1982 - SORCERESS, extremely crappy Roger Corman production

Even by the standards of movie producer Roger Corman this exploitation film is very poor stuff.  Sorceress was directed by B movie director Jack Hill.  Clearly the intention was to make a cheapo version of the John Milius film, Conan The Barbarian.  According to Hill the producer Roger Corman stepped in after filming and did a lot of reediting ruining Hill's film.  Hill's comments are kind of laughable since this was the guy who directed, The Big Doll House, The Big Bird Cage and The Swinging Cheerleaders, hardly award winning stuff.

Sorceress is a typical Roger Corman production with sex, violence and nudity but when it comes to female nudity in a Roger Corman show, it's nothing below the waist.  Corman was strangely prudish about female nudity in his films while still managing to exploit his female cast.  In this film the nudity is kind of ineptly photographed.

 

 Corman has recently passed away as of this writing and has been getting a lot of accolades about his career mostly I think because he was a survivor of the B movie Hollywood film scene which has been surpassed by  the crap that now shows up on streaming channels.  A lot has been written about Corman giving opportunities to filmmakers like Bogdanovich and Scorsese at the beginning of their careers but the bottom line was that it was all about turning a profit for Corman.

 

Sorceress is sort of a cult film mostly because it is so ineptly made and poorly acted and I'm not even going to get into the dialog.  I suppose there are a few chuckles to be had with some of the ridiculous scenes and characters, a guy in a Viking costume shows up for no particular reason and the climatic special effects at the end of the film are hilariously poor.  Well you get the picture.

 The film has a writing credit for Jim Wynorski although Jack Hill claims he actually wrote the script probably something he shouldn't be talking about.  The running time is 83 minutes.

1971 - BIG DOLL HOUSE, Roger Corman's famous exploitation film

It's amazing what the passage of time does for some movies.  Fifty two years ago when Roger Corman released this "women in prison" exploitation flick it was considered a piece of crap.  However Corman had the last laugh, director Jack Hill shot the film for around $200,000 dollars and the film went on to gross around $3,000,000 dollars, probably mostly from the drive in movie circuit.

Corman sent Jack Hill to the Philippines to shot the film the reasoning being that he could stretch a dollar a lot further over there.  Hill has stated that he rewrote the script as they filmed because it was very bad.  He claims he tried to add more humor to it.  But no one watching this film is viewing it for it's comedic scenes.

The film features a lot of women in various states of undress as they like to say.  The film has lots of torture scenes, some weird attempts as lesbianism, a mud fight and towards the end a whole lot of shooting.  The action scene is actually kind of well done.

 

 The cast is the usual "bevy of beauties" who can't act one lick.  The standout is Pam Grier in one of her first major roles.  Grier plays some kind of lesbian but it's difficult to tell because nobody was really going to go there in the early 1970's.  Grier sings the title song and she's really off key.   Roberta Collins is an inmate who is so horny she makes a guy have sex with her at knife point.  Sid Haig and Jerry Franks are Harry and Fred a couple of guys who deliver food to the prison,  they have the most amusing scenes in the film.

 

Today Big Doll House is considered a classic in the "Women in Prison" exploitation feature, that's what the passage of time can sometimes do for a movie I guess.  I will have to give Corman and Jack Hill credit, it's sort of entertaining in a demented kind of way.

Written by Don Spencer, (Jack Hill?), the running time is 95 minutes.