As a director, the American filmmaker has played a key role in shaping Hollywood cinema since the 1950s. Roger Corman has produced and directed over 50 films for cinema and television in a career spanning more than 50 years. Corman’s focus became stories that adapted to the spirit of the times and were perfectly crafted and marketed at low budgets. Important awards were denied to the independent producer. Nevertheless, internationally successful productions emerged with his entertaining and often radical films…
Roger William Corman was born on April 5, 1926 in Detroit, Michigan.
After graduating from high school, studying engineering at Stanford University and military service, Roger William Corman was initially drawn to the film world. In Hollywood he worked as a messenger for the production company “20th Century Fox”. He then moved to Oxford to study English literature. He then returned to Hollywood in 1953, where he began working as a literary agent. In 1953 he produced his first film, Highway Dragnet. Two years later he made his directorial debut with two westerns. In the years that followed, Corman made a name for himself as a director for the film production AIP by Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson. There Corman created westerns, gangster and horror films as well as science fiction for a primarily young audience. He also developed new genres, such as rocker and rock’n’roll films, which knew how to appeal to young people with their rebellious basic themes.
With his rocker film “The Wild Angels” in 1966, Corman anticipated Dennis Hopper’s legendary “Easy Rider” (1969). In the 1960s, Corman also became known for a whole series of film adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe literature, the basic ideas of which he exaggerated into horror films. In 1970, Corman created his last directorial work for two decades with “Manfred von Richthofen”. With his production company “New World Pictures”, which from 1983 was known as “Concorde – New Horizons Corp.” traded, he subsequently appeared exclusively as a film producer. He realized about 1972 “The Fist of the Rebels” by Martin Scorsese, 1975 “Capone” by Steve Carver and 1978 “Piranhas” by Joe Dante. In the 1980s, titles such as “The Android”, “Tango for a Killer”, “Blood Fist Fighter” and “Warlock – Satan’s Son” followed. Privately, Roger Corman was married to Julie Ann Halloran, with whom he had four children.
In 1990, the dream manufacturer briefly returned to the director’s chair with “Roger Corman’s Frankenstein”. He then continued his work as a producer to realize such successful films as “Philadelphia” (1993), “Apollo 13” (1994) and “Death Race” (2000). Corman has produced more than 200 films. His late films, in which he appeared himself, include the thriller “The Silence of the Lambs” (1990), the horror film “Body Bags” (1993) and the road movie “Wild Daughters” (1994). Corman received a lifetime achievement award in Los Angeles in 1997. The following year he was honored with the award for the first producer of the century in Cannes. In 1998 he published his autobiography, How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime. In 2012, Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel, his autobiography, was released as a documentary.
Filmography
Director/Producer
1955 – Five Guns West
1955 – Apache Woman (Hot Guns and Fast Horses)
1955 – Swamp Women
1956 – The Oklahoma Woman (One Shot Faster)
1956 – It Conquered the World
1956 – The Day the World Ended
1956 – Gunslinger (Sunday Thou Shalt Die)
1957 – Sorority Girls
1957 Not of this Earth
1957 – The Undead
1957 – Naked Paradise
1957 – Attack of the Crab Monsters
1957 – Rock All Night
1957 – Teenage Doll
1957 – Carnival Rock
1957 – War of the Satellites (Planet of Dead Souls)
1958 – I, Mobster (Mobster #1)
1959 – A Bucket of Blood (The Legacy of Professor Bondi)
1960 – The Little Shop of Horrors
1960 – The House of Usher
1961 – Buried Alive
1962 Tales of Terror
1963 – The Haunted Palace
1964 – The Masque of the Red Death (Satanas)
1966 – The Wild Angels
1967 – The Trip
1968/69 – How to Make It
1969 – Bloody Mama
1970 – Von Richthofen and Braun (Manfred von Richthofen)
1990 – Frankenstein Unbound (Roger Corman’s Frankenstein)
1993 – Carnosaurus (Carnosaur)
1993 – Corman”s Dracula (Dracula Rising)
1993 – Fantastic Four (uncredited)
1995 – Black Scorpion
1995 – One Night Stand
2001 – Marlene Dietrich: Her Own Song
Actor
1972 – The Godfather
1976 – Cannonball
1990 – The Silence of the Lambs
1993 – Body Bags
1993 – Philly
1994 – Wild Daughters
2003 – Looney Tunes: Back in Action
What is Roger Corman famous for?
Roger Corman, in full Roger William Corman, (born April 5, 1926, Detroit, Michigan, U.S.), American motion picture director, producer, and distributor known for his highly successful low-budget exploitation films and for launching the careers of several prominent directors and actors, notably Francis Ford Coppola.
How old is Roger Corman?
96 years
Did Roger Corman make any good movies?
He is perhaps best known for the low-budget horror films he issued with remarkable speed in the early ’60s, including The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), The Raven (1963), and The Terror (1963), as well as the counterculture classics The Wild Angels (1966) and The Trip (1967).
Does Roger Corman still make movies?
Many of Corman’s films are based on works that have an already-established critical reputation, such as his cycle of low-budget cult films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe.
