by Alain Silver and James Ursini

Corman used to brag that he'd never lost a dime making movies, and upon taking a good look at his productions, this isn't hard to believe. On the one hand, they couldn't possibly have earned much money; but on the other, they couldn't have cost more than California pocket change to produce.

So when this director needed to make movies in bulk, on a deadline, and without any real capital, he turned to genre films. In short, he discovered a handful of formulas and he stuck to them—turning out spaghetti westerns, teen tragedies, wiseguy dramas, femme fatale scorchers, and of course his infamous science fiction flicks. At best, these films were cheesy Edgar Allan Poe adaptations and speculative post-apocalyptic tales; at worst, they were trashy exploitation reels.

The titles alone tell you pretty much all you need to know. On the high end, you've got Not of This Earth, War of the Satellites, and half a dozen Poe stories. On the low end, there's She Gods of Shark Reef, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Naked Paradise, Teenage Caveman . . . need I go on? Well, all right. Just one more. One of these days I simply must get my hands on a copy of The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent. I think my husband will thank me.

I do have to admit, I greatly enjoyed the movie summaries. The authors are concise yet thorough, if overly fawning at times; and reading these vignettes was like catching the previews without having to sit through the whole things. And let's be honest. Ski Troop Attack? Maybe if I had a broken leg, a bottle of wine, and burned-out batteries in the DVD remote. Maybe.

But probably the most accidentally entertaining moments in Metaphysics On a Shoestring come from the author apologetics. I understand and sympathize with their desire to make Corman's exploitation flicks more palatable to a modern audience, but I'm not sure I see the need. It just doesn't do Corman any favors to go back and identify such screen-pulp classics as Swamp Women or The Oklahoma Woman as "feminist" works, and the authors aren't fooling anyone to call them that. Every time my eyes were snagged by the F-word, I heard Inigo Montoya muse, "I do not think that word means what you think it means." Role inversion for novelty's sake does not a feminist film make.

Besides, it's completely unnecessary.

By and large, these aren't films for women, and they are only vaguely even about women. They're about masculine fantasy caricatures, and that's okay. There's a place for that, even now. I would argue that one of my favorite movies—Frank Miller's Sin City—is a fine descendant of Corman's flicks; and furthermore, it's possible to appreciate these stories while recognizing that some of the attitudes are a tad caveman-esque.

Fortunately for my analysis, Corman is still available for commentary on his own films, and this commentary is copiously included. I was glad to note that he's quick to stand up and admit that his ballsy fictional women are something less glorious than a social statement. In one interview (re: The Gunslinger), he freely admits that, "In an exploitation picture, if you had a strong woman protagonist, the story could be advertised from that angle, and it could be sold better." So yes, clearly ol' Rog struck a deliberate blow for bra-burners everywhere with that one.

No matter. His films were products of their time, and with one money-losing exception (The Intruder), none of them were intended to say anything profound. They were cheap, hastily produced pieces of screen candy, and they made money—which is the real reason Corman was such an influential and long-lived success: not because his films were great, or his social commentary was revolutionary, but because he never went bankrupt.