borrowing themes established in Yojimbo and its Italian version A Fistful of Dollars, this action/fantasy film features the exploits of Kain (David Carradine), a drifter/holy-man/martial arts expert who comes upon a village divided into three parts: two clans fighting over control of a water well, and the impoverished masses who suffer at their hands. Since this village is on an imaginary planet with two suns that circle across the sky, water is a premium commodity. Sorceress Naja (Maria Socas) is alternately the captive of either one or the other of the embattled clans and obviously needs to be rescued. Just like Sanjuro, the samurai in Akira Kurosawa's classic film, Kain pits the two clans against each other so his own job of finishing off the bad guys and saving Naja will be less strenuous. The most memorable aspect of this low-budget film is a dancer who is not wearing a double-breasted suit, but should be. Like the two suns and the two clans, she also has two of each. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Unmarried disc jockey Jamie Lee Curtis happens across a packet of love letters, written by her late mother. As she peruses these missives, she learns that her mother had carried on a lengthy extramarital affair. At firt appalled by mom's "double life," Curtis is slowly brought around to another way of thinking. Soon she has embarked on her own romance with an older man, the very married James Keach. Well cast and sensitively directed, Love Letters is a purposely "small" films that deserves a larger audience. The film was also released as My Love Letters and Passion Play. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This semi-documentary offers an interesting look at the infamous biker organization and makes the slightly slanted point, that despite their reputation as hell-raisers and violent thugs-on-wheels, they do in fact live by a strict code of honor and a genuine love of the road. The film chronicles their initial formation in the early '50s and features appearances by such performers as Willie Nelson, Jerry Garcia, and Johnny Paycheck. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Fans of outrageously bad drive-in fare from New World Pictures will find much to love in this bargain-bin science fiction weirdness -- one of several Alien rip-offs foisted on defenseless audiences by Roger Corman's legendary B-movie factory. The plot -- which, of course, is irrelevant to the action -- involves a food-research team on a distant planet, whose latest genetic product decides it would rather eat than be eaten...and boy, is it hungry. Then enters our hero, an undefined government specialist (Jesse Vint) whose dreams in hypersleep find their way into almost every scene in the film -- his apparent powers of precognition, however, are never mentioned. Vint responds to the team's distress signal and shows up with his robot pal to blast the slime-beast to smithereens -- and, of course, to engage in a little intergalactic nookie with the team's female personnel. Meanwhile, the constantly mutating monster chews its way through virtually the entire cast before one cancer-ridden scientist devises a highly original (and extremely disgusting) solution. The ever-thrifty Corman recycled sets and scenes from Battle Beyond the Stars and Galaxy of Terror to pad out this weekend wonder, making up for its threadbare production values (which include plenty of cheap scares, nudity, and graphic gore). ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

This groundbreaking, darkly-comic horror film from director Joe Dante changed the look and feel of werewolf movies in ways light-years distant from Universal's horror classic The Wolf Man. The story begins with television reporter/anchor Karen White (Dee Wallace) taking part in a dangerous police operation intended to trap psychopath Eddie Quist (Robert Picardo). When confronted by Eddie face-to-face, she witnesses something horrifying enough to trigger selective amnesia. Plagued by a series of violent nightmares, Karen decides to admit herself to a posh recovery resort known only as "The Colony," run by her eccentric New Age therapist Dr. Wagner (Patrick MacNee), and brings along her husband Bill (Christopher Stone) for support. The night after they arrive, Karen and Bill are unnerved by eerie howling in the woods. Back in the city, Karen's coworkers Chris (Dennis Dugan) and Terry (Belinda Balaski) have been investigating Eddie's background after discovering that his body has disappeared from the morgue. Sifting through Eddie's possessions, they find a strange collection of artwork depicting wolf-like creatures, and decide to consult with Walter Paisley (Dick Miller, of course), the owner of an occult bookshop, on werewolf lore. Though he claims not to believe in the stuff he's selling, Paisley nevertheless convinces Chris to purchase a handful of silver bullets... just in case. Back at the colony, Dr. Wagner has organized a hunting party after hearing Karen's account of the nocturnal howling, but the men find nothing but a rabbit, which Bill is told to bring to the cabin of the sultry Marsha (Elisabeth Brooks) to prepare for dinner. After resisting Marsha's less-than-subtle sexual overtures, Bill is attacked by a wolf while returning to his cabin. The following moonlit night, the sleepless Bill wanders outside to find Marsha waiting and the two make love by the campfire, their bodies undergoing a frightening transformation. Just as Karen is beginning to suspect that her husband is hiding a secret far more threatening than marital infidelity, Chris and Terry have come to realize -- too late, in Terry's case -- that Eddie Quist is not only still alive, but not quite human... and he knows he's being followed. Chris arrives at the colony too late to save Terry, but manages to find Karen just as the colony's residents -- all of whom are werewolves, including Dr. Wagner -- are assembling to decide her fate. Dante fills his film with heartfelt homages to The Wolf Man and other classic horror movies, as well as a few clever visual puns and in-jokes from his tenure with Roger Corman, but never strays from the path to genuine horror, particularly when Rob Bottin's chilling monsters are onscreen. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

Car chases abound in this youthful, comedy action outing that centers on the rivalry between a small-town Southern sheriff and a mischievous, but basically good-hearted kid who bedevils him by joy riding in stolen cars and then destroying them. As added insult, the sheriff's daughter, the boy's steady, is frequently involved. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Produced by Roger Corman and scripted by John Sayles, Battle Beyond the Stars is a cheerfully blatant imitation of The Seven Samurai (or at least the American remake The Magnificent Seven). A peaceloving planet is attacked by malevolent aliens. The powers-that-be hire a group of mercenaries, headed by George Peppard, to protect the planet from harm. Peppard's contingent includes squeaky-clean Richard Thomas Jr. and statuesque Sybil Danning. John Saxon goes through his usual paces as the villain, while the supporting players include such dependables as Sam Jaffe, Jeff Corey, and, from Magnificent Seven itself, Robert Vaughn. Keep an eye out for Julia Duffy as "Mol". A deft blend of standard sci-fi action and knowing "inside" humor, Battle Beyond the Stars was one of Corman's biggest hits of the 1980s-not to mention an endless supply of stock footage for future New World Productions. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide