The King of B-movies: Exploring Roger Corman’s Impact on Hollywood

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May 12, 2024
Roger Corman and Vincent Price on the set of House of Usher 1960

The world of cinema has lost another true pioneer and legend this week. Prolific filmmaker Roger Corman passed away on May 9th, leaving a legacy of cinema, inspiration, and mentorship. The aptly named King of B-Movies was 98 at the time of his death, sadly only a month after his birthday on April 5th. He is survived by his wife, Julie (married in 1964), and their four children: Catherine, Roger, Brian, and Mary. He directed nearly 60 films and produced more than 490 projects mentoring or discovering some of the biggest talent in Hollywood across multiple decades of cinema.

Corman was born on April 5th, 1926, to William and Anne Corman in Detriot, Michigan. After moving to Los Angeles, he attended Beverly Hills High School and went on to Standford, where he studied industrial engineering, taking after his father. Corman completed his degree after serving in the Navy for two years from 1944 to 1946 and then went to work for U.S. Electrical Motors in Los Angeles, where his career in engineering lasted only three days. Corman told his then-supervisor, “I’ve made a terrible mistake.” before quitting just short of a week on the job.

 “I was writing for the Stanford Daily and found out that the film critics got free passes to all the theaters in Palo Alto, and one was graduating. So I wrote a few reviews and was taken on as a critic. Films had been just entertainment, but now I began to analyze them. I was more interested in this, but I was graduating and earned my engineering degree. I was the failure of my Stanford class. After three days at U.S. Electrical Motors, I quit and got the worst job among my peers – as a messenger at 20th Century Fox, delivering the mail for $32.50 a week. But it was pure passion.”

Roger Corman via VFX Voice

That he made a mistake would prove most likely true as he found work in the mail room of 20th Century Fox and would work his way up to script reader. Knowing his worth at a young age, he quit shortly after being given no credit on a script he found for the company and provided input and early development. In 1950, that film was released as The Gunfighter with screen legend Gregory Peck of To Kill a Mocking Bird fame in the lead role, but Corman was left unmentioned in the production.

Leaving 20th Century Fox, he took advantage of his time in the Navy and leveraged his payout from the G.I. Bill to attend Oxford to study English literature. Film had become his true passion, though, and he returned to Hollywood several years later, after a brief stint in Paris, with an ambition to make his own way in cinema. His early career found him taking on various roles in the studio system, from stagehand to literary agent, providing him with a steady foundation to build his empire.

“His films were revolutionary and iconoclastic, and captured the spirit of an age. When asked how he would like to be remembered, he said, ‘I was a filmmaker, just that’.”

Corman family statement via Variety

Friends and family knew Corman as a driven and ambitious man. This same ambition and sheer will helped him produce his first feature film. Having sold his first script to Allied Artists for a mere $2000, he turned around and used that money, along with pulling some personal favors, to raise enough to make Monster From the Ocean Floor. The 1954 film was filmed for just $12,000 and produced entirely by Corman’s production company, making good on his promise to forge his own path.

“Roger seemed a driven man. Roger wanted to accomplish a lot, he had to have a lot of drive to do it, and he pushed through. He not only pushed through, he punched through! With a lot of energy, and a lot of disregard at times.”

Susan Cabot long time Corman collaborator

If you doubt the immense impact Corman had on filmmaking, you should sit down for this random trivia: the title of his second film in 1955 would later be re-licensed nearly 46 years later to be used in the high-octane action freshman entry of The Fast and the Furious franchise. This series of films belongs to a subgenre that owes its very existence to Corman, but we will touch on that later.

Even more random, there is actually a legal settlement between now-defunct Fox Atomic and Rockstar Games over the title of the 1977 Ron Howard film Grand Theft Auto, which was produced by Corman. Though the success of the game has not inspired a sequel or remake using the same title, it supposedly prohibits Rockstar, at least for now, from using the name to make their own film based on their hit video game as the rights have reverted back to parent company 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight.

Roger Corman on his favorite films

By 1959, Corman was ready to step out of solely producing films and tackle distribution. He formed his next company, The Filmgroup, alongside his brother Gene Corman, and their collaboration led to notable B-movie classics such as A Bucket of Blood, Little Shop of Horrors, and The Waspwoman, among numerous others.

