Cult director Roger Corman often invented titles before coming up with plots. His 1957 film Attack of the crab monsters is one example: “I had no story,” Corman told NPR’s Renee Montagne in 2010.
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During his half-century career, Roger Corman filled American drive-ins with hundreds of low-budget films. They had titles like Sharktopus, teenage doll And Terror. The trailers – and the titles – were often better than the films themselves.
But Corman was also a major figure in American independent cinema. The directors and actors who worked with him early in their careers are a veritable who’s who: Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Francis Ford Coppola.
“I think the task of the filmmaker is to break through and hit that horror that still remains in the unconscious,” Corman said. “And there is a certain catharsis there. He is pictured above in 2009.
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“I think the task of the filmmaker is to break through and hit that horror that still remains in the unconscious,” Corman said. “And there is a certain catharsis there. He is pictured above in 2009.
Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images
Corman died Thursday at his home in Santa Monica, California, according to a statement released Saturday by his wife and daughters. “He was generous, open-minded and kind to everyone who knew him,” the statement said. “When asked how he would like to be remembered, he replied: ‘I was a filmmaker, no less.'” He was 98 years old.
Corman was educated at Stanford and Oxford universities before becoming dean of the grindhouse. In 1990, Corman spoke to NPR about making his first film, Monster from the bottom of the ocean. It was the early 1950s, and Corman had read in the newspaper about a company that had invented a miniature submarine.
“I finished my breakfast, called them, told them I was an independent filmmaker and would be interested in having their submarine in my picture,” he recalls.
Putting free content into the films he produced on the cheap became Corman’s trademark – alongside little-known starlets in even smaller outfits, filmed on the tiniest of budgets. Corman’s economics were legendary.
Dick Miller starred in dozens of Corman films, including the 1955 western. Apache woman. “I played an Indian in my first movie and about halfway through (Corman) asked me… Would you like to play a cowboy?” Miller remembers in a Fresh air interview in 2004. “I said, ‘Am I doing another movie yet?’ He said, ‘No, in the same movie.’ So I ended up playing a cowboy. And an Indian in my first film.”
Corman released as many as eight films a year – a breakneck pace that rivaled even the major studios. One day, as a joke, he borrowed a set (for free, of course) and shot a film in two days and one night. This hastily assembled film was the original, in black and white, Little shop of horrors.
“Perhaps the fast pace and insane schedule brought something to the film that made it the more or less cult film that it became,” Corman said.
Some of Hollywood’s biggest stars began working on Corman’s films. Above, Salli Sachse and Peter Fonda are pictured on the set of The trip, a 1966 film written by Jack Nicholson and directed by Corman.
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Some of Hollywood’s biggest stars began working on Corman’s films. Above, Salli Sachse and Peter Fonda are pictured on the set of The trip, a 1966 film written by Jack Nicholson and directed by Corman.
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Of course, it didn’t hurt that the film featured a young Jack Nicholson playing a masochistic dental patient.
Nicholson appeared in a series of Corman pictures, including a relatively well-regarded series based on works by Edgar Allan Poe, all starring Vincent Price.
But Corman was mostly synonymous with schlock – there was Nursing students in 1970 (followed by several later films focused on nurses), the 1966 biker gang film Wild Angelsand the 1975 homicidal hot rod movie Death Race 2000.
“Drivers are rated not only on how fast they can drive and how many other drivers they might hit, but also on how many pedestrians they might kill,” Corman boasts. “That was the key. The film was the biggest success we ever had, and it gave rise to all kinds of jokes that have entered our time.”
Corman received an honorary Academy Award in 2009 for producing and directing more than 300 films and fostering the careers of Ron Howard, John Sayles, Sylvester Stallone and James Cameron.
“It is likely that all his films together would not have cost as much as Avatar,Cameron told NPR in 2010.
Corman produced Cameron’s first feature film, 1981. Piranha II: spawning, and taught him a vital lesson: “Your will is the only thing that makes the difference in getting the job done…” Cameron said. “It teaches you to improvise and, in a funny way, to never give up hope. Because you’re making a movie, and the movie can be whatever you want it to be.”
The films Corman wanted to create are their own crazy, glorious world of teenage cavemen, x-ray eyes, and deep-sea humanoids. His 300-odd films have barely risen to the level of camp. But many of Hollywood’s most respected directors have at least one Corman credit buried in their resumes. And by teaching so many people how to stay on budget and on schedule, Corman was arguably one of the most influential figures in American cinema.
In 1964 he married Julie Halloran, a UCLA graduate who also became a producer. He is survived by his wife Julie and his children Catherine, Roger, Brian and Mary.
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