The Not-So-Abominable Dr. Phibes

 

"This little green one seems to need a home."

In 1970, a certain horror movie star and his daughter pretty much came to the same conclusion. 

Quips and Quotations (Declaration of Independents Edition)

 

Roger made us work hard and long, I remember that! He was always fascinating to me, a fascinating man – and a good businessman! He had such incredible energy, it was tremendous – he was a dynamo to be around. I always knew he was going to be a huge success because there was no stopping him. He just made up his mind that he was going to be a success and that was it.

--Beverly Garland

Roger seemed a driven man. Roger wanted to accomplish a lot, he had to have a lot of drive to do it, and he pushed through. He not only pushed through, he punched through! With a lot of energy, and a lot of disregard at times...What we did for Roger Corman – I mean, things that you could never do in a real studio, but you did for this guy! Everything seemed unreal with him.

--Susan Cabot

I wrote a screenplay titled Gluttony, about a salad chef in a restaurant who would wind up cooking customers and stuff like that, you know? We couldn't do that though because of the [production] code at the time. So I said, 'How about a man-eating plant?', and Roger said, 'Okay.' By that time, we were both drunk.

--screenwriter Charles B. Griffith 

 

It's not precisely the Edgar Allan Poe short story known to high school English that emerges in House of Usher, but it's a reasonably diverting and handsomely mounted variation ... The film has been mounted with care, skill and flair by producer-director Roger Corman and his staff.

--Variety

[Frank Sinatra] was very worried that his daughter was in a film with the Hell's Angels. And for some reason he didn’t want to bring it up to me, so he arranged to meet with my second assistant director, Paul Rapp, and said, “Is Nancy going to be all right?” And Paul, we had never even thought about it, but Paul made up a whole lot of nonsense, just, “Well, we’ve got people there, we’re going to be protecting her all the time.” It was all just talk, but Frank accepted it, and Nancy was great.

--Roger Corman

1926-2024

(Things happen, so I'll just save the Mother's Day post until next year. You know how it is--Kirk)