Forbidden World began with an almost absurdly compressed assignment. Director Allan Holzman has said that Roger Corman told him he had four days to write, produce, and direct a seven- or eight-minute opening for a space film—without a completed script. Corman would provide an astronaut and a robot, and suggested that Holzman take inspiration from an outer-space version of Lawrence of Arabia. Holzman improvised the sequence, incorporating a dogfight assembled partly from footage recycled from Corman's earlier production Battle Beyond the Stars. Corman liked what he saw enough to hire Holzman to direct the feature, which was then shot under the working title Mutant in only twenty days for less than $1 million. The method was pure low-budget Corman: existing sets, recycled footage, rapid construction, and creative decisions made while the production was already moving. The pace was so severe that cast and crew had to watch where they stepped because sets were sometimes still covered in wet paint. Even the monster work had to be repaired after the fact; during editing, Holzman discovered that the production did not have enough usable footage of the mutant, leading to additional sequences being redone with effects artist and filmmaker John Carl Buechler. The finished film became a notorious Alien imitation, but its production history shows how Corman's factory-style filmmaking could turn a nearly impossible deadline into a releasable feature.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1980s
Roger Corman Gave Forbidden World Four Days to Invent Its Opening
Forbidden World / Roger Corman / Allan Holzman / 1980s
Forbidden World began with an almost absurdly compressed assignment. Director Allan Holzman has said that Roger Corman told him he had four days to write, produce, and direct a seven- or eight-minute opening for a space film—without a completed script. Corman would provide an astronaut and a robot, and suggested that Holzman take inspiration from an outer-space version of Lawrence of Arabia. Holzman improvised the sequence, incorporating a dogfight assembled partly from footage recycled from Corman's earlier production Battle Beyond the Stars. Corman liked what he saw enough to hire Holzman to direct the feature, which was then shot under the working title Mutant in only twenty days for less than $1 million. The method was pure low-budget Corman: existing sets, recycled footage, rapid construction, and creative decisions made while the production was already moving. The pace was so severe that cast and crew had to watch where they stepped because sets were sometimes still covered in wet paint. Even the monster work had to be repaired after the fact; during editing, Holzman discovered that the production did not have enough usable footage of the mutant, leading to additional sequences being redone with effects artist and filmmaker John Carl Buechler. The finished film became a notorious Alien imitation, but its production history shows how Corman's factory-style filmmaking could turn a nearly impossible deadline into a releasable feature.
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