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This is later with Lee Matthews the
Lee Matthews Podcast. More of what you

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here weekday afternoons on the Drive.
Chris Alexander is a Canadian editor, music

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composer, writer, filmmaker. He's
the former editor in chief of the iconic

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horror film magazine Fangoria, and he's
composed a book that is very interesting to

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me. It is called Corman Poe
Interviews and Essays, exploring the making of

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Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe films from
nineteen sixty to nineteen sixty four. Let's

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just start with the man himself,
Edgar Allan Poe, Chris, was he

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the first author of the maccabbren know, he was the first Chris to say,

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but he certainly is one of the
most, the most probably important of

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them for sure, the most inspirational
and influential outside of Baby hp Lovecraft,

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which Roger Corman also mined for one
of these films secretly on the side,

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but certainly Poe's shadow looms large to
this day in the context of psychological and

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gothic horror. You're correct, well, yeah, I mean his stories are

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still as popular today as they were
when he wrote them. So they're definitely

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timeless. Well, and nudge of
that. I mean, even if you're

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no matter what kind of horror story
you're writing or what horror film you're making,

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if you're not conscious of being influenced
by Poe, you're still borrowing from

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Paul, whether you're aware of it
or not. I mean, he's so

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his words and sensibilities are so ingrained
in the genre it's impossible to separate him.

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Well, it's also so very quoted. Absolutely absolutely, he's He's the

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first mainstream horror writer, let's put
it that way, if not one of

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the first successful writers of the American
short story. But anyway, the book

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is about Roger Corman and Roger Corman
taking these stories and bringing them to life.

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But he wasn't the first to bring
them to life. We wasn't the

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first, that's for sure. Now, the reason why these films are so

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important are not even necessarily the fact
that they were based on pol faithfully,

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because they weren't, and none of
the previous Poe films necessarily were faithful either,

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Because to adapt Poe for film,
you have to realize that as you

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as you mentioned po being the master
of the short story. To expand that

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to feature length is a challenge.
So even the previous Poe influenced films like

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The Black Hat and The Raven from
the nineteen thirties still borrowed elements of other

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post stories and other has other subplots
in contemporary settings and were much different.

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But what they did, and what
Corman did with those eight, these eight

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remarkable films, was take the essence
of Poe, the soul of Poe,

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and distill them and blend them and
turn them into something radically different than unique,

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using his crew is literally called the
Corman Crew of collaborators. We're talking

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with Chris Alexander. He's a Canadian
writer and the composer of Corman Poe Interviews

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and essays exploring the making of Roger
Corman and his Edgar Allen Poe films.

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What did he do that other producers
did not or could not Well, I

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mean, the back of up this, the whole idea behind these films was

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pretty pretty avant garde, pretty daring, pretty bold, and that was Roger

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was the house director for a company
called American International Pictures in the nineteen fifties,

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and they were the first studio to
really kind of capitalize and exploit to

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the burgeoning youth market that was obsessed
with rock and roll and rebellion and horror

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movies and Monster. I felt like
I was a teenage Wrewolf. I was

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a teenage Frankenstein, a lot of
teenage stuff. And Corman was the king

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of these sorts of pictures. But
what he decided, being a student of

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English literature and an ardent admirer of
Poe, was to convince American International Pictures

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to invest in out of three black
and white movies back to back, to

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invest into one single, more evolved, more sophisticated and expensive, full blooded

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color film, and that film was
nineteen sixties to follow the House of Usher,

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and it was so successful. Of
course, when you have a success

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in your hands, you try to
repeat that success. And American International Pictures

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persuaded Roger to keep going back to
the Well, and he did so seven

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more times. While six more times
nineteen sixty three is The Haunted Palace was

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really an HP Lovecraft story that AIP
kind of insidiously morphed into a Poe film

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to trick audiences into thinking that's what
they were seeing. But it's still part

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of the series Well and Chris Chris
Alexanders, who were talking to and his

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new book about the making of Roger
Corman films based upon Edgar Allen post stories.

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You mentioned expense because at that time, usually the horror genre was shot

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in black and white, I gather
because horror films of that time required special

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effects that could get expensive. So
if you shot in black and white,

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at least you were cutting costs there. But he didn't do that. He

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went for color. Well, I
mean he did cut costs. He's notoriously

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and where's this is a badge of
bara cheap. He's a cheap producer,

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cheap day. He likes to save
money. So a lot of those movies

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were lower budget. But we remember, history repeats itself, so now we

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have this new modern age with him
several different, dozens and hundreds of different

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platforms to watch movies on. Well, back in the late nineteen fifties,

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suddenly we had an explosion of theaters
catering to inner cities and down markets and

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teenage markets. And then we also
had the drive in and television, so

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there was a bigger market and that
needed more content. So movies started being

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produced cheaply. And the thing about
horror movies is you can produce them cheaply,

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because generally speaking, you don't go
to a horror movie based on who's

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in it, so it's not based
on an above the credit star. You

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don't need a star to have a
hit. So that was kind of Corman's

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but he tried to step up this
game. He's a guy, He was

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a filmmaker who to this day gets
bored really easily likes to change things up.

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So that was the whole impetus behind
making The Fall of the House of

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Usha is that he was bored making
these movies. He wanted to do something

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a little bit more refined and upskill. He was lucky he was able to

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do it because he was smart.
He knew that there was a milliad of

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talented artists working in Hollywood who were
out of work. So he used a

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cinematographer named Floyd Crosby, the father
of Rockstar Departed Rockstar David Crosby actually,

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who was an Academy Award winning cinematographer, and he was out of work because

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you know, Hollywood and his agist. So he found that he could get

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a lot of great talents that weren't
employed and give them work in volume,

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and therefore he would get better production
values. He was always a master of

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saving money but stretching dimes into dollars. Chris Alexander, author of Corman Poe

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Interviews and essays exploring the making of
Roger Korman Edgar Allen Poe films from nineteen

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sixty to sixty four. So that's
how Price arrived on the scene. I

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was about to ask, and did
he jump at the opportunity or have to

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be cajoled? Well, yeah,
you mentioned that Price was around for a

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long time. He was a Hollywood
character actor. He was an auto Premat's

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Laura he was. He was actually
an invisible man returns. But he wasn't

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a horror star. You always see
horrors. You always see older actors who

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are on the way out starring in
horror films and younger actors who are on

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the rise. They kind of crossed
paths on the silver screen. But Price

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was sort of at the at the
not the end, but certainly a lull

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in his career. He had started
in a couple of horror films in the

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fifties, including the first three D
horror film, House of Blacks in nineteen

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fifty three and the Fly and William
Castle's house on Hunted Hill. But Roger

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could get Price for a good quote
unquote price. Yeah, and he gave

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him good material, and he gave
him good roles and meaty dialogue written by

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heavyweights like Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont. So he gave him, you know,

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a great canvas to paint on and
to create these roles, and thus,

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whether accidentally or on with intent,
ended up creating one of the that

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era as first de facto or stars. I mean, Vincent Price wouldn't be

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Vincent Price today if it wasn't for
his collaborations with Roger Corman on these pictures.

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After seeing Vincent Price on several several
videos of his interviews, I'm remarketing

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now that he had a wonderful,
biting sense of humor. Vincent Price,

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well, like Roger Corman, he
was a very He was an intellectual and

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certainly that's what you get when you
see him on screen. That's why Rogers

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movies kind of stand apart too,
because he had a degree in English literature.

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He was the first guy to actually
bring Igmar Bergman films and Kurosawa films

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to American drive ins in the nineteen
seventies and late nine sixties, so he

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had a real sense of cinema and
history and literature. And Price was no

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slouch either, incredibly intelligent man,
a refined collector of art and wrote many

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books on art collecting, and was
also an accomplished chef. No, he

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was a real, real gadfly,
a really interesting dude, an esoteric individual

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who just happened to in order to
pay the bills and keep the machine running.

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Starring these bizarre, wonky weird movies, Chris Alexander. The book is

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Corman Poe Interviews and essays exploring the
making of Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe films

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from nineteen sixty to nineteen sixty four. If you're like my producer Mike Gan

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and the love Cannon, who just
devours this kind of stuff, this is

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going to be a great summer read
for you. And Chris, we thank

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you for joining us today. Thanks
so much for having me. I really

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appreciate thanks for listening to Later with
Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast,

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and remember to listen to The Drive
Live weekday afternoons from five to seven and

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