New Roger Corman DVDs, and a Lesson in Great Titles



Buena Vista Home Entertainment was kind enough to send me review copies of four new Roger Corman DVDs they’re releasing this week. They are Death Race 2000 – Special Edition, Big Bad Mama - Special Edition, Rock ‘n’ Roll High School – Special Edition, and Dinocroc. Of the four films three have been on DVD before, but these are the best editions yet.

Three first three films have been released under the banner of “Roger Corman: Early Films.” It’s pretty funny to note that some of these “early” films come nearly 30 years into Mr. Corman’s career. It’s incredible how long this guy has been producing movies.



Death Race 2000 (1975) is one of my favorite movies. It amazes me every time I see it just how incredibly entertaining it is. In the far-flung future of the year 2000 the most popular sporting event is a cross continent race where the contestants are scored by both how fast they go and how many pedestrians they kill. Every racer is a flamboyant, over-the-top character with a bizarre custom car to match: Calamity Jane’s car looks like a bull, Machine Gun Joe Viterbo (Sylvester Stallone in an early role) drives a car with Tommy guns on the front, etc. The main character is the masked racer Frankenstein, played by David Carradine, who is the most popular hero the race as ever produced. The movie wastes no time getting to the race (it starts minutes into the movie) and never slows down while delivering a constant supply of action, gore, nudity, corny puns, silly satire, and plot twists.

Death Race 2000 is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, which appears to be cropped from a full frame master. While this means that you may have seen a bit more image on the top and bottom of the image in the previous fullscreen home video presentations of this film, the new edition certainly represents how the movie would have been presented in theaters. The print appears to have some mild wear, but looks colorful and sharp. I get the sense that Corman didn’t keep take good care of his masters as he jumped from company to company (if he kept them at all), so this is probably the best transfer we can expect.

On Amazon.com right now there’s a review of this DVD that complains that it doesn’t deserve the label “special edition” because it doesn’t include any deleted scenes. Dude, this is a Roger Corman film -- there were no deleted scenes. Corman didn’t put up money to shoot scenes that weren’t going to be in the final cut. If anything, any scene he paid for might be reused in three or four later films he produced. What we do get on this disc is a short retrospective, the original trailer, and an audio commentary with Roger Corman and Mary Woronov (who played Calamity Jane). Corman manages the neat trick of being unapologetic yet faintly embarrassed by the frequent gratuitous nudity in the film.



Big Bad Mama (1974) is a sex-soaked version of the Ma Barker story, with Angie Dickinson as Ma, and Tom Skerritt and William “Double Emmy-Winner” Shatner as two of her beaus. The movie is probably better as a primer on how to recreate the Depression-era American heartland on a budget than as a biopic, but you can’t argue with that cast. Big Bad Mama is presented in open-matte fullscreen, with a retrospective and a new audio commentary with Roger Corman and Angie Dickinson. Always honest, Roger attributes the film’s relative success to the title. (And Angie Dickinson, but she’s sitting right next to him.)



I have to admit up front, I have never seen Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979). I’ll remedy that soon. BVHE’s special edition DVD includes almost all the extras from the previous “Roger Corman Classics” release, including the audio commentary with the crew, audio out-takes of the Ramones big number, radio ads, and adds a new commentary with Roger Corman and Dey Young (in place of the previous disc’s interview with Corman) and a retrospective.



The most recent film is Dinocroc (2004), labeled aspart of the “Roger Corman: Sci-Fi Collection.”  This movie premiered on the Sci Fi Channel last year so you probably know what to expect: washed up stars (Costas Mandalor), minimal monster appearances, bad CGI. I’m also still not sure what a “Dinocroc” is, even after seeing the movie.

And insert included with the DVDs suggests that the next set of four releases will include Loose Screws (1985) and Beach Balls (1988), both part of “Roger Corman: Comedy Collection,” and two more “Early Films”; Caged Heat (1974) and The Big Doll House (1971). That last one, a Jack Hill flick, I’m particularly looking forward to. Hopefully we’ll get some extras and maybe even an explanation of that bizarre dubbed-in last line of dialogue in the film.

Posted: Tue - December 13, 2005 at      

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