Roger Corman, king of the Hollywood B-movie, dies at 98
Roger Corman, the writer and director who helped turn out low-budget classics including The Little Shop of Horrors and gave many of Hollywood’s most famous actors and directors early breaks, has died at 98.
Corman died on Thursday at his home in Santa Monica, California, his daughter Catherine Corman said. “He was generous, open-hearted and kind to all those who knew him,” she said. “When asked how he would like to be remembered, he said: ‘I was a film-maker, just that.’”
In a career spanning more than 60 years, Corman developed a cheap and cheerful style that led some to refer to him as the “king of the B-movies”. Producing up to nine films a year, he made more than 400 across his career.
His films were notable for their low-budget special effects and attention-grabbing titles such as She Gods of Shark Reef (1958) and Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957). He also played a significant role in developing the talents of acclaimed directors including James Cameron and Martin Scorsese, and launching the careers of actors including Peter Fonda, Robert De Niro and Sandra Bullock.
Works such as the satirical horror Death Race 2000, Piranha and The Little Shop of Horrors became cult classics and received big-budget remakes. “By mistake Roger would actually make a good picture every once in a while,” Jack Nicholson said of his frequent collaborator. “But I was never in it.”
Nicholson appeared in The Little Shop of Horrors as well as several Edgar Allan Poe adaptations.
Fonda and Dennis Hopper appeared alongside Nicholson in The Trip, a Corman-directed 1967 ode to the counterculture.
Other actors to cross paths with Corman before finding fame included a young De Niro, who featured in the Corman gangster film Bloody Mama; Sandra Bullock, who starred in straight-to-video action adventure Fire on the Amazon, and a pre-Star Trek William Shatner, who appeared as a white supremacist in Corman’s 1962 race-relations drama The Intruder.
Corman cut his own directorial career short by retiring in 1971. He was self-effacing about his films. “I don’t know if I would say I’m an artist,” he told the Guardian in 2011. “I would say I’m a craftsman. I attempt to ply my trade in the best possible way. If occasionally something transcends the craft, that’s wonderful. It doesn’t happen very often.”
Journal Obituary Page 6