Roger Corman  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Revision as of 19:30, 12 May 2024

In 1963, Roger Corman directed The Raven, a horror-comedy very loosely based on the poem The Raven

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Roger Corman (1926 – 2024) was an American film producer, distributor and director of low-budget exploitation films.

Many of Corman's films are low-budget cult films including some which are adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe.

In 1964, Corman became the youngest filmmaker to have a retrospective at the Cinémathèque Française, as well as in the British Film Institute and the Museum of Modern Art. He was the co-founder of New World Pictures, the founder of New Concorde and was a longtime member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In 2009, he was awarded an Academy Honorary Award "for his rich engendering of films and filmmakers".

Corman is also famous for handling the U.S. distribution of many films by noted foreign directors, including Federico Fellini (Italy), Ingmar Bergman (Sweden), François Truffaut (France) and Akira Kurosawa (Japan). He mentored and gave a start to many young film directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Peter Bogdanovich, Joe Dante, John Sayles, and James Cameron, and was highly influential in the New Hollywood filmmaking movement of the 1960s and 1970s. He also helped to launch the careers of actors like Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, Bruce Dern, Diane Ladd, and William Shatner.

Corman occasionally acted in films by directors who started with him, including The Godfather Part II (1974), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Philadelphia (1993). Apollo 13 (1995), and The Manchurian Candidate (2004), A documentary about Corman's life and career titled Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel, directed by Alex Stapleton, premiered at the Sundance and Cannes Film Festivals in 2011. The film's TV rights were picked up by A&E IndieFilms after a well-received screening at Sundance.

Filmography

The IMDb credits Corman with 55 directed films and some 385 produced films from 1954 through 2008, many as uncredited producer or executive producer (consistent with his role as head of his own New World Pictures from 1970 through 1983). Corman also has significant credits as writer and actor.

Selected credits:

• It Conquered the World
• A Bucket of Blood
• The Little Shop of Horrors
• The Corman-Poe Cycle
• X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes
• The Wild Angels
• The St. Valentine's Day Massacre
• The Trip

See also

• Corman