Roger Corman

Known for ProductionBorn 1926-04-05Died 2024-05-09Detroit, Michigan, USA

Roger William Corman (April 5, 1926 – May 9, 2024) was an American film director, producer and actor. Known under various monikers such as "The Pope of Pop Cinema", “The King of The B’s”, "The Spiritual Godfather of the New Hollywood", and "The King of Cult", he was known as a trailblazer in the world of independent film. Many of the more than 500 features directed or produced by Corman were low-budget films that later attracted a cult following, such as The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), The Intruder (1962), X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes (1963), and the counterculture films, The Wild Angels (1966) and The Trip (1967). House of Usher (1960) became the first of eight films directed by Corman that were adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and which collectively came to be known as the "Poe Cycle". In 1964, Corman became the youngest filmmaker to have a retrospective at the Cinémathèque française, as well as in the British Film Institute and the Museum of Modern Art. He was the co-founder of New World Pictures, the founder of New Concorde and was a longtime member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In 2009, he was awarded an Academy Honorary Award "for his rich engendering of films and filmmakers". Corman was also famous for handling the U.S. distribution of many films by noted foreign directors, including Federico Fellini (Italy), Ingmar Bergman (Sweden), François Truffaut (France) and Akira Kurosawa (Japan). He mentored and gave a start to many young film directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Peter Bogdanovich, Joe Dante, John Sayles, and James Cameron, and was highly influential in the New Hollywood filmmaking movement of the 1960s and 1970s. He also helped to launch the careers of actors like Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, Bruce Dern, Diane Ladd, and William Shatner.Read more

Movies & web series

Corman's Eyedrops Got Me Too Crazy

It Was a Colossal Teenage Movie Machine: The AIP Story

Cybermaster: Shepherd II

Dance with Me

Last Stand at Lang Mei

CULT-TASTIC: Tales From The Trenches With Roger And Julie Corman

Famous Monster: Forrest J Ackerman

Stray Bullet

The Dark Side of Hollywood

Martin Scorsese Directs

Tales from the Lumber Yard: The Making of Galaxy of Terror

Horror Cafe

The Godfather Part II

Martin Scorsese, the Italian-American Master

A Century of Cinema

The Silence of the Lambs

Wasp Woman: Murder of a B-movie Queen

AGFA Mystery Mixtape #1

The Horror of It All

E! True Hollywood Story

Reel Radicals: The Sixties Revolution in Film

The Phantom Eye

The Devil Ant

A Decade Under the Influence

Rebel Highway

To Die Standing

Edgar Allan Poe: Buried Alive

Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story

Kings of Cult

Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of the American Drive-in Movie

Still Screaming: The Ultimate Scary Movie Retrospective

Burnt Offering: The Cult of The Wicker Man

The Perfect Scary Movie

Philadelphia

The Practice

Galaxy Express 999

The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs

Roger Corman: Hollywood's Wild Angel

The Movies That Made Us

The Man Who Drew Bug-Eyed Monsters

Gangland: Bullets over Hollywood

Apollo 13

Time Warp: The Greatest Cult Films of All Time

It Conquered Hollywood! The Story of American International Pictures

Warlords from Hell

Inside the Labyrinth: The Making of 'The Silence of the Lambs'

Cheyenne Warrior

Conan