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Getting a grip on low-budget auteur Roger Corman's '60s output is problematic if you've seen his films only on tape or TV. Previously, his wide-screen works were available solely in bleached-out, badly panned-and-scanned prints that left you wondering whether the man was ever a competent filmmaker. These letterboxed versions of his famous Poe adaptations, however, help set the record straight. The crisp transfers on laserdisc, with their CinemaScope and Panavision images intact, reveal quite respectable pieces of drive-in gothic mood-mongering. True, House of Usher and Pit and the Pendulum are dramatically slack, but what's on view here proves at least one thing: Whatever Corman's limitations as an artist, he knew how to move his camera around. B-


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Posted Apr 29, 1994 | Published in issue #220 Apr 29, 1994 | Order Article Reprints

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