The Good

8 films from one of the legends of cinema.

The Bad

Not enough special features!

The Roger Corman Collection features 8 films from the man who has been involved with over 300 films. Making this set really special is that Corman didn’t just serve as a producer on these movies. He directed every single film in this collection. The films in this set are:

Gas-s-s-s

The Trip

Bloody Mama

A Bucket of Blood

The Young Racers

The Wild Angels

The Premature Burial

X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes

Made in 1970 Gas-s-s-s is an interesting film about what happens when a poisonous gas kills everybody over 25. The Trip is a psychedelic affair about a commercial director named Paul (Peter Fonda) who tries LSD for the first time. The Premature Burial deals with a medical student who frets about being buried alive. Ray Milland stars in X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes in a film about a doctor who will stop at nothing to glimpse the future. The Young Racers and The Wild Angels might best be called Roger Corman’s “road pictures,” as he looks at the subcultures of race car drivers and motorcycles. Bloody Mama showcases Shelly Winters, a young Robert DeNiro and Bruce Dern as members of Ma Barker’s gang. Lastly, A Bucket of Blood is a gory, introspective look at the world of modern art.

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Features

The Trip DVD

Featurettes

There are three featurettes to watch for this movie. They are:

Love and Haight

Tune In, Trip Out

Psychedelic Film Effects

Believe it or not the featurette that I most gravitated to was the Psychedelic Film Effects. I just loved getting to see how they achieved the look of this film. Sure, the effects seem primitive by today’s standards but for their time they were pretty darn groundbreaking. It is amazing to me that even in 1967 (the year this movie was released), filmmakers really hadn’t pushed the envelope that much in regards to all the amazing things that could be achieved on screen. The two other featurettes had historical perspectives in regards to how they looked at this film, but I think everybody involved knew that they were on to something special in terms of shining the light on this subculture.

Premature Burial DVD

Roger Corman Interview

Video

Gas-s-s, The Trip, Bloody Mama and X-The Man with the X-Ray Eyes are all presented in Widescreen - 1.85:1. The Wild Angels, A Bucket of Blood, and The Premature Burial are all presented in Widescreen - 2.35:1. The Young Racers is offered up in Widescreen - 1.66:1. These movies all looked pretty darn good. Sure there was some dirt here and there on the picture, but I was willing to forgive that mainly because I think that it actually added something to look of all these films. MGM and Fox Home Video seem to have done a very solid job presenting the amount of content here in as clear a way as possible. On the average, I was quite impressed with how this whole set looked.

Audio

All the movies in The Roger Corman Collection are available in English Mono. They contain other languages as well as subtitles but there are simply too many to list out for this release. The audio seemed pretty decent even though it did change up from disc to disc and film to film. I am not used to having to adjust the sound that much, but that is probably because of the amount of TV on DVD titles that I end up reviewing (they are shot so close together there really isn’t time for their to be too much audio variance). When dealing with so many different films, made at different times, with multiple assets it stands to reason that the audio would change up often.

Package

They have made this set look awesome! Combining images from all the movies, mixing in a bunch of colors and throwing words around like “Red-Hot Babes” and “Debauchery,” the front of this slipcase cover should very much appeal to genre fans. The back cover has tiny images for each movie, a description and technical specs. There is even a small bit of information on Roger Corman himself. The 8 films in this set have been put on 4 DVDs (2 movies to each one) and stored in a piece of slim-case packaging. There is more in-depth information on each film on the front and backs of the slim-case packaging that is housed inside the slipcase.

Final Word

What I absolutely love about The Roger Corman Collection is that it charts this man’s evolution as a director. From films like A Bucket of Blood to The Trip and The Wild Angels, it is amazing to see what this man was able to accomplish. I am sure that a lot of people who simply saw his movies as genre films, but there is such a variance of subject matter within those genres it is truly breathtaking. He didn’t just make blood filled movies, nor did he only make films that showcased killers. Corman seemed to tackle subject matter that was not only interesting to him but interesting to world at large. He gave so many people so many chances, and even though these productions were done with numerous restrictions (either due to budget or creative means), the films all seem to bear the mark of whoever was helming them.

Again this is what makes this collection so special. These are all films directed by Roger Corman and we get to see his style change, grow and mature throughout these productions. On top of that, we are also taken into Corman’s mind to see what was interesting to him at that point in time. The Roger Corman Collection is a must own for anybody who collects DVD or has a love of film history.

A Bucket of Blood was released October 21, 1959.