Legendary exploitation film producer Roger Corman died this year at the age of 98, marking the end of one of Hollywood’s most storied careers. To pay tribute, The Brattle Theatre has programmed a two-week retrospective, “Roger Corman: King of Cult.” The series begins Friday with a double feature of two of Corman’s most beloved works as a director (and my favorites): the black comedy “A Bucket of Blood” (1959) and its sister film, the original, nonmusical version of “The Little Shop of Horrors” (1960), which was shot in two days on leftover sets from “Blood” and features a 22-year-old Jack Nicholson in one of his earliest roles. On Saturday, you can catch “House of Usher” (1960), the first in a series of uncharacteristically lavish Technicolor adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe works Corman made in the ’60s with Vincent Price (for the rest of these films, you can cross the river to the Coolidge Corner Theatre, which is running them as midnight movies all month). Saturday also brings a 50th anniversary screening of one of the most offbeat films Corman ever produced, Monte Hellman’s “Cockfighter” (1974), with an introduction by author and film historian Kier-La Janisse. Then, next week, you can see the Corman-produced early work of some of the filmmaker’s most prolific proteges: a double feature of Martin Scorsese’s “Boxcar Bertha” (1972) and Francis Ford Coppola’s “Dementia 13” (1963) on Monday, followed by Peter Bogdanovich’s chillingly prescient “Targets” (1968) on Tuesday. This is, of course, the tip of the iceberg of this wonderfully expansive series; for full schedule and ticket info, you can check out The Brattle’s website.
This Thursday also marks what would be the 100th birthday of another director of 1950s exploitation films, albeit to far less successful ends: so-called “worst director of all time” Edward D. Wood Jr. To be sure, Wood’s films were miles away from what one might conventionally deem “professional”; each of his features is rife with comically bad special effects, wooden acting, word-salad dialogue and nonsensically deployed stock footage. Yet Wood was also an undeniable auteur, smuggling more of his own personality into his poverty-row epics than nearly any mainstream filmmaker before or since – and what’s more, his films are often more entertaining and watchable than any number of so-called “good” movies. To celebrate the Ed Wood Centennial, The Brattle will run a double feature capturing the director’s unique charms. First is Wood’s own “Bride of the Monster” (1955), a typically nutty mad scientist picture starring a visibly aged Bela Lugosi, Swedish wrestling icon Tor Johnson and a not-terribly-animatronic octopus. It will be followed by Tim Burton’s loving biopic of the director, “Ed Wood” (1994), starring Johnny Depp as the embattled director and Martin Landau (in an Oscar-winning performance) as Lugosi. It’s a fitting tribute to a director who, despite a lack of traditional filmmaking talent, made movies that are still being enjoyed nearly 70 years later.
Of course, this sort of go-for-broke enthusiasm is not an artifact of the past – nor is it confined to Hollywood. Danvers’ own Matt Farley has made a name for himself over the past decade through his idiosyncratic career as a musician; he has recorded hundreds, if not thousands, of albums’ worth of songs capitalizing on every conceivable search term (names, holidays, endless variations on “poop” and “puke”), making him one of the very few independent musicians to earn a living wage on Spotify royalties. But Farley has also written, produced and starred in more than a dozen feature films (many in collaboration with director Charles Roxburgh). Produced under the banner of “Motern Media,” the films of Farley and Roxburgh are all charmingly homemade affairs, all made in and around the North Shore with a regular troupe of the filmmakers’ family and friends, several of whom will undoubtedly be in attendance when “Don’t Let the Riverbeast Get You!” (2012), perhaps the most beloved of the Motern productions, screens Friday in the main house of the Somerville Theatre. There is a particular joy in watching a local production on the big screen, and perhaps inspiration to be drawn for those who hope to make their own.
One of the hidden jewels of local cinema is Channel Zero, a series of lovingly curated screenings showcasing obscurities and oddities from years past. Following a year’s absence, Channel Zero returns this month, albeit in a new home, moving a couple of blocks from the Somerville Theatre’s Microcinema to Davis Square’s Comicazi comic shop. For its inaugural Comicazi screening Saturday, Channel Zero presents the oddball French spy caper “Women Are Like That” (1960), starring Eddie Constantine as globetrotting FBI Agent Lemmy Caution. Constantine and Caution are today best remembered from 1965’s “Alphaville,” Jean-Luc Godard’s avant-garde take on the character, but “Women” finds him in his original incarnation as a proto-Bondian international man of mystery. Like nearly all of Channel Zero’s rediscoveries, “Women Are Like That” is virtually never screened (it stands at 30 views on Letterboxd), making this a genuine you-gotta-be-there event in moviegoing.
Indigenous People’s Day (formerly Columbus Day) is, understandably, a holiday that inspires conflicting emotions in many people. Thankfully, indigenous artists from around the globe are working to turn this day into a time of celebration rather than painful memories. On Sunday and Monday, The Brattle hosts the 2024 Sundance Institute Indigenous Film Tour, a showcase of short films from some of our most vital voices. Some of the filmmakers on display you might already know, such as “Reservation Dogs” co-creator Sterlin Harjo or visual artist turned filmmaker Sky Hopinka (“Maɬni: Towards the Ocean, Towards the Shore,” 2020), while others may be discoveries. The films themselves range from narrative to documentary to animation and span as far as New Zealand and Siberia, but all give voice to the indigenous experience across the globe.
Oscar Goff is a writer and film critic based in Somerville. He is film editor and senior critic for the Boston Hassle and his work has appeared in the monthly Boston Compass newspaper and publications such as WBUR’s The ARTery and iHeartNoise. He is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, and the Online Film Critics Society.
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