Roger Corman
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"In many ways Roger Corman (1926 – 2024) was to American cinema what Jess Franco (1930 - 2013) was to European cinema. They both directed low budget, B movie style films that attracted subcultures." --Sholem Stein "I don't want anybody to use the words 'good taste' around here." --Roger Corman, spurious |
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Roger Corman (1926 – 2024) was an American film producer, distributor and director of low-budget exploitation films.
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 and the founder of New Concorde.
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.
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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
The Corman Film School
A number of noted filmmakers (including directors, producers, writers, and cinematographers) have worked with Corman, usually early in their careers, including Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Polly Platt, Peter Bogdanovich, Paul Bartel, Jonathan Demme, Donald G. Jackson, Gale Anne Hurd, Carl Colpaert, Joe Dante, James Cameron, John Sayles, Monte Hellman, Carl Franklin, George Armitage, Jonathan Kaplan, George Hickenlooper, Curtis Hanson, Jack Hill, Robert Towne, Menahem Golan, James Horner, and Timur Bekmambetov. Many have said that Corman's influence taught them some of the ins and outs of filmmaking. In the extras for the DVD of The Terminator, director James Cameron asserts, "I trained at the Roger Corman Film School." The British director Nicolas Roeg served as the cinematographer on The Masque of the Red Death. Cameron, Coppola, Demme, Hanson, Howard and Scorsese have all gone on to win Academy Awards. Howard was reportedly told by Corman, "If you do a good job on this film, you'll never have to work for me again."
Actors who obtained their career breaks working for Corman include Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern, Charles Bronson, Todd Field Michael McDonald, Dennis Hopper, Tommy Lee Jones, Talia Shire, Sandra Bullock, Robert De Niro, and David Carradine, who received one of his first starring film roles in the Corman-produced Boxcar Bertha (1972) and went on to star in Death Race 2000 (along with Sylvester Stallone). Many of Corman's protegés have paid their mentor homage by awarding him cameos in films, such as in The Godfather Part II, The Silence of the Lambs, Apollo 13,
Full filmography
Filmography
Director
- Five Guns West (1955)
- Apache Woman (1955)
- Day the World Ended (1955)
- The Beast with a Million Eyes (1955, uncredited)
- Swamp Women (1956)
- The Oklahoma Woman (1956)
- Gunslinger (1956)
- It Conquered the World (1956)
- Naked Paradise (1957)
- Carnival Rock (1957)
- Not of This Earth (1957)
- Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957)
- The Undead (1957)
- Rock All Night (1957)
- Teenage Doll (1957)
- Sorority Girl (1957)
- The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent (1957)
- I Mobster (1958)
- War of the Satellites (1958)
- Machine-Gun Kelly (1958)
- Teenage Caveman (1958)
- She Gods of Shark Reef (1958)
- A Bucket of Blood (1959)
- The Wasp Woman (1959)
- Ski Troop Attack (1960)
- House of Usher (1960)
- The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)
- Last Woman on Earth (1960)
- Atlas (1961)
- Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961)
- The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)
- Premature Burial (1962)
- The Intruder (1962)
- Tales of Terror (1962)
- Tower of London (1962)
- The Young Racers (1963)
- The Raven (1963)
- The Terror (1963)
- The Haunted Palace (1963)
- X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes (1963)
- The Masque of the Red Death (1964)
- The Secret Invasion (1964)
- The Tomb of Ligeia (1964)
- The Wild Angels (1966)
- The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967)
- The Trip (1967)
- A Time for Killing (1967, uncredited)
- The Wild Racers (1968, uncredited)
- Target: Harry (1969)
- De Sade (1969, uncredited)
- Bloody Mama (1970)
- Gas-s-s-s (1970)
- Von Richthofen and Brown (1971)
- Frankenstein Unbound (1990)
Producer only
- Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954)
- The Fast and the Furious (1954)
- Dementia 13 (1963)
- Devil's Angels (1967)
- Boxcar Bertha (1972)
- Unholy Rollers (1972)
- I Escaped from Devil's Island (1973)
- Cockfighter (1974)
- Big Bad Mama (1974)
- Capone (1975)
- Death Race 2000 (1975)
- Fighting Mad (1976)
- Eat My Dust! (1976)
- Thunder and Lightning (1977)
- Deathsport (1978)
- Avalanche (1978)
- Saint Jack (1979)
- Fast Charlie... the Moonbeam Rider (1979)
- Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)
- Smokey Bites the Dust (1981)
- Galaxy of Terror (1981)
- Forbidden World (1982)
- Space Raiders (1983)
- Love Letters (1984)
- Cocaine Wars (1985)
- Big Bad Mama II (1987)
- Munchies (1987)
- The Terror Within (1989)
- Two to Tango (1989)
- Bloodfist (1989)
- Overexposed (1990)
- Watchers II (1990)
- Immortal Sins (1991)
- Kill Zone (1993)
- Dracula Rising (1993)
- Hellfire (1995)
- Scene of the Crime (1996)
- Black Scorpion II (1997)
- A Very Unlucky Leprechaun (1998)
- Running Woman (1998)
- The Haunting of Hell House (1999)
- White Pony (1999)
- Enemy Action (1999)
- The Suicide Club (2000)
- Stray Bullet II (2000)
- Moving Target (2000)
- Aladdin and the Adventure of All Time (2000)
- Nightfall (2000)
- Raptor (2001)
- When Eagles Strike (2003)
- The Hunt for Eagle One (2006)
- The Hunt for Eagle One: Crash Point (2006)
- Saurian (2006)
- Cyclops (2008)
- Splatter (2009)
- Dinoshark (2010)
- Sharktopus (2010)
- Attack of the 50 Foot Cheerleader (2012)
- Palace of the Damned (2013)
- Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda (2014)
- Fist of the Dragon (2014)
- Sharktopus vs. Whalewolf (2015)
- Death Race 2050 (2017)
See also