Thursday 6 August 2009

Roger Corman's Poe-sters addenda Part II



Roger Corman produced The Terror for American International Pictures in 1963 and although he's credited as director, parts of it were shot by Monte Hellman, Jack Hill, Jack Nicholson (who co-starred in it) and Francis Ford Coppola, who also had to edit together Corman's footage - some of it allegedly random shots of Boris Karloff and other actors walking across the set because he still had contractual access to Karloff, Nicholson and sets from The Raven for four days after that film's shooting wrapped. While similar to the Poe pictures in design and style and sharing with them some of the actors who had appeared in those films, it is, nevertheless, not based on any of Poe's work.

Corman utilised left over sets from other AIP films too, including The Haunted Palace.

In the early 1990s, actor and Corman regular Dick Miller, who plays Karloff's servant, was hired to shoot new scenes to use as a framing sequence, so the main action of the film represents a flashback. Because of missing copyright indication, the film is now in the public domain.


Footage appears in FNB movie Targets, directed by Peter Bogdanovich in 1968. Karloff owed studio head and producer Corman two days work and the latter told Bogdanovich he could make anything he wanted, provided he used Karloff, used clips from The Terror and brought the movie in under budget!

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