Mel Welles

Mel Welles

A writer turned actor/director, Mel Welles is one of the most enduring cult figures from '50s exploitation pictures. Welles moved into films after careers in New York theater and wrestling promotion in Canada, and arrived in Hollywood at just about the time that his services were needed. Filmmakers were eager to make movies appealing to teens, and Welles, who had written for jazz satirist Lord Buckley, was a natural both as a performer and writer of "special material" to jazz up the scripts and action of the exploitation pictures being ground out. His most notable work in this area was in the 1958 drug-and-sexploitation classic High School Confidential, directed by Jack Arnold, for which Welles provided two stunningly funny (and effective) parodies of beat poetry and jargon, and also served as the movie's resident expert on marijuana. During this period, Welles--who is a master of numerous accents and dialects--appeared in numerous Roger Corman films (Attack of the Crab Monsters, Rock All Night etc.), usually in small roles, and became part of the stock company that included Dick Miller and Jonathan Haze. During the '60s, Welles began directing low budget films such as the crime thriller Code of Silence (1960) and the horror film Lady Frankenstein (1972). In recent years, Welles has come to appreciate the former teenagers who now love his work--which usually falls into the "psychotronic" or cult movie category--although he is embarrassed by the seriousness with which modern audiences embrace his beat poetry parodies in High School Confidential (and which, much to his puzzlement, recently surfaced on a compact-disc collection of Beat poetry). ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide