Product Details

• Actors: Ray Milland, Hazel Court, Shelley Winters, Don Stroud, Peter Fonda
• Directors: Roger Corman
• Writers: Charles B. Griffith, Charles Beaumont, Don Peters, Edgar Allan Poe, George Armitage
• Format: Box set, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
• Number of discs: 4
• Rating: Unrated
• Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
• DVD Release Date: September 18, 2007
• Run Time: 641 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000SK5ZFC
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #63,501 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

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  #39 in	Movies & TV > Horror > Horror Masters > Roger Corman
  #42 in	Movies & TV > Cult Movies > Cult Directors > Corman, Roger

• For more information about "Roger Corman Collection (Bloody Mama / A Bucket of Blood / The Trip / Premature Burial / The Young Racers / The Wild Angels / Gas-s-s / X)" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Roger Corman's name has become synonymous with cheap B-movies--but the cunning, vitality, and astounding variety of movies in The Roger Corman Collection demonstrates that money has nothing to do with making a dynamic movie. Corman is best known as the producer who launched some of the greatest directors of the 1970s (like Scorsese and Coppola), but these eight movies prove Corman himself had directorial chops. He has no signature visual style, but the movies are united by Corman's restless intelligence and--perhaps surprising to viewers who think of exploitation movies as vapid--moral consciousness. The earliest movie is one of the best: The black comedy A Bucket of Blood satirizes the beatnik counterculture, but many of its jabs can be applied to every rebellious trend since. But the strangely sympathetic performance of Dick Miller as a socially inept would-be artist/accidental murderer resonates most. Miller went on to appear in bit parts on many other Corman movies (you'll see him several times in this collection), but this performance fully captures his unique charisma. The Premature Burial and X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, both starring Ray Milland (The Lost Weekend), are more conventional horror science fiction movies. Burial is a sterling example of Corman's adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe stories, with lavish (by Corman's standards) production values and an increasingly creepy plot. X, in which a scientist gains x-ray vision, begins as a naughty joke and builds to a downright metaphysical finale. Also made in the same year (1963) is the weakest film in the collection, The Young Racers, which was constructed around footage shot of actual Grand Prix races in Europe. The mid-1960s saw Corman exploring the rising youth cultures and creating some genuinely remarkable work: The Wild Angels, starring Peter Fonda, Nancy Sinatra, and Bruce Dern, portrays a Hell's Angels-style motorcycle gang whose unrepentant nihilism reaches a genuinely troubling peak. The movie paints a caustic picture yet withholds judgment, almost taunting the viewer to draw a moral line. Similarly, The Trip, though it features some cheesy visual effects, is an accurate and uncritical depiction of a man (Fonda again) taking his first acid trip; the movie neither advocates nor condemns, but captures both the ups and downs of LSD. Bloody Mama is a gangster picture set in the Depression, but the incestuous psychosexual landscape of Ma Barker (played with zest by Shelley Winters) and her sons (including a young Robert DeNiro) could only have been portrayed with such unsettling vividness in 1970. And finally, there's Gas-s-s!, one of the last movies Corman directed, a freewheeling allegorical odyssey in which a military experiment kills everyone over 25, turning society into a strange patchwork of subcultures. There's really no other movie like it, and it may capture the 1960s more accurately than the Baby Boom generation finds comfortable. Corman's oeuvre deserves to be rediscovered and reexamined. The Roger Corman Collection includes a few interviews with Corman, who proves himself thoughtful and unpretentious. All in all, an important (and enjoyable!) addition to any cinephile's library. --Bret Fetzer

Product Description

Disc 1 Side A: Bloody Mama Disc 1 Side B: A Bucket of Blood

Disc 2 Side A: Gas-s-s Disc 2 Side B: The Trip

Disc 3 Side A: Premature Burial, The Disc 3 Side B: X: The Man With X-Ray Eyes

Disc 4 Side A: The Young Racers Disc 4 Side B: The Wild Angels

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This collection is a mixed bag of style, September 10, 2007

By	calvinnme "Texan refugee" (Fredericksburg, Va) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

Corman's work generally falls into two categories. The first would be the horror/sci-fi he did in the late 50's to early 60's including his Vincent Price films and those along a similar vein. These don't have anything particularly graphic in them. They tend to be cleverly done B-productions with bigger stars than you would guess. The second group start in the mid 60's and run into the 1970's and can be quite violent. This doesn't mean that they aren't cleverly done. Just don't expect something along the line of Corman's series of Poe films when you sit down to watch "Bloody Mama". "Billy Jack" and "Easy Rider" are more similar to Corman's later films, five of which make up this eight film collection. There are no extras included in this set. The following is a brief synopsis of each included film with ratings by a popular film database. Let me say I think the ratings given for most of the films is way too low. If you like Corman's work you'll likely rate each of these films much higher.

A Bucket of Blood (1959) 6.9/10 - a horror story with an artsy bent featuring an outstanding performance by Dick Miller as the accidental artist.

Premature Burial (1962) 6.4/10 - Ray Milland is obsessed with being buried alive, so he's outfitted his future tomb with all kinds of bells and whistles to insure this won't happen. Vincent Price was supposed to star in this one, but Milland does a great job as the death-obsessed gentleman.

X: The Man with X-Ray Eyes (1963) 6.5/10 - Like "The Incredible Shrinking Man" this film examines what it means to exist. Ray Milland experiments on himself and gives himself "X-Ray vision". As a result he can see past and through all reality. The only problem is that his senses are unable to take in and comprehend what his eyes are seeing - and seeing through - without going insane.

The Young Racers (1963) 3.5/10 - New to DVD.

The Wild Angels (1966) 5.2/10 - I think this film is better than its rating. It's one of the original biker films and I don't think that the film's tagline that paints these guys as just a bunch of violent losers is completely accurate. They do some outrageously pointless violent things, but they are more complex than that. Stars Peter Fonda and Bruce Dern as two of the bikers.

The Trip (1967) 5.8/10 - Written by Jack Nicholson. This is one of the first of the drug culture films of the late 60's, early 70's. The whole movie is basically what an LSD trip looks like as experienced by Peter Fonda's character. In spite of the fact that the plot is thin this film did well at the box office. Very much an artifact of the time in which it was made, but still interesting.

Bloody Mama (1970) 5.1/10 - New to DVD. Here Corman is cashing in on the success of Bonnie and Clyde to tell another familial tale of crime and violence. This family is headed by Ma Barker (Shelly Winters). It also sports some great supporting work by Bruce Dern and Robert De Niro.

Gas-s-s-s (1972) - 3.7/10 - A strange gas kills everyone over 25 in the world. The movie is part political satire and part comedy with a large dose of violence that is likely to make many people queezy. The film works quite well and holds up over time, but it's not your old-fashioned Vincent Price-style Corman film. You'll note the early appearances of some performers who are just getting started such as Ben Vereen, Cindy Williams, and Talia Shire.

My four star rating comes from being a fan of Roger Corman. If you are not, you might want to pay more attention to the film database rating.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bloody Mama on DVD, finally, at last!!, August 29, 2007

By	Big Mike (Bradford, West Yorkshire United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

I rejoice at the news of Bloody Mama finally coming to DVD. I am a bit surprised to find that I have to buy a whole set of DVD's to get it, however. Bloody Mama features a very early and memorable performance by Robert De Niro. Shelley Winters is unforgettable as Kate "Ma" Barker. The film is quite tawdry and violent for a film made in 1970. I have always remembered this film for the nearly totally nude scene by Diane Varsi and the other outrageous goings-on. I will buy this and recommend it heartily to others with similar interests. A great and underrated gangster film. The only thing I don't like are the double-sided DVD's. Far to easy to fingerprint or scratch the data side!!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Corman Set Release a Second Volume!, September 26, 2007

By	Jackie L. Holstein "[e-mail]" (MPLS, MN) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This set was decently priced I'm not a fan of the slim line DVD cases but it is ok ... You get a few Films that were OOP until now the two I will mention is THE TRIP and PREMATURE BURIAL, so maybe we will get future volumes and more Midnite Movies double features to bring out many more OOP films again in the future. Cover art etc is made up to look very Grindhouse like which is fine they make good double feature films.