The Eclectic Cinema Presents:
Roger Corman Double Bill (15)
The Little Shop of Horrors (PG)
USA | 1960 | 73 mins
Directed by: Roger Corman
Starring: Jonathan Haze | Jackie Joseph | Mel Welles | Jack Nicholson
The Masque of the Red Death (15)
USA/UK | 1964 | 84 mins
Directed by: Roger Corman
Starring: Vincent Price | Hazel Court | Jane Asher
Roger Corman died in May this year, aged 98. When there were such things as B-movies, Riger Corman was likely involved – he was the producer of hundreds of films and the director of more than fifty.
Jack Nicholson appears in The Little Shop of Horrors in one of his earliest film roles. We begin to see his unhinged side as Wilbur Force, a dentist’s patient, who is mainly interested in the experience of pain. Of course, this film is a comedy, so no need to hide under the seat, even in the presence of the blood-thirsty plant, which has been nurtured by the accident-prone assistant of the titular little shop.
In the 1960s, Corman directed a series of adaptations based on the stories of Edgar Allen Poe. The Masque of the Red Death is one of these. Vincent Price is the star, as he was for all but one the eight films in Corman’s Poe Cycle. Price plays a wicked prince who terrorises the local peasantry, leaving them to suffer the pestilence then stalking the land. But he takes in one of the villagers, Francesca, on whom he has extra-marital designs. She is played by a young Jane Asher.
Please note films cannot be booked separately.
