Five Guns West (1955)
Corman became famous for his science fiction and fantasy films, but when he started out, he mostly made Westerns. This is because in the mid ‘50s, Westerns were seen as the most commercially safe genre to make – there was always a market for them somewhere, and many an ageing male star prolonged their career by strapping on a six gun. However, this also meant that the market became congested (television in particular caused a deluge) and Corman quickly realised that other genres were more lucrative. It took a few months for that penny to drop, by which time Corman had already cranked out a few Westerns, starting with Five Guns West, his directorial effort.
This was a cheapie but already shows Corman was determined to be the best low budget filmmaker he could be – it was shot almost entirely outdoors, in colour and used some semi-stars (John Lund, who had scored a few leading parts at Paramount because Charles Brackett had a crush on him, and Dorothy Malone, who somehow wound up making this around the time that she was in big studio films like Battle Cry and Young at Heart)).
Bob Campbell’s script had a terrific concept – some criminals are released from prison to help the South fight the Civil War out west (Campbell and Corman reused this idea in The Secret Invasion). Truth be told, the concept isn’t developed the way it could be, and Lund looks like he’s about to fall asleep, but it’s a decent enough debut judged by the standard of B Westerns from this era.
Gunslinger (1956)
Charles B. Griffith became famous for writing Corman black comedies, but his first produced script for Rog was this Western (although I think Griffith did an uncredited rewrite on It Conquered the World First). It’s a Western with a twist, the twist being the hero is a woman, played by Beverly Garland, who takes over as sheriff when her husband is killed. Garland is great fun, as is Alison Hayes who is a villain; Griffith says the script was inspired by the Harry Joe Brown Western Three Hours to Kill (1954).
There are terrific moments, like Garland spotting one of her husband’s killers at her husband’s funeral and plugging the guy then and there – but if I’m being honest, Corman’s direction back then wasn’t up to the quality of his script or cast. John Ireland (who had been in and directed The Fast and the Furious for Corman) is male lead.
Apache Woman (1956)
A competent, unremarkable Western written by the competent, unremarkable Lou Rusoff (AIP’s resident in-house scribe) about an Apache woman raised by a white family. It needed some of that Griffith flair, but it is fine, and has Dick Miller as an Apache, which is fun.
Oklahoma Woman (1956)
Corman says that, like Apache Woman, this film was an idea of AIP’s rather than him (Rusoff again wrote the script), although maybe he was saying it because it’s been called Corman’s dullest film. It’s about a gunslinger (Richard Denning) who comes up against a gang that includes his ex (Peggie Castle). There’s a catfight between Castle and Peggy Downs and the support cast includes Corman regulars like Mike Connors, Dick Miller and Jonathan Haze.
The Gunfighter (1950)
Classic Gregory Peck Western which played a small, yet significant role in Corman’s career. Roger was working as a reader and story analyst at 20th Century Fox in the late 1940s when he came across a story that formed the basis of The Gunfighter; he says that he pitched it enthusiastically with a few notes on how to improve it, and although the notes were used his contribution was ignored by the executive above him, who took all the plaudits when The Gunfighter became a critical sensation (I believe this story – such behaviour is very common). This soured Corman on working for the studios and encouraged him to cut his own path, though honestly, I think that was always going to happen.
Three Bright Banners and Hangtown
Some unmade Western scripts that Charles Griffith wrote for Corman in the mid ‘50s. Banners (also known as Devil on Horseback) was about the Battle of Brownsville, but I don’t know what Hangtown was about. They were not made (probably too expensive) but Corman was impressed enough by the writing to hire Griffith to do Gunslinger. I’d love to read these scripts if anyone knows of a copy.
Unmade Robert E. Lee Project
Corman long wanted to make a biopic about the Southern General Robert E. Lee from a script by Leon Katz. During the ‘60s, he tried to set it up at various studios, particularly Columbia, Fox and United Artists, where he had deals, but was unable to make it happen. Corman says the reason is that the studios were unable to see how he could do it so cheaply; the financial underperformance of The St Valentine’s Day Massacre and Corman’s sacking on A Time for Killing (see below) may have been why. Corman was attracted to the project in part because it was about an “aristocrat at war” and managed to make another biopic in this vein at UA, Von Richthofen and Brown. Corman clearly liked the subject of a film about Lee – he was floating the possibility of doing it at New World as late as 1979 (along with another long-dreamed of project about the Battle of Iwo Jima) but any vague plans he had of moving New World into a bigger budgeted arena ended with the failure of Avalanche. It’s hard to do the Robert E. Lee story on the cheap.
A Time for Killing (1967)
Corman didn’t often talk about his experience on this film. It was a big budget Western made by Columbia set during the Civil War where Union troops chase after some escaping Confederates. Corman had tried for several years to get projects going at Columbia, who finally agreed after the huge success of The Wild Angels. He started directing a cast including Glenn Ford and George Hamilton but was fired during filming and replaced by Phil Karlson. The exact reasons remain hazy, but it sounded like a culture clash between Corman and Columbia – the studio were most likely suspicious of his thriftiness and worried that he was going to make a bad movie. There may have been other factors involved. It’s got to be said, though, the resulting film isn’t that much. After his dismissal, Corman rarely went near Westerns again. While you can blame this on the general decline in popularity of the genre, there were still a few being made around this time (eg Clint vehicles, spaghetti Westerns). I wonder if Corman’s Time for Killing experience made him particularly anti-Western.
Ride in the Whirlwind and The Shooting (1966)
Corman financed these two odd Monte Hellman directed Westerns starring Jack Nicholson, who also wrote Whirlwind while Carole Eastman wrote The Shooting. Both films gained considerable cult reputations and have been called early “acid Westerns”. It was Corman at his best – backing young talent, giving them freedom to come up with something different.
Biker films
Maybe this is cheating… While Corman veered away from Westerns in the 1960s, he had huge success with a genre that was very much the spiritual heir to the Western – the biker movie, with its similar use of outlaws, violence, action, and sense of freedom, not to mention bikes standing in for horses. Corman kicked off this genre with The Wild Angels, at one stage the most profitable independent film ever made, and financed many biker movies to great success including The Devil’s Angels, Angels Die Hard, Bury Me an Angel and Angels, as Hard as They Come, although he famously passed the opportunity to invest in Easy Rider (in fairness that involved a lot of money for an untested director). From the ‘70s onwards, Corman would continue to use Western tropes in other genres – sometimes with spectacularly successful results eg Battle Beyond the Stars revamping The Magnificent Seven – but on the whole avoided them. Still, he did make a contribution to the Western, however small.
