Roger Corman, the director of The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), The Intruder (1962), The Wild Angels (1966), and The Trip (1967) and the producer of such films as Battle Beyond the Sun (1962), Boxcar Bertha (1972), Caged Heat (1974), and Grand Theft Auto (1977), died on 9 May 2024. He was 98 years old. During his 70-plus years in the film industry, Corman had come to be known variously as “The Pope of Pop Cinema,” “The Spiritual Godfather of the New Hollywood,”  “The King of Cult,” and “The King of B-Movies.” His contributions to cinema were monumental.

Corman was born in Detroit on 5 April 1926. His father, William, an engineer, worked for Henry Ford and designed a bridge for Ford’s Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. When Corman was a teenager, the family moved to California, where he attended Beverly Hills High School and first fell in love with the movies. After school, he studied engineering at Stanford. His studies were interrupted by World War II, during which he volunteered for the V-12 Navy College Training Program. After graduation in 1947, he went to work for US Electrical Motors—but he held out only four days before quitting his job in favour of a position as a messenger boy in 20^th Century Fox’s mail room. He then worked briefly as a script reader—an experience that convinced him that he could write better scripts than those he had been assigned. His first successful script was sold to Allied Artists and formed the basis of the 1954 film Highway Dragnet. Corman used the $4,000 he made from that movie, along with donations from friends and family, to finance his first feature film: The Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954). Between 1955 and 1960, Corman directed or produced more than thirty films for American International Pictures (AIP), most of them westerns, science fiction, or teen films, which were shown at drive-in cinemas. 

All of Corman’s early films were shot in less than two weeks and cost less than $100,000 to make. He went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that his movies were completed on a tight schedule and an even tighter budget. He would have his cameramen follow ambulances and fire trucks around so that he could use the footage. To save time, Corman would film every shot in a single take. To save money, he didn’t obtain permits, but would simply shoot scenes on location as quickly as possible and then beat a hasty retreat before the police arrived. The filming of The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) demonstrated Corman’s money-saving methods: he completed it in just two days, so that he could use the sets from his previous film, A Bucket of Blood (1959) before they were torn down. In addition, Corman had an eye for talent. A young actor and screenwriter named Jack Nicholson had a small role in the film. It would not be the last time Corman gave a future titan of Hollywood their first break.

The Little Shop of Horrors proved to be one of Corman’s most iconic and enduring works. It became a cult film in the 1960s and ’70s and was made into a stage musical by composer Alan Menken and lyricist Howard Ashman, which was first performed in 1982 and has had several revivals over the ensuing decades. In 1986, the musical was re-adapted into a film, which has become a cult classic in its own right. The 1960 version of The Little Shop of Horrors had a budget of $30,000 while the 1986 version had a budget of $25 million. The successes of the musical and the film remake caught the attention of Walt Disney Animation Studios, who recruited Menken and Ashman to write songs for their animated films. The songs the duo contributed to The Little Mermaid (1989) and Aladdin (1992)—hits like “Kiss the Girl,” “Under the Sea,” “Friend Like Me,” and “A Whole New World” ushered in the Disney Renaissance of the 1990s. 

By the early 1960s, Corman turned from genre films to social realism. The result was The Intruder (1962): a film about a racist—wonderfully played by William Shatner—who visits a small southern town to provoke its white citizens into rebelling against the court-ordered racial integration of their school system. The movie was filmed on location in Charleston, Missouri where the crew were harassed by townspeople and local law enforcement, concerned that the movie would damage their town’s reputation. The Intruder received mediocre reviews and was a box office flop. Corman later concluded, 

One … the audience at that time, the early sixties, simply didn’t want to see a picture about racial integration. Two, it was more of a lecture. From that moment on I thought my films should be entertainment on the surface and I should deliver any theme or idea or concept beneath the surface.

From 1960 to 1964, Corman directed a series of horror films based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe; these became known as the “Poe Cycle.” All but one of the films starred horror icon Vincent Price, who typically filmed his scenes in just two days. Corman later paired Price with Boris Karloff, best known for iconic performances as Frankenstein’s Monster, and with Peter Lorre. The films boosted the three actors’ later careers significantly. 

During this time, Corman also took on a series of protégés, who would later become Hollywood icons. The shoestring budgets Corman had to work with meant that he was forced to take chances on unproven young filmmakers, since he couldn’t afford the hefty fees demanded by seasoned professionals. He taught these aspiring directors, screenwriters, actors, composers, and producers many important lessons about filmmaking—including the importance of a good script and of meticulous preparation—as well as how to improvise a solution when something went wrong on set. 

The Western Reinvented. Again.

