Roger Corman

Abstract

“The King of the B Movies.” “The Pope of Pop Cinema.” “The Spiritual Godfather of the New Hollywood.” “The King of Cult.” Celebrated and reviled, the many-nicknamed Roger Corman is a remarkable filmmaker for many reasons. By all accounts a quiet, unassuming man with left-wing politics who is nevertheless known as a cutthroat businessman and unapologetic capitalist, Corman is enshrined in Hollywood legend for his thrift and innovation. His 1950s and 1960s output as a director, mainly for American International Pictures (AIP), is varied and colorful: science fiction films, gangster films, motor racing films, biker films, sex comedies, Westerns. And yet it is surely for his horror films he is best remembered, especially the mid-budget series adapting Edgar Allan Poe stories, mostly starring Vincent Price. He is also well known as a nurturer of new talent, providing numerous actors and directors with early opportunities; his successful disciples have rewarded him with cameos in films such as The Godfather Part II (1974) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Corman was an innovator on the business side as well. In 1959, he and his brother Gene Corman founded a distribution company called Filmgroup; it folded within a few years but was a prelude to the founding of Corman’s much more successful New World Pictures in 1970. New World was oriented toward inexpensive exploitation films but also responsible for the American distribution of many international art films by directors such as Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, and Akira Kurosawa. Academic attention to Corman came slowly. There was a swell of interest in the late 1960s and thereafter, identifying him as a low-budget auteur who maintained a distinctive set of themes unifying a diverse body of work, but it happened just as he retreated from directing, only sporadically returning to the director’s chair. Though Corman directed around fifty films, that count is vastly outstripped by his films as a producer, a role he regularly occupies to this day. General public appreciation for Corman peaked with his 2009 Honorary Academy Award and the celebratory documentary Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel (2011).