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Released by: Full Moon Features
Released on: July 31, 2016
Cast: Roger Corman, Charles Band
Year: 2015
The Movie:
Filmmaker Roger Corman began his career as director in the mid-1950s, Band in the early 1970s. Corman and his brother Gene were transplants to Hollywood from Michigan and started out in low-budget genre fare. Corman made several films that are today considered public-domain classics before directing a series of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations starring Vincent Price and released by American International. This changed the trajectory of Corman's career. He transitioned into counterculture films aimed at teenagers and young twenty-somethings, but in 1967 he made what would become his best film, The St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Despite his artistic achievement, which was made for Fox, Corman was turned off by big-studio production, believing it beset by waste and indecision. By the end of the 1960s, he had basically given up direction in favor of producing. He founded New World Pictures in 1970 to produce films from young up-and-coming talent, but he also acquired major work from foreign talent such as Berman, Kurosawa, Truffaut, and Fellini. Corman continues to work to this day, producing made-for-television films with fantastic premises for the science fiction/horror network SyFy.
Charles Band was the son of producer/director Albert Band; as such, he spent his young life bouncing around the world, often spending time on movie sets. He became a filmmaker in his own right in the mid-1970s, first through Charles Band Productions, then through Empire Pictures, and finally through Full Moon, all of which he started. These were just a few of the production companies he oversaw, operating within a number of genres and categories. Among his many works were a great deal of genre fare. He has produced hundreds of films as well as directed many and continues to work to this day. Much of his early work was released theatrically, though his current productions tend to go straight to video or are released through streaming. His work has included the Puppet Master series, the Ghoulies movies, the Evil Bong films, and so on.
Considering that both men have long been masters of low-budget, marginalized cinema, it must have seemed a natural to put the two together for a joint interview discussing their lengthy careers. Kings of Cult is a 53-minute interview in which the two men sit in chairs next to each other and share innumerable anecdotes about their experiences in the film industry. While there are edits between the two men, the interviewer is never seen, only heard. Though Band was born around the time that Corman entered the industry, both men share terrific memories of their time in the industry, which continues to this day. The interviews focus on the men's later careers more than their early ones, but it's all good. A truly definitive, all-encompassing interview would have resulted in a documentary of unwieldy length. When the interview was first announced last year, Full Moon's website took questions from fans, and some of those questions are asked and answered here. The most interesting part of the interview occurs when Band discusses how streaming and piracy have affected the industry. There's also a wonderfully fanboyish moment when Band turns to Corman and asks what every viewer wants to know (but we won't spoil it for you here).
Kings of Cult is absolutely not for everyone. It's specifically for people who love Corman and Band's unique and intimate style of filmmaking. It's for people who love the exploitation cinema of the 1970s and '80s. It's for people who love straight-to-video horrors or SyFy science fiction. If you are one of them, you might want to check this informative little program out.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Full Moon Features has released Kings of Cult on standard-definition DVD. The interview was shot on mid-grade digital video but looks pretty good in 480p; it's a fairly smooth presentation that's well lit and in no way suffers from the usual issues. Given how short the feature is and how few the extras are, there are no compression issues to speak of. The image is solid and easy to watch. Detail is pretty high, though there's not a lot of variation in what you'll see (both men's faces; Band's blue shirt; Corman's bluish shirt), though the film clips during the opening credits are intentionally soft and made to look duped. There are no film clips during the actual program.
The only track on the DVD is presented in English Dolby Digital 2.0. Band and Corman both sound fine; the sound levels are well adjusted and don't require much adjustment with the remote. The host's voice is a little lower, which can be chalked up to his distance from the mic. His questions can sometimes be a little difficult to hear, but Band and Corman's answers tend to clarify them easily enough. There are no subtitles.
When the disc is placed in the DVD player, it begins with a promo for Charles Band's new streaming service, Full Moon Streaming, which is available through a number of hosts. The service also contains work from various other Band companies as well as Blue Underground's film library. The promotion promises three DVDs or Blu-rays, with free shipping, for those who subscribe now. (One can assume that this promotion is over, as the deal currently listed on the service's site promises 3 free DVDs with a six-month subscription and 6 DVDs plus a bonus $50 gift card with a year's subscription.) The promo lasts for 2:18. It's followed by a promo for Full Moon Direct's website, where movies, toys, and assorted other paraphernalia can be purchased. It lasts a little less than a minute.
Extras include an original promo for Kings of Cult, which lasts approximately 2 minutes. There's also an excerpt from a “rare 2001 Roger Corman interview by William Shatner†(the two men worked together on The Intruder, an adaptation of a novel from Charles Baumont, in 1962). The excerpt in question deals with how Corman constructed fearful situations in his Poe adaptations. Rounding out the extras are trailers for Specters (2015), Evil Bong High-5 (2016), Puppet Master 2 (1990), Puppet Master X (2012), Ooga Booga (2013), Evil Bong 420 (2015), and Killjoy Goes to Hell (2012).
The Final Word:
Kings of Cult is an informative and entertaining interview with two of cult cinema's most prolific and influential talents, despite being too short to really delve into each filmmaker's career. Shot on digital video, the image looks good and the sound is mostly pleasant. Extras are sparse, but all in all, the package is a nice one for admirers and buffs.
Christopher Workman is a freelance writer, film critic, and co-author (with Troy Howarth) of the Tome of Terror horror film review series. Horror Films of the 1930s is currently available, with Horror Films of the Silent Era: Book One (1895-1915) and Book Two (1916-1929) due out later this year.
