Roger Corman, King of the B’s
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009
Setting aside the series of films that Roger Corman produced and directed – the numerous adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe classics (starring Vincent Price) such as The Pit and the Pendulum, The Raven, and The House of Usher, classics such as The Little Shop of Horrors, and forgettable but enjoyable dreck like X, The Young Racers, and Gas-s-s-s, Corman has still left an incredible legacy of both actors and directors who owe much of their success to the opportunities he gave to them. Read the rest of this entry »
One of the most blatant running gags throughout the National Lampoon’s Vacation series of films is the obvious fact that the Griswold children are played by different actors in every entry of the series, while the parents remain consistently Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo. This was not the original intention as Anthony Michael Hall was offered the role of Rusty for the second entry in the series European Vacation, but he declined for his role in Weird Science. 
I’m not quite sure I know how I would feel to be Leslie Nielsen. On one hand he was once called the Olivier of spoofs by film critic Roger Ebert. But on the other hand, it may seem a bit demeaning that his serious manner of acting which began in such classic films as Forbidden Planet and The Poseidon Adventure has segued into one spoof after another. Surely one can’t discount the hilarious roles that he played in Airplane!, The Naked Gun series, and of course the greatest of all spoof TV shows, the short lived Police Squad. And don’t call him Shirley. 
Angie Dickinson is a legendary performer best noted for her role as Pepper Anderson during four seasons of the TV drama Police Woman. But she had a rather lucrative career both before and after that series which ran from 1974-78. Starting out in a handful of TV dramas and westerns, the first major role which interests me came along in 1959 when she starred in Rio Bravo opposite John Wayne, Rick Nelson, and Dean Martin. She went on to star as a leading lady in numerous films throughout the 60’s, including Ocean’s Eleven. 
Once upon a time there was a curly-headed guy who had virtually no career of note, but had the good fortune to star in one of the most fun pictures ever produced. The movie was called Gremlins and the guy played the role of Billy Peltzer. The guy’s name was Zach Galligan and he was a very lucky guy because he got to make time with a hot princess named Phoebe Cates. After Gremlins, he went on to star in a fun sequel called Gremlins 2: The New Batch, which wasn’t quite as good as the first one, but was still rather fun. Zach has continued to make movies up to the present day, but no one has ever heard of any of them – except for The Love Boat: The Next Wave – but everyone wishes they hadn’t.