Roger Corman, also known as the “King of the Bs” for producing low-budget Hollywood movies, has passed away at the age of 98.
“He was generous, open-hearted and kind to all those who knew him. A devoted and selfless father, he was deeply loved by his daughters. His films were revolutionary and iconoclastic, and captured the spirit of an age,” reads the statement.
Throughout his half-century-long career, Mr. Corman made a name for himself as an independent director and producer.
Having made hundreds of B movies, or films produced inexpensively and quickly, he also acted as a mentor for others in the industry.
Mr. Corman was the visionary behind horror, science fiction, and crime-based movies, including cult classics such as “Little Shop of Horrors,” “Attack of the Crab Monsters,” and “Black Scorpion.”
‘King of the Bs’
Born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1926 but raised in Los Angeles, Mr. Corman studied engineering before transitioning to filmmaking in the 1950s. He landed a job at 20th Century Fox as a mail-room employee and eventually worked his way up the ladder.Keeping a good relationship with the major studio companies, Mr. Corman produced his own independent projects with the debut of his first feature, “Monster From the Ocean Floor,” in 1954.
His acclaim as a director came with a series of films based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and for the next 15 years, he directed almost all the films he produced.
He went on to release at least eight pictures a year, with specialty theaters and drive-ins being the only bookers at the time. His first few films were shot in about 10 days for less than $60,000 each.
It wasn’t until the 1960s that national chains gave in to hosting his films after seeing a rise in viewership among the teenage demographic. This was due to his openness to creating pictures about horror, sex, and drugs and often giving them unique titles.
Among those were “Little Shop of Horrors,” which starred a bloodthirsty plant that feasted on humans, and “The Trip,” an explicit story about LSD.
By the early 1970s, Mr. Corman’s career went beyond just creating classics, as he became the source of new talent in Hollywood. Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Francis Ford Coppola, and James Cameron are just some of the A-list directors he took a chance on.
He also jump-started the acting careers of other household names, including Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, and William Shatner.
Mr. Corman went on to found his own production company, New World Pictures, which produced films such as “Women in Cages” (1971), “Death Race 2000” (1975), “Rock ‘n’ Roll High School” (1979), and “Galaxy of Terror” (1981).
Keeping its film library, he sold New World in 1983, and that’s when he created a home video-focused production and distribution company, Concorde-New Horizons. It wasn’t until the 1990s that he also sold Concorde and its library for $100 million.
In 2009, he won an honorary Oscar, and in 2011, he was the subject of a documentary feature, “Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel.”
“My theory was this … when you’re shooting on a tight schedule like that, you don’t have time to make important decisions … you just have time to shoot.”