In the 1960s, his ambitions led him to Europe after he announced that The Filmgroup would be part of an international production effort called Compass Pictures. With distribution and production now entirely under his control, Corman began working with American International Pictures on various adaptations of Edgar Alan Poe’s and H.P. Lovecraft’s literary works.

It was during this time that he would work with genre film legends such as Richard Matheson, Vincent Price, and Boris Karloff and even direct one of William Shatner’s earliest performances in The Intruder. However, The Intruder turned out to be Corman’s first flop, something that bothered him for some time as the film played well at festivals before opening theatrically.

“It changed a lot of my feelings about filmmaking. It went to festivals and got really great reviews. One New York critic said, “‘The Intruder’ is a major credit to the entire American film industry”. And it was the first movie I made that lost money! I analyzed it. Even though it got all the critical acclaim and so forth, it was too much of a lesson, trying to teach the audience. I had to get back to entertainment.”

Roger Corman on The Intruder

Speaking of early performances, Corman also directed Jack Nicholson in the 1963 film The Terror, Little Shop of Horrors, and Jack’s first film, The Cry Baby Killer.

“When I started directing, my engineering background enabled me to learn the camera and editing fairly quickly, but I didn’t know enough about acting. So I enrolled in a method acting class. Jack was in it and was just 19 years old, but clearly the best actor in the class, so I gave him his first role in The Cry Baby Killer. And he was on his way.”

Roger Corman on finding Jack Nicholson
Jack Nicholson tears up in an emotional moment from the documentary Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel

Corman would also finance Francis Ford Coppola’s first film, Dementia-13, after hiring Coppola initially to edit anti-American propaganda out of Russian sci-fi films he had acquired the US rights to.

Several years later, he produced a film directed by Jack Hill called The Big Doll House, which was Pam Grier’s second film and would begin a long run of so-called “Women in Prison” films of which Grier would star in several for Corman and team thus catapulting her into cinema history. All of this under yet another iconic company he created, New World Pictures. Corman once again continuing his trend of either directly discovering or financially supporting newly found talent that would go on to become some of the biggest names in cinema.

During the era of New World Pictures, a young Joe Dante would find himself cutting trailers for Corman, adding another legendary career bolstered by his whirlwind of discovery and innovation. The two would later work on Dante’s first film, Hollywood Boulevard co-directed by another frequent Cormanite Allan Arkush and starring Paul Bartel who previously directed Death Race 2000.

The film did so well that Corman was able to back films for the directors to helm solo: Dante’s second film more well-known to horror fans, Piranha and Arkush’s fourth film Rock and Roll High School which starred P.J. Soles fresh off the streets of Haddonfield having completed John Carpenter’s Halloween a year prior.

Carpenter on Corman

Indeed, he mentored many filmmakers and gave rise to many more careers during his lifetime. People like Ron Howard, James Cameron, John Sayles, Dennis Hopper, Bruce Dern, Diane Ladd, Robert De Niro, Robert Patrick, Menahem Golan, Peter Bogdanovich, John Landis, Sandra Bullock, Tommy Lee Jones, Talia Rose Shire, and frequent Corman collaborator Susan Cabot, who would co-star alongside Charles Bronson in his first role in Machine Gun Kelly in 1958, yet another rising star he would launch. And this is not even a complete list!

Gale Anne Hurd, a legend in her own right, took to X this evening to share her thoughts on the master of the B-movie who was her very first boss.

While working with Corman, she met James Cameron, a model builder at the time, alongside Rob Bottin, who was working on practical effects. Cameron would go on to meet Bill Paxton and James Horner through working with Corman, while Bottin would eventually meet Joe Dante, John Sayles, and Jon Davison there as well.

If that is not impressive enough, Corman is also regarded for championing filmmakers like Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini, and Ingmar Bergman. He also helped catapult the French New Wave into American film lovers’ hearts with François Truffaut. All of whom benefited from Corman’s extensive foreign distribution efforts.

