[^^ Up] - [jahsonic.com] - [Next >>]
Apart from making dozens of enormously entertaining cult films (there are amazingly few duds in his output), Corman's place in film history is assured simply through his unrivalled eye for talent - among many world-class names who were employed by him at a very early stage in their careers are Francis Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, James Cameron, Peter Bogdanovich, Joe Dante and many others - which means that his influence on modern American cinema is almost incalculable.
(b. 1926) Prolific filmmaker whom the Los Angeles Times' Kenneth Turan dubbed "the Orson Welles of Z Pictures." Corman's four-decade oeuvre of over 200 low-budget movies found a loyal audience receptive to its patented blend of nudity, violence and kitschy humor; the director virtually defined trash cinema, establishing sub-genres like women-in-prison films, stewardess/nurse softcore sex romps, and hard-core action, gore, sci-fi and horror fare. Key Corman titles include Fall of the House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Little Shop of Horrors (1960), and The Wild Angels (1966). Corman is responsible for providing the first break for a number of notable Hollywood talents: directors Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme, and Ron Howard got their start on Corman's sets, as did actors like Jack Nicholson, Robert DeNiro, and Sylvester Stallone. (Howard repaid the favor by casting notorious tightwad Corman as the cheapskate congressman in Apollo 13.) Corman's distribution company handled the work of prestigious foreign directors like Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa, and Francois Truffaut. In 1970, Corman retired from directing to run his New World Pictures production company; he re-emerged in 1989 to helm the $9 million-budgeted Frankenstein Unbound for 20th Century Fox. In 1995 cable channel Showtime aired the "Roger Corman Presents" series, 13 remakes of Corman "classics" like Not of This Earth and The Wasp Woman. Corman's 1990 autobiography was titled How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime.
Outside links
The Intruder is the greatest irony of Roger Corman's film career. In 1962, after cranking out dozens of exploitation quickies and gaining recognition for his widescreen Edgar Allen Poe series, he put up his own resources to produce a serious work of drama on the explosive issue of racism and integration. Shot on location in a small town in Missouri, where he and his crew faced bigotry first hand when the locals found out exactly what they were actually shooting, the film went on to win rave reviews and film festival prizes and became Corman's first film to lose money. --Sean Axmaker