It has been 30 years since a Western last won the Best Picture Oscar at the Academy Awards. That was in 1992 and the film was Unforgiven, directed by Clint Eastwood, who also starred in it alongside Morgan Freeman, Gene Hackman, and Richard Harris. On Sunday, Jane Campion’s The

QuilletteKevin Mims

Many of the future directors Corman mentored worked for him in other capacities before they directed films of their own. This gave them vital insights into how other departments on a film production function. Francis Ford Coppola worked as a sound technician, dialogue director, and editor for Corman before he directed his first film, Dementia 13 (1963). Most importantly, the directors learned how to work under tight time constraints and get the most out of meagre budgets.

Although Corman shied away from making overtly political films after The Intruder, he remained in tune with the issues of the day. In the sixties, he began to make films that appealed to America’s rebellious youth, whom the major Hollywood studios had been ignoring. In 1966, Corman directed The Wild Angels, a film about a motorcycle gang based on the Hell’s Angels, who had become anti-heroes within the counterculture, but were hated by the establishment. The film starred Peter Fonda, Nancy Sinatra, Bruce Dern, and Diane Ladd. Peter Bogdanovich—who would go on to direct such films as The Last Picture Show (1971), Paper Moon (1973), and Mask (1985)—did an uncredited rewrite of the script and assisted Corman during the production. (Corman subsequently produced Bogdanovich’s 1968 directorial debut, Targets.) 

Peter Fonda was an especially interesting casting choice. The son of Henry Fonda, he was initially typecast as an ordinary yet heroic character, and seemed set to follow in his father’s footsteps as a clean-cut actor. By the mid-1960s, however, Fonda had begun associating himself with the counterculture. He grew out his hair, experimented with marijuana and LSD, and criticised the Vietnam War. Fonda’s political views and drug use alienated Hollywood’s conservative establishment and Fonda soon found himself out of work. The Wild Angels’ critical and box office success revived Fonda’s career and rebranded him as a hippie movie star. Corman himself capitalised on the success of The Wild Angels with another counterculture film, The Trip (1967), about a young man, played by Fonda, who takes LSD for the first time. The film was written by Jack Nicholson and co-starred Dennis Hopper. 

Fonda, Nicholson, and Hopper went on to make a hippie-themed film of their own, which drew on the biker and psychedelic themes of The Wild Angels and The Trip. Easy Rider (1969) was both a critical and a box office smash hit. The film was so successful that major film studios could no longer ignore the counterculture or the creativity of younger filmmakers. It ushered in the New Hollywood era, a time when filmmakers, rather than studios, had control over the creative direction of the industry. 

By 1970, Corman had largely retired from directing to focus on producing and distributing films. In 1972, he interviewed a young director from New York City for a project he was producing. The man’s knowledge of filmmaking impressed Corman, who hired him to make his film Boxcar Bertha (1972). The young director’s name was Martin Scorsese and Boxcar Bertha was only his second feature-length movie. Corman gave Scorsese complete creative freedom; his only stipulations were that he must finish shooting within 24 days, stay within budget, and include a nude scene every 15 minutes. Scorsese prepared meticulously, drawing storyboards for every scene—something even Corman didn’t do when directing. Corman scheduled the first four days of filming to take place on a moving train. After each take, the train would have to back up, which ate up precious filming time, placing the director under enormous pressure. “We don’t have time. You go in the morning, you’re already behind. There’s no such thing as time. We’ve lost time already. Just by breathing, you’re losing time,” Scorsese recalled in an interview, in which he described the experience as a “baptism by fire.” Boxcar Bertha was a minor success at the box office and received mixed reviews. 

Corman was also good at capitalising on film industry trends. In 1978, he produced a low-budget Jaws knockoff called Piranha (1978), directed by Joe Dante, who would later go on to direct one of the most iconic films of the 1980s: Gremlins (1984). Piranha’s script was written by the novelist John Sayles, who later self-financed his directorial debut, Return of the Secaucus 7 (1980), with the money he earned writing scripts for Corman. Return of the Secaucus 7 received excellent reviews and in 1997, the Library of Congress decided to preserve it in the National Film Registry because of its cultural and historical significance. Sayles carved out a niche for himself directing and writing films like Eight Men Out (1988), City of Hope (1991), and Lone Star (1996). Corman’s tutelage proved crucial to Sayles’s success. Sayles shot his 2013 film Go For Sisters in just 19 days across 65 locations in the United States and Mexico, all for under a million dollars.

In 1980, John Sayles wrote the script for Battle Beyond the Stars, a science fiction film Corman produced to capitalize on the popularity of the genre following the success of Star Wars (1977) and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. At $2 million, it was the most expensive film Corman had ever produced. James Horner, who had worked for Corman on three previous films, composed the score. The film ran into difficulties in post production when the special effects team fell behind schedule. Corman sent his assistant, Gale Anne Hurd, to see what was causing the delays. Among the team, she encountered a young model designer, who impressed her with a flair for visual storytelling that was epitomised by the way in which his spaceship designs reflected the cultures of the alien races depicted in the film. When Corman heard about the young man’s talent, he promoted him to head of the special effects team. The young man’s name was James Cameron. The film sets for Battle Beyond the Stars were made by a young carpenter from Texas who kept the crew’s spirits up with his light-hearted jokes. His name was Bill Paxton. Gale Anne Hurd, Horner, Cameron, and Paxton would all play vital roles in each other’s careers over the ensuing decades. Hurd and Cameron married and she produced four of Cameron’s finest films: The Terminator (1984) and Aliens (1986)—both of which featured Paxton in supporting roles—as well as The Abyss (1989) and Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991). Horner would score Cameron’s Titanic (1997) and Avatar (2009), two of the highest grossing films ever made. Cameron would often later acknowledge that he “trained at the Roger Corman Film School.”

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Right now, I’m maybe most spooked by how a living, breathing cultural memory is seeming to evaporate.

QuilletteClay Routledge

When major US distributors shied away from releasing foreign films that they believed were too experimental for their home audience, Corman stepped in to fill the resulting gap in the market. Previously, major distributors would only release foreign films in big markets like New York City and Los Angeles. Corman took a different approach. He distributed Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers (1972) across the country, to the same drive-in theatres where his B-movies played. This move paid off both critically and financially. Cries and Whispers is one of very few foreign films ever to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. Throughout the 1970s, Corman continued to distribute foreign films like Federico Fellini’s Amarcord (1973), Akira Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala (1975), and François Truffaut’s The Story of Adele H. (1975)—an endeavour that garnered him both critical acclaim and financial success.

Corman never lost his ability to see where the film industry was heading. Since the 1990s, anime has become a cultural juggernaut and it was Corman who distributed one of the first anime films in the United States. With Galaxy Express 999 (1980), Corman cut what was originally a two-hour film down to 90 minutes, eliminating important plot points, and had the film redubbed with dialogue that didn’t fit its plot. It became an infamous “it’s so bad it’s good” movie among early anime fans (like an anime version of The Room). 

Corman also saw the potential in adapting superhero comics to the big screen long before the Marvel Cinematic Universe came to dominate the film industry. He purchased the film rights to Spider-Man in the mid-1980s and planned to produce a film starring that character for Orion Pictures. However, bureaucratic squabbles delayed production for so long that Corman’s rights to Spider-Man lapsed. He then teamed up with Constantin Film to produce a movie based on Marvel’s Fantastic Four characters. Production was rushed because Constantin Film had no intention of actually releasing the film—they just wanted to ensure they retained the film rights to the characters before those rights expired. Fantastic Four (1994) was never officially released, although bootlegged versions are sometimes posted on YouTube.

In the 2011 documentary Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel, a tearful Jack Nicholson recalls how much he owes to Corman’s willingness to support him when he was struggling young actor: 

There’s nobody in there that he didn’t in the most important way support. He was my main connection… my lifeblood to whatever I thought I was going to be as a person… and you know I hope he knows that this is not all hot air. 

Corman remained close friends with all his pupils and many of them paid tribute to him by casting him in cameo roles. Francis Ford Coppola cast him as a US Senator in The Godfather Part II (1974), Jonathan Demme, who directed the Corman-produced Caged Heat, gave him the role of FBI Director Hayden Burke in The Silence of the Lambs (1991), while Ron Howard featured him in Apollo 13 (1995). While on the set of Apollo 13, Corman told Howard that he would have been able to shoot the movie’s big-budget sequences for a lot less money. Howard conceded that his mentor could have easily made the film for a fraction of the price.

On 28 March 2024, Francis Ford Coppola hosted a private screening for his new film Megalopolis, an ambitious sci-fi film, which he spent 50 years intermittently working on at the Universal CityWalk IMAX cinema in Los Angeles, in the hopes of finding a potential distributor. Among the Hollywood luminaries who attended were Al Pacino, Spike Jones, Coppola’s sister Talia Shire, his nephew Nicholas Cage, Spike Jones, and Darren Aronofsky. Corman was also in attendance to witness his pupil unveil the most ambitious film of his career. It was to be his final public appearance before his death a little over a month later. 

While promoting his latest film, The Shrouds (2024), director David Cronenberg recently told Variety that he was “watching movies in order to see dead people. I want to see them again; I want to hear them… In a way cinema is a cemetery.” This is certainly true of Corman’s work. Many of his most prominent protégés predeceased him. Dennis Hopper died in 2010, Jonathan Demme in 2014, James Horner in 2015, Peter Fonda in 2019, and Peter Bogdanovich in 2022. Those who are still alive are all senior citizens. Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and Jack Nicholson are in their eighties; John Sayles and Ron Howard are in their early seventies; Gale Anne Hurd and James Cameron are nearing seventy. The era of filmmaking Corman helped nurture is ending. The filmmakers who follow in the footsteps of his students will struggle to fill their shoes and they won’t have a Roger Corman to teach them the ins-and-outs of moviemaking. Roger Corman was a true original. The world of film will be worse off without him.