As incredible as it is to believe, all of this actually happened thanks to one man. Honestly, it is not even the tip of the iceberg regarding the lives and careers touched by Roger Corman. Undoubtedly, someone, somewhere, is taking issue with something or someone I left out right now. It is nearly impossible, to sum up his influence or his career with decades of filmmakers considering themselves students in the School of Corman, having been inspired by his work and sheer power of will to get pictures made.

After deciding to give the major studios another shot, Corman was in contracts with Columbia Pictures and United Artists for several years. During this time, he would wind up making the first biker movie ever, The Wild Angels, starring Peter Fonda and Nancy Sinatra. The movie made over $6 million in profit and would birth an entire subgenre of biker films for decades to come. A film which actually caused the real life Hell’s Angels MC to put a hit out on him as he once recounted to Joe Bob Briggs on The Last Drive-in in this clip shared by X user PoorOldRoloTony.

As previously mentioned, Corman went on to found New World Pictures in May 1970, nearly 54 years ago, as of his passing this month. An independent production and distribution company, New World Pictures became responsible for countless films regarded as classics, including Jonathan Demme’s directorial debut, Caged Heat, director Steve Carver’s debut, The Arena, also starring Pam Grier, and Martin Scorsese’s second film, Box Car Betha, starring David Caradine.

“I was called recently in some article ‘Hollywood’s Oldest Established Rebel.’ So I’m sort of working from the inside now, with still a little bit of a rebellious spirit.”

Roger Corman via AV Club

And yet, with countless successes under its belt, New World Pictures would most likely become most well-known for Death Race 2000, starring David Caradine alongside a young Sylvester Stallone, directed by Paul Bartel. Another highly influential film that would later go on to inspire an entire subgenre of car-based action films. Unironically, this would lead to, you guessed it, The Fast and the Furious, whose existence is partly owed to Corman and Death Race 2000, both of which kicked off the subgenre and its now infamous title. Corman would joke for years to come that The Fast and the Furious had helped him close more than a few deals in his day.

After distributing horror fan favorite Humanoids from the Deep, New World Pictures underwent several name changes after being sold in 1984. From Millennium Films to New Horizons. During this time, Corman found himself at odds with his new partners, accusing them of screwing him out of money on several films, including Slumber Party Massacre. The lawsuits settled out of court and led Corman to found another distribution company: Concorde Pictures.

Concorde Pictures went on to remake and re-release several of Corman’s early productions, as well as even more classic genre films like Slumber Party Massacre II, Sweet Revenge, The Terror Within, a hilarious Gremlins knockoff called Munchies (a personal favorite), and Chopping Mall produced by Corman’s surviving wife Julie Ann Corman starring horror alums Kelli Maroney and Barbara Crampton alongside Mary Woronov (who attained a cult following while working with Andy Warhol). It also found several big hits with the Carnosaur and Don “the Dragon” Wilson-led Bloodfist series.

It was also around this time in 1984 that Julie Corman started her own company, Trinity Pictures, which was dedicated mainly to family fare including one of my all-time favorite movies from my childhood, The Dirt Bike Kid, starring Peter Billingsley from A Christmas Story.

In 1990, Corman returned to the director’s chair for Frankenstein Unbound and, in 1995, acted as executive producer on a series of 13 films known as “Roger Corman Presents” in collaboration with Showtime, which most notably included his adaptation of Vampirella.

Lloyd Kaufman Interviews Corman about his SyFy Era

After a short stint in the world of comic books from 95-96 with Roger Corman’s Cosmic Comics, he began making nature run-amok films for SyFy Channel in the early 2000s. Films like Dinocroc, Supergator, Dinocroc Vs. Supergator, Dinoshark, Sharktopus, Piranhaconda, as well as sequel Death Race 2050.

As silly and schlocky as those titles sound, an entire generation of kids grew up on these films and are now just beginning their film careers at this very moment. Kids who were inspired by an industrial engineer born 98 years ago who turned his back on his college degree to follow his heart. Inspiration that will no doubt further cement the “Pope of Pop Cinema” as one of the most influential filmmakers in our time or any other.

Filmmakers react to the loss of a titan of the film industry:

A touching thread of posts from Katt Shea on working with Corman

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