Roger Corman
—Jason

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The death of Roger Corman at 98, on 9 May 2024 stripped the entertainment industry of one of its most prolific film directors and producers. Corman was active in the film industry from 1958 until his death.  According to Internet Movie Database (IMDB) is credited with directing 56 movies, producing an astounding 491 films, and acting in 46 more! His filmography is so extensive and influential that he has been called "The Pope of Pop Cinema," "The Spiritual Godfather of the New Hollywood," and my personal favorite "The King of Cult."

Corman was born on 5 April 1926 in Detroit, Michigan and later moved with his parents, William and Anne, and younger brother Gene to Beverly Hills, California where he attended high school.  Initially, Roger went to Stanford University to follow in his father’s footsteps and become an industrial engineer; however, like many students, he decided to go in a different direction. Corman entered a United States Navy college program to fast-track the training of officer candidates. This involved enlisting in the service, where Corman spent 1944-1946. 

Corman finished his bachelor’s degree in engineering after leaving the service in 1947.  He managed to find a job in his field at U.S. Electrical Motors in Los Angeles during 1948 and stayed employed there for a total of four days! Corman stated in many interviews that he was miserable for that period and realized he had made a terrible mistake: thankfully for him, and the world (or maybe just his fans like me) 20th Century Fox was hiring.

20th Century Fox did not hire Corman initially for his directorial or screenwriting acumen: instead, he started out as a messenger in the mailroom. As with so many aspiring Hollywood types, Corman’s career was filled with starts and stops. After becoming a story reader, Corman left 20th Century Fox because he did not receive any screen credit for his work on the 1950 Western film The Gunslinger.  Feeling dejected and unappreciated, Corman left Los Angeles to contemplate his future.

However, the pull of the silver screen was too much of a part of Corman’s life: he returned to Los Angeles and worked on several odd entertainment jobs. He was able to sell his first screenplay to William F. Broidy at Allied Artists in 1954, it was adapted into Highway Dragnet. Besides the commission for the screenplay, Corman was allowed to be an assistant producer of the movie (without pay) to give him experience and screen credit. The generosity that Broidy gave Corman was reciprocated throughout the latter’s career as many young and inexperienced directors and actors were given their first roles in Roger Corman movies.

The cash from the sale of Highway Dragnet’s screenplay gave Corman the seed to raise additional funds for his own first movie titled Monster from the Ocean Floor in 1954. This was released under Palo Alto, Corman’s own film company, and made enough profit to allow the producer to put together his next film The Fast and the Furious in 1955 (of course without Vin Diesel and Paul Walker as stars). 

This movie was inspired by a continuing trend called exploitation films, which would be a major cornerstone of Corman’s, and later directors and producers, careers. Exploitation films do not revolve around exploiting their actors: rather, they are creations of the underground social demands and tensions of audiences. Fast cars, beautiful women, aliens, monsters, atomic threats, westerns, and especially cheaply produced horror, action, crime, and science fiction movies throughout the 1950s to the present are core elements of “the New Hollywood.” 

Even though Corman had potential deals lined up with Columbia and Republic Studios, he sold The Fast and the Furious to a new independent company, the American Releasing Company (ARC), run by James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff. Smaller studios were more likely to give new screenwriters, directors, and actors their first breaks than the already established film giants that dominated Hollywood. Again, Corman found that smaller companies would advance money to the producers to get the films off the ground much more quickly than larger studios. If the initial costs were covered, plus adding in some profit, Corman was never short on funds.

ARC changed its name to American International Pictures (AIP) in April 1956 and made Corman their leading filmmaker. He led a culture of incredibly fast, and cheap, filmmaking that allowed AIP to turn out movies with as few as nine shooting days. While the special effects, screenplay, and even the acting, was not of as high a standard as films produced by Universal Studios, the popular drive-in theaters had plenty of material for young couples to “watch.”

Corman was also able to produce and direct films for other studios while working for AIP. His success in exploitation films was so great that by 1959, Corman and his brother Gage were able to found The Filmgroup, his own distribution company. The Filmgroup specialized in cheap black and white films for the drive-in craze. Perhaps Corman’s most successful early film is Little Shop of Horrors about an alien plant that has a taste for human beings. In what was one of the most memorable scenes, a young Jack Nicholson plays a masochistic patient at a dentist’s office (subsequently this was a major break of Nicholson who credited Corman for his career).

Corman continued to produce hundreds of exploitation films, changing the trends of American cinema. Horror and science fiction movies flooded the market in the 1950s and 1960s. Adaptations of Edgar Alan Poe works were a popular trope for AIP and Corman produced The House of Usher and The Pit and the Pendulum. Vinent Price, one of my favorite horror actors, starred in several of Corman’s Poe-cycle films, as well numerous others of Corman’s productions. 

While horror and science fiction were at the time still viewed as childish by many studios, they had a tremendous impact on the next generations of filmmakers and audiences. Major studios would not touch taboo subjects like civil rights, interracial relationships, social commentary about war, government, and sex for fear of alienating audiences: yet exploitation studios had no problem pushing these themes in their films and profiting generously in the process.

Corman himself had no issue working with the larger studios and regularly rotated between independent and mainstream companies. In 1970, Corman founded New World Pictures where he produced his own movies while distributing the foreign arthouse films that larger studios had abandoned. Movies revolving around bikers, women prisoners, women nurses, and any combination of horror/science fiction you can imagine poured from New World Pictures over the next decade.

His high point, as far as many exploitation fans believe, was between 1975 and 1983. In 1978, Corman produced Joe Dante’s Piranha where some unsavory military experiments lead to the creation of super piranhas (this one is a must watch for fans of man versus nature fans). Humanoids from the Deep and Galaxy of Terror were released 1980 and 1981 and were rightfully criticized for scenes of gore and violence on screen. Despite these two movies public faux pas, Corman was able to recover his status when he jumped on the success of George Lucas’s Star Wars and produced Battle Beyond the Stars in 1982.

Corman sold New World Pictures in 1983 and continued producing movies for the studio until he founded another company named Millenium Films. This name never really seemed to work for Corman, and he rebranded the company as New Horizons in 1984. This man simply could not slow down! Legal issues erupted between Corman and New World Pictures over distribution rights over several films, which were eventually settled out of court in 1985 for an undisclosed amount.

Corman’s early success had ridden on the drive-in theater industry, and while this declined, he was able to make up for lost opportunities in video cassette rentals in the mid-1980s. Another break for Corman in the 1990s was the cable network Showtime creating the series Roger Corman Presents where he was able to distribute generally 24 movies per year to new audiences. SyFy Channel, another cable network, became the leading market for Corman’s movies in the 2000s. Such “classic” films as Dinocroc, Supergator, Dinocroc vs Supergator, Sharktopus, and Piranhaconda graced the small screen from 2004 to 2012.

I can honestly admit that I have perused more than my fair share of Roger Corman’s filmography over the course of my life and have enjoyed some of it. Whenever I have the craving for movies that have cheesy special effects, occasional rough dialogue, and starring either new or older actors or directors, I know that I can count on Roger Corman to keep me entertained.