American film director Roger Corman: biography, filmography and interesting facts

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Since the early 1950s, renowned independent producer and director Roger William Corman, whose film history includes hundreds of low-budget films of dubious artistry and taste, has revolutionized the way they are produced and distributed. Working outside the studio system, he set a record as one of the most commercially successful directors in Hollywood history, with 90% of his productions making a profit.

Talent Scout

Roger Corman, whose full filmography includes more than 400 films, managed to create only a few films that have become classics of the genre, including Not of This Earth (1957), The Shop of Horrors (1960), The Raven (1963), Death Race 2000 (1975) and Battle for the Stars (1980). Perhaps more important than his own accomplishments, he brought many famous Hollywood actors and directors to the people, such as Jack Nicholson, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, JonathanDemme, Joe Dante, Ron Howard, Peter Bogdanovich, John Sayles, Curtis Hanson and James Cameron. At the same time, in the 1970s, he helped foreign directors such as Akira Kurosawa, François Truffaut and Ingmar Bergman to become popular in the United States when no one wanted to take risks. He was one of the first producers to recognize the financial benefits of filming in Europe, and used sets that other films had not used. No wonder Korman, nicknamed the king of low-budget films, became one of the most prolific and successful producers of his time.

Short biography

Roger was born April 5, 1926 in Detroit, Michigan. He was the eldest of two sons of Gene Corman, an engineer who was involved in the design of the Greenfield Village Dam, and his wife Ann. Raised in the industrial Midwest, but due to his father's illness and early retirement, the family moved to southern California. After graduating from Beverly Hills High School during the last years of World War II, Roger served in the US Navy and then followed in his father's footsteps to become an engineer, graduating from Stanford University. It was then that he first showed interest in the entertainment industry by publishing movie reviews in the Stanford Daily. After graduating from high school in 1947, he worked for 4 days at U. S. Electric Motors and, parting with his ambitions as an engineer, decided to try his hand at Hollywood. Corman broke into the film industry as a bellhop for 20th Century Fox and later became a stagehand and script analyst. At his last job, he met with a number of budget stories,which seemed to him a decent way to make money.

Engineering Approach

Roger Corman sold his first script, Freeway Seine, for $4,000. He invested in the production of his first film, The Monster from the Bottom of the Ocean (1954), an ultra-low-budget horror film about a hiker and a deep-sea diver trying to find a mysterious sea creature that attacked people and animals. Having shown a knack for directing, he raised funds for further filming by choosing the American Releasing Corporation, which later became American International Pictures, to distribute his second film, The Fast and the Furious (1954), which became his longest-lived creation. By the following year, when he made his directorial debut on Five Guns of the West (1955), Corman's formula had already crystallized: quirky characters, offbeat plots laced with social commentary, clever use of set and cinematography, scouting for new talent, and most of all, dense shooting schedule with meager budgets. This approach allowed to create up to 9 films per year. It was an unheard of performance in Hollywood at the time.

Roger Corman - director

Over the next decades, he released hack after hack, among which, however, sometimes came across tapes worthy of the admiration of critics. Films directed by Roger Corman include It Took the World (1956), Swamp Women (1956), Attack of the Monster Crabs (1957) and Resurrection (1957), which weresatirized years later in the popular television series Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1988-1999). After filming "Carnival Rock" (1957) and "Naked Paradise" (1957), he created the best work of the era "Not of this Earth" (1957), in which he got rid of the standard monster in a rubber suit, depicting a humanoid alien who arrived on Earth for blood to feed their fellow tribesmen. Dark, creepy and mystical, this film was one of those rare occasions when Corman was able to turn a small budget into a creative advantage. The following tapes - "Machine Gun Kelly" (1958), "The Night of the Blood Beast" (1958) and "The Dope Street Post" (1958) - left no doubt about his intention to sacrifice artistic merit in favor of fast, cheap and ultimately profitable genre.

From carnivorous plant to Edgar Poe

He made another commendable horror film, A Bucket of Blood (1959), about a dimwitted Beatnik coffee busboy that was accepted on Wednesday, turning gruesome murders into works of modern art. Perhaps his most famous film of the time was Little Shop of Horrors (1960), a comedy about a florist's assistant who developed a carnivorous plant that feeds on human blood. Two successful musicals and a remake were staged based on it, and the tape itself became a cult and gained a long life on video and DVD, thanks to the fact that the director shot an unknown Jack Nicholson in a cameo role. Corman Roger entered his most famous period when he filmed several stories and poems by Edgar Allan Poe, which starred the greatVincent Price. The first and best of the films was The House of Usher (1960), in which Price played Roderick Ussher, followed by the film version of Poe's story The Well and the Pendulum (1961).

Roger Corman kept making cheap genre films based on Poe adaptations. After Horror Stories (1962), he directed a young William Shatner in The Violator (1962), a surprisingly mature and ahead of its time film about racial segregation and civil rights. The following year, he directed another popular adaptation of Poe based on the author's most famous work, The Raven (1963), starring Nicholson, Peter Lorr and Boris Karloff. Korman's fascination with the thriller pioneer's works culminated in adaptations of The Enchanted Castle (1963), The Masque of the Red Death (1964) and Ligeia's Tomb (1964). The latter film featured a screenplay written by future Oscar winner Robert Towne. At the same time, the thriller Dementia 13 (1963) was filmed, directed by the young Francis Ford Coppola.

Corman Roger returned to film production with Beachball (1965), Journey to a Prehistoric Planet (1966) and Wild Angels (1966). The latest biker-themed film features performances by Peter Fonda, Nancy Sinatra, Diana Ladd and Bruce Dern, and a screenplay by Peter Bogdanovich. Then, in The Valentine's Day Massacre (1967), Corman switched to the famous gang wars of the 1920s, starring Jason Robarbes (Al Capone) and Bugs Moran (Ralph Meeker).

New World Pictures

Always allowing creative talents to experiment, Corman enlisted Nicholson to write The Journey (1967), a surreal psychedelic fantasy about a television sales executive who embarks on an LSD journey similar to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which ends with his rebirth in the final. The director is said to have taken drugs to get a better idea of what the acid might be like. The next few years he directed and produced Targets (1968), Peter Bogdanovich's directorial debut about Charles Whitman's 1966 turret shooting with a sniper rifle, Bloody Mama (1968), with Shelley Winters, about a crime family led by Ma Parker and The Dunwich Horror (1970), which starred Dean Stockwell and Sandra Dee and was written by future Oscar-winning director Curtis Hanson. Dissatisfied with distributor American International Pictures' interference in the scripts and budgets of his films, Corman decided in 1970 to form his own company, New World Pictures, in order to gain full control of his production. He directed the films "Gas!" (1970) and Von Richthofen & Braun (1970), but soon lost interest in directing until the 1990s.

Sex and crime

At the same time, Korman actively helped to get on their feet budding directors, many of whom created the greatest pictures in the history of cinema. After launching Jonathan Demme's career, which began writing The Hot Box (1972), he hired a young Martin Scorsese to shoot "Bertha the Commodity". Wagon (1972), a crime drama about the Great Depression that forced a young woman (Barbara Hershey) and a trade unionist (David Carradine) into crime. At the same time, Korman made a series of sexual exploitation films full of nudity and violence that had little plot or prominent characters, including Tender Care (1972), Student Interns (1973) and The Young Nurses (1973).). Curtis Hanson, who made his directorial debut in Sweet Murder (1973), also went to Corman's film school, and Demme tried his luck in a film about women in prison, Renegades (1974). After The Sisters of Mercy (1974), The Crazy Woman (1975) and a cameo in The Godfather II (1974), he directed another quality science fiction action film, Death Race 2000 (1975), a futuristic satire about the national rally, the winner of which will be the driver who crushes more pedestrians.

Chasing and Crime Thrillers

10 years Corman churned out chase films and crime thrillers - Cannonball (1976), Jackson County Jail (1976) with Tommy Lee Jones, and Grand Theft Auto (1977), which debuted Ron Howard. He then released the horror movie parody Piranha (1978) by Joe Dante. After producing and starring in the documentary Roger Corman: Hollywood's Wild Angel (1978), he produced some of his most famous films: Rock and Roll School (1979), The Lady in Red (1979) and Battle for the Stars (1980), one of his biggest hits in which talent was once again usedJohn Sayles and special effects by James Cameron. Howl (1981), a groundbreaking werewolf film with stunning make-up, directed by Joe Dante and written by Sales, was also successful. Following Forbidden World (1982), Hells Angels Forever (1983) and Freaks (1984), Corman once again showed his keen business acumen when he sold New World Productions, the largest independent company, in 1983. producing and distributing films in the United States for $16.5 million.

New Horizons

Furthermore, in the same year, Korman founded the film production company Concorde/New Horizons, which became a successful and profitable enterprise, taking full advantage of new markets such as sales of video cassettes and later DVDs, pay TV, as well as overseas sales that produced low-cost films such as Breaking the Rules (1985), Sorority House Massacre (1986), Summer Camp Nightmare (1986) and Stripped to Kill (1987) full of scenes violence and nudity. Over the next few years, Korman produced a long line of horror and martial arts films that were of poor quality and barely distinguishable from one another. But, as always, his work was profitable. Of the many titles, only a few stood out, including Bloody Fist (1989), which spawned numerous sequels over the years. He also helped revive the career of porn star Traci Lords, who starred in the 1988 remake of Not of This Earth. Then, after a twenty-year break, Korman unexpectedly returned todirecting with Frankenstein Unchained (1990). He went on to produce films with ridiculous titles like Passionate (1991), Deadly Impulse (1992) and Carnosaurus (1993).

In recent years, actor Corman Roger has appeared in several sensational films, including The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Philadelphia (1993), directed by his old protégé Jonathan Demme. After appearing in Ron Howard's Apollo 13 (1995), he seemed to be slowing down for the first time since he started filming 40 years ago. In fact, Corman has simply caught up with the usual pace of modern producers, releasing one or two films a year. Following Black Bolt (1998) and Nightfall (2000), he was the executive producer of The Barbarian (2003), a cheap knockoff of Conan the Barbarian. Corman continued to exploit the old plots and settings, creating the nth sequel to Blood Fist 2050 (2005).

Honorary Oscar

Roger Corman has been in the industry long enough to earn the respect of Hollywood, which has largely ignored the director for most of his career. In 2009, after producing Joe Dante's web series Spletter, Corman was presented with an honorary Oscar at the Governors Awards on November 14. Although some called the award undeserved due to his lack of artistry and taste over the years, many defended him, arguing that the director andthe producer has made a significant contribution to the cinema, as he has produced many great filmmakers.