Roger Corman, the Oscar-winning "King of the Bs" who helped turn out such low-budget classics as Little Shop of Horrors and Attack of the Crab Monsters and gave many of Hollywood's most famous actors and directors early breaks, has died. He was 98.
Corman passed away on Thursday, May 9, at his home in Santa Monica, California, his daughter Catherine Corman said Saturday, May 11, in a statement. "He was generous, open-hearted and kind to all those who knew him," the statement said. "When asked how he would like to be remembered, he said, 'I was a filmmaker, just that.'"
Starting in 1955, Corman helped create hundreds of films as a producer and director, among them Black Scorpion, Bucket of Blood and Bloody Mama. A remarkable judge of talent, he hired such aspiring filmmakers as Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, James Cameron and Martin Scorsese. In 2009, Corman received an honorary Academy Award.
"There are many constraints connected with working on a low budget, but at the same time there are certain opportunities," Corman said in a 2007 documentary about Val Lewton, the 1940s director of Cat People and other underground classics. "You can gamble a little bit more. You can experiment. You have to find a more creative way to solve a problem or to present a concept."
Minuscule budgets
The roots of Hollywood's golden age in the 1970s can be found in Corman's films. Jack Nicholson made his film debut as the title character in a 1958 Corman quickie, The Cry Baby Killer, and stayed with the company for biker, horror and action films, writing and producing some of them. Other actors whose careers began in Corman movies included Robert De Niro, Bruce Dern and Ellen Burstyn. Peter Fonda's appearance in The Wild Angels was a precursor to his own landmark biker movie Easy Rider, co-starring Nicholson and fellow Corman alumnus Dennis Hopper. Boxcar Bertha, starring Barbara Hershey and David Carradine, was an early film by Scorsese.
Corman's directors were given minuscule budgets and often told to finish their films in as little as five days. When Howard, who would go on to win a best director Oscar for A Beautiful Mind, pleaded for an extra half day to reshoot a scene in 1977 for Grand Theft Auto, Corman told him, "Ron, you can come back if you want, but nobody else will be there."
Initially only drive-ins and specialty theaters would book Corman films but as teenagers began turning out, national chains gave in. Corman's pictures were open for their time about sex and drugs, such as his 1967 release The Trip, an explicit story about LSD written by Nicholson and starring Fonda and Hopper.
Meanwhile, he discovered a lucrative sideline releasing prestige foreign films in the United States, among them Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers, Federico Fellini's Amarcord and Volker Schlondorff's The Tin Drum. The latter two won Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film.
'Little Shop of Horrors'
Most of Corman's movies were quickly forgotten by all but die-hard fans. A rare exception was 1960's Little Shop of Horrors, which starred a bloodthirsty plant that feasted on humans and featured Nicholson in a small but memorable role as a pain-loving dental patient. It inspired a long-lasting stage musical and a 1986 musical adaptation starring Steve Martin, Bill Murray and John Candy.
In 1963, Corman initiated a series of films based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. The most notable was The Raven, which teamed Nicholson with veteran horror stars Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Basil Rathbone. Directed by Corman on a rare three-week schedule, the horror spoof won good reviews, a rarity for his films. Another Poe adaptation, House of Usher, was deemed worthy of preservation by the Library of Congress.