Los Angeles – For better or worse, Roger Corman has been one of the true mavericks of American independent movies, which makes Corman’s new affiliation with Disney-based behemoth Buena Vista Home Entertainment a minor surprise.
“We’ve always had our own home video company and in the last couple of years, we’ve seen the majors start to dominate,” explained Corman. “On the old basis of ‘You can’t beat ’em, join ’em,’ we thought we would go with a major.”
Corman emphasizes that Disney’s bid for the Concorde- New Horizons catalog wasn’t the highest, but that the company made the best pitch for handling the material. In coming months, Buena Vista will be gradually disseminating parts of Corman’s vast 400-film library, along with newer releases that have never been seen on DVD. The process began last week, when “Rock ‘n’ Roll High School,” “Death Race 2000” and “Big Bad Mama” hit shelves in special editions along with the self-explanatory 2004 Costas Mandylor opus “DinoCroc.”
“I thought it was going to be a daunting chore,” Corman says of contributing to DVD bonus features. “I thought ‘I really don’t want to sit in a room day after day.’ Luckily they didn’t all get bunched together. … And we just started talking and laughing and it ended up being sort of a reunion.”
