‘Celluloid Wars: The Making of Forbidden World’ Review
Written by Allan Holzman | Published by Pulp 2.0 Press
If you think making a Roger Corman sci-fi horror flick in the early ’80s was chaotic, Celluloid Wars: The Making of Forbidden World politely taps you on the shoulder, hands you a flamethrower, and shoves you straight into the mutant-infested ventilation ducts. Allan Holzman’s memoir isn’t just a “making-of,” it’s a full-body immersion into low-budget filmmaking madness, stitched together with the sort of personal vulnerability you’d never expect from the guy who once had to convince a producer that, yes, the monster should probably move.
Holzman opens with a raw, unflinching look at his childhood trauma and lifelong struggle with stuttering, immediately grounding the book in something deeper than production gossip. It’s a bold move: before we even reach the spaceship sets, he’s already shown us the real monster he’s been battling since age six. That emotional honesty pays off throughout the book – every conversation with an executive, every pitch meeting, every on-set meltdown carries the weight of someone terrified of his own voice, yet determined to be heard.
Once the memoir hits New World Pictures, the tone shifts from intimate confession to all-out war diary. Corman appears like a benevolent tyrant of thrift, doling out impossible deadlines (“Write, produce, direct and edit seven minutes of a movie in five days”) while pinching pennies so hard they squeal. Holzman navigates a minefield of collapsing schedules, half-built sets, panicking designers and a script that, in his words, has “no heart.” He reshapes scenes, rewrites character beats, restructures the entire film and somehow keeps the crew motivated through sheer neurotic determination.
The monster itself goes through creative purgatory: sketches too ambitious, designs too static, concepts too expensive. The eventual solution? A mutant that’s both male and female, because at a certain point, why the hell not lean into the madness?
What makes Celluloid Wars: The Making of Forbidden World sing is Holzman’s ability to balance the absurdity of Corman’s filmmaking boot camp with a deep affection for the art of cinema. He’s anxious, exhausted, occasionally convinced it’s all falling apart, but he never stops trying to make something good. And that’s the heart of the book: the relentless, stubborn belief that low-budget filmmaking still deserves passion, craft, and soul.
For fans of Forbidden World, Corman history, or behind-the-scenes chaos that feels one coffee away from a nervous breakdown, this is catnip. For filmmakers, it’s practically group therapy. And for Nerdly readers… well, this is exactly the kind of unfiltered, gloriously messy genre-movie saga we live for.
***** 5/5
A gripping, funny, deeply personal chronicle of filmmaking on the brink of collapse, and a reminder that sometimes the scariest creature in the room isn’t the mutant on the page, but the fear clawing at the director behind the camera.
