Roger Corman

A native of Detroit, the city where the American automobile industry is based, Roger William Corman – who came into the world on April 5, 1926 – was about to follow in the footsteps of his father, an engineer at the service of the sector. After finishing his studies in Industrial Engineering at Stanford University, and after the hiatus caused by his recruitment during World War II, the boy went to work for US Electrical Motors.

But Roger Corman ‘s run in this area lasted exactly four days. He started working on Monday, and on Thursday he told his boss that he had made the wrong profession. He had come to the conclusion that his thing was the movies.

Determined to establish himself in the world of the Seventh Art, even if it was from below, he got a job as a mail delivery boy at 20th Century Fox. In the area of ​​​​the majors he endured a little more than in engineering, and even rose to script reader . He only liked one of those assigned to him, that of The Gunslinger , which Henry King would shoot with Gregory Peck in 1950. The young and excited Roger Corman wrote a report with ideas for the filming of the project. But he was completely disenchanted when the film was over, he discovered that they had not bothered to mention him in the credits. He decided that from that moment he would only dedicate himself to his own films.

Taking advantage of a government law popularly known as the GI Bill, which provided funding for the studies of veterans, Roger Corman studied English Literature at Oxford, the prestigious British university. Back in the United States, he settled in Los Angeles, and managed to sell his own script for the film Highway Dragnet , directed by Nathan Juran , in 1954.

Shortly thereafter, he joined James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff at the independent production company American International Pictures. Within this company, in which he would remain for a long time, he debuted as a director with Five Guns , a tiny budget western, with John Lund and Dorothy Malone .

From that moment, Roger Corman begins a frantic career. He directs numerous titles a year (up to 9 in 1957). They are light films, but with entertaining and fresh plots, appealing above all to young audiences, who came to see them in the double-edition rooms and drive-ins of the time. It does not leave genre cinema, as it repeats several times in the western ( The Oklahoma Woman , The Oracle Sheriff ) and abounds in fantastic and horror cinema ( Attack of the Crab Monsters , Teenage Cave Man , The Wasp Woman , The viking women and the sea serpent). The cunning filmmaker always managed to make them look much more expensive than they really were. To do this, he used simple tactics (shooting in places without permission, using discarded footage from other films and expired celluloid, taking advantage of ready-made sets, or actors hired for other films, etc.) but effective after all.

Dick Miller , a regular actor in his films, remembered very well the behavior of Roger Corman , with whom he made his debut the day after meeting him, as an Indian in Mujer apache . “I didn’t even wear the nose plugs that widened the nostrils, common at the time to give an Indian look. They just smeared me with dark makeup,” he explains. A week later, Corman called him again to ask him to play the cowboy. “I asked him if he was going to make another film and he said no, that it was the same one. That’s how I played a cowboy and an Apache in one film, and in the end I was about to kill myself, since it was part of part of the gang that was sent to liquidate my Indian. In Roger’s productions everyone was doubled”.

The Edgar Allan Poe Cycle of Adaptations

1960 was key in Roger Corman ‘s career . That same year, according to the legend that circulates about it, he made a bet with someone who would be capable of making a film in less than three days. In only two and one nights, the director finished the main sequences (during the following two weeks he shot additional material) of Little Shop of Horrors , about a flower shop assistant who cares for a mysterious carnivorous plant that eats humans. In one of his first roles, Jack Nicholson plays a masochist, a patient of a brutal dentist. Converted into a cult film by fans of the B series, in 1982 it gave rise to a musical, which in turn was made into a film ( The Little Shop of Horrors , byFrank Oz ). Subsequently, an animated series titled Little Shop was made .

That same year, Roger Corman shoots The Fall of the House of Usher , starring Vincent Price , who would become a regular in his films, and which begins the series of adaptations of works by Edgar Allan Poe , which has 7 other titles: The Pendulum of Death , The Obsession , Horror Stories , The Palace of the Spirits , The Mask of the Red Death , The Tomb of Ligeia, and The Raven (1963) . Since for the latter he had signed one of the icons of horror cinema, the great Boris Karloff, took advantage of the cast to shoot The Terror in a weekend on the same sets , alien to Poe’s universe, although very much in line with his writings.

Most of these titles have scripts by the prestigious novelist Richard Matheson ( I am legend ) – Robert Towne , a great friend of his, and Charles Beaumont also collaborate with him on some. The truth is that Corman likes to surround himself with trusted people in his team, which is why he also used to work with the set designer Daniel Haller, the cinematographer Floyd Crosby and actors such as the aforementioned Nicholson and Price, as well as Ray Milland , Basil Rathbone , Barbara Steele , Peter Lorre and others.

After these tapes, the director obtained certain prestige. He even opened the Venice festival in 1966 with Hell’s Angels , a true precursor of biker movies, starring Peter Fonda (three years before the mythical Easy Rider ), Nancy Sinatra and Bruce Dern . Among his films, the man with X-rays in his eyes stands out , the chilling journey of a scientist ( Ray Milland ) who decides to inject himself for testing purposes with a serum that provides the ability to see through walls.

The filmmaker married Julie Halloran –later known as Julie Corman–, who also became a producer. The marriage has had four children. In the early 1960s, Corman had wanted to break away from American International Pictures, founding his own company, Filmgroup, with his brother Gene. But the attempt did not work. Finally, in 1970, the two created New World Pictures, which operated until 1997, and became an important media group.

With this signing, Corman produces by the piece, giving an opportunity to any talented young man willing to work without much remuneration. Among his students, several young people from New Hollywood stand out, who would change cinema forever, such as Francis Ford Coppola , Martin Scorsese , Joe Dante , James Cameron , