Night of The Blood Beast - WGA Arbitration

WGA Arbitration

I'm one of the few people who ever arbitrated against Roger Corman. Because so many people were so, "My God! I'm working! I'm working in a real movie! Roger's giving me a chance!" And, meanwhile, Roger's paying this guy hardly anything a week. ... Well, hey, that's better than nothing – this was the thinking of most people.

Martin Varno's dissatisfaction with the Cormans eventually led him to take them into formal arbitration proceedings. Although Varno was not a member of the Writers Guild of America when he wrote the Blood Beast script, he was encouraged by actor Jay Jostyn to discuss the matter with them. According to Varno, Jostyn claimed several actors and writers had similar problems with the Cormans in the past, but were not taking action because the Cormans provided them continued work in their films. After meeting with the Writers Guild, Varno became a member and filed arbitration papers against the Cormans for not paying him enough. Roger Corman was in the process of editing the film when he received the arbitration notice, and he became so angry he started screaming and throwing things in the cutting room. Varno claims one of the film crew members approached him and promised the Cormans would hire Varno to work on many of their future films if he dropped the matter, but Varno refused.

Varno later filed a second arbitration upon learning that Gene Corman was to receive writing credit for the original story. Varno claimed Corman had nothing to do with the story, and produced large amounts of dated notes he claimed proved he wrote it himself. Varno won both arbitration matters. However, Roger Corman refused to pay Varno, and as a result he was not allowed to use Writers Guild of America members on his films. Corman used non-union writers for several years, but he finally agreed to pay Varno when he wanted to use a union writer on one of his films. Varno said he would have sought more money for the delay, but he was out of the country when Corman paid the money and missed his opportunity. Additionally, despite winning arbitration in the writing credit matter, Gene Corman was given on-screen original story credit in Night of the Blood Beast. When contacted by the distributor, American International Pictures, he was told removing Corman's credit would mean recalling all of the prints and changing them, which would have cost thousands of dollars, and Varno agreed to allow it remain unchanged.