ANOTHER CORMAN HEARD FROM

Julie Corman looks like an actress, talks like a scholar and thinks like an accountant. She would hardly seem a candidate for producer of such low-budget movies as “Boxcar Bertha,” “Crazy Mama,” “Saturday the 14th” and “Chopping Mall.”

Yet those are only a few of the 10 pictures that she’s produced in as many years (her latest, “The Last Resort” with Charles Grodin, opened last weekend). All have been made on relatively low budgets ($2 million-$3 million) and have fared well in the profits column; “Resort,” which opened in 69 theaters, brought in $204,000 over the weekend. All but one have been distributed by her husband, Roger (as in B-movie mogul Corman, producer, director and former owner of New World Pictures).

The fact that the low-budget independent film director-turned-producer has a spouse who is also a producer may come as a surprise to Roger Corman buffs. That’s no surprise to Julie Corman, a striking, saucer-eyed woman with a shy but easy laugh.

“I don’t know how many books have been written on Roger, but not one author has ever talked to me about him,” she commented matter-of-factly the other day. Sitting in her office at New Horizons--the latest Corman production company--she seemed unperturbed that she’s remained out of the limelight; “I’ve been so busy producing that I really haven’t thought about doing interviews.”

Indeed, over the last year she has produced three movies and a baby.

The movies are “Chopping Mall” (formerly titled “Killbots”), a horror spoof; “The Dirt Bike Kid” and “Resort.” The baby is Mary, her fourth since her marriage to Corman in 1970.

The former Julie Halloran was graduated from UCLA in 1965 with a major in English. Her first job was in The Times’ marketing department where she conducted surveys on the viability of a book section (not then a part of the paper).

After that, she held a variety of entertainment-industry-related jobs obtained through UCLA’s job-referral service. “I scouted locations, worked on scripts, found stories--I think I did a little bit of everything.”

She even took an acting class from noted acting coach Jeff Corey.

“I thought it was really important to know things from an actor’s point of view,” she explained. “I didn’t want to act, necessarily, but Jeff would have none of that. From the day I walked into class, he treated me like an actor.”

To this day, casting remains her most difficult task. “I feel that every actor deserves to get the part. I feel that identification.”

Initially, she applied to New World for a job, but as Roger Corman--one of the few producers who hired women for non-gofer jobs before feminism hit--told one writer, “Julie was one of the applicants. I hired somebody else. The woman I hired had just received a Phi Beta Kappa at Berkeley and a master’s in film at USC. She was the only woman ever to win the Directors Guild award as the outstanding directorial student at an American university. I could not avoid hiring that girl. So I hired her--and asked Julie for a date.”

Once married, Corman cut her teeth as a producer on “Boxcar Bertha,” which starred Barbara Hershey and was directed by then-first-time director Martin Scorsese. Asked by her husband to oversee the production, Corman confessed to being “very reluctant. I started out to sort of watch the money on one picture. I didn’t do it very well, but the movie made a lot of money. I didn’t want to produce again; it was too tough.”

However, by her third picture, “The Lady in Red,” which starred Pamela Sue Martin, Corman “settled in.” She makes it very clear that she alone is in charge of her productions. They have been financed with her money (or that of other investors) and have nothing to do with her husband, she said.

For many women, producing is a tough chore, often compounded by discrimination, given the “boys club” nature of the profession.

“Certainly I’ve been discriminated against in my personal life,” Corman reflected, “but during production, everything is androgynous. There is no question of me as a woman.”

She thought for a moment. “I mean, I might be perceived as a difficult woman, but I’ve not heard it.

“Anyway, I don’t know when it happened, but at a certain point I went from resenting men calling me ‘Honey’ to liking it. Maybe it comes with age.”

Corman, like her husband, has watched many of her first-time actors, writers or directors blossom. Jonathan Demme (“Stop Making Sense,” “Melvin and Howard”); John Sayles (“Brother From Another Planet,” “Return of the Secaucus Seven”), and Jonathan Kaplan (“Heart Like a Wheel”) all worked for her at one time or another.

“I always have felt that if first-time directors are doing their job, they won’t be working with me again,” she said.

After the last of her three current projects opens, Corman plans to enter a new arena: television. She is producing a TV movie, “Drop-Out Mother,” for CBS.

But she still plans to make movies. “Nightfall,” a short Isaac Asimov story for which she has the rights, is among her highest priorities. Given the low-budget nature of her projects, she said, “there are certain restrictions. There is only a certain amount of money. Generally we start with a release date, so it’s got to be finished by a certain time. I just try to do the best I can every step of the way. Most interesting is how things become better than you expect them to be.”

Given her body of work, Corman recently applied for membership in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. When she was asked to list her credits, she wrote down her first producing project, “Boxcar Bertha,” and one of her latest projects.

She was rejected.

“I usually don’t push where I’m not wanted,” Corman explained, “but in this case I just had to know the reason, so I called and asked. They told me that I had no continuity in my career.”

She laughed, “I guess the eight pictures I did in between didn’t count.” (Ultimately they did; she was admitted.)