Roger Corman: The mid-century horror director who influenced Tim Burton
Embarking on a journey through the dark and whimsical, Tim Burton has curated a unique niche within the cinematic realm. His distinctly gothic yet endearingly quirky aesthetic, carved across films like Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice, combines the macabre with the comic, appropriating a visual language that existed decades before he set foot in the industry.
Behind Burton’s characteristic style lies a thread that weaves back through time, intertwining with another maestro of genre who similarly dared to dip his storytelling into a fusion of horror and humour. That artist, known for his ability to sculpt cinematic experiences that both chilled and charmed, is Roger Corman.
During the mid-20th century, the aptly named ‘Pope of Pop Cinema’ Corman emerged and shattered the mould of sci-fi and horror narratives with a palpable injection of unexpected humour and bizarre storytelling. While hovering within the domains of fright and fantasy, his movies tenderly nudged audiences to chuckle amidst their shudders, crafting a nuanced viewer experience that dared defy the solemnity typically woven through these genres.
Perhaps his most classic was the 1960 fright fest, The Little Shop of Horrors, where a florist’s assistant nurtured a flesh-craving, conversational, quip-making plant. In true Corman fashion, it wore its absurdity on its sleeve – both committing wholeheartedly to its unconventional premise whilst inviting us to laugh along at it as it did so. The Little Shop of Horrors became so deeply embedded in the audience’s consciousness that it continues to be put on worldwide in the form of school plays.
Burton, while forging his filmmaking style, echoes Corman’s ability to meld emotionally-driven stories into a cinematic journey defined by its B-movie aesthetics and theatrical worlds. Beetlejuice, though exploring themes of death and the supernatural, wielded a lightness and humour that cushioned the darkness. Edward Scissorhands, the tale of a gothic outcast with literal blades for fingers, could easily have been a Corman tale from the 1950s. Indeed, whilst never explicitly taking place in a certain time period, Burton and his production designer drew heavily on the 1950s aesthetic, ensuring Edward Scissorhands felt like a tale from a more Corman-esque time.
If Corman hadn’t been making movies at the same time that Burton was emerging, with his last film Frankenstein Unbound releasing in 1990, it’s entirely plausible that Burton would have made a movie about him. So enthralled and dedicated was Burton to directors of that ilk that he would make the exquisite Ed Wood – part biography of 1950s director Edward Wood and part ode to the general spirit and underdog essence of B-movie directors of the mid-century.
Out of his entire filmography, perhaps one film best serves as a testament to the influence Burton drew from Corman. With the likes of 1957’s Not of This Earth, Attack of the Crab Monsters and the following year’s Attack of the Satellites demonstrating Corman’s passion for schlocky science fiction, it felt like it would only be a matter of time before Burton attempted the genre. And he did, with 1996’s Mars Attacks!, in what remains one of mainstream cinema’s most obvious yet covert tribute to the audacious filmmaking of Roger Corman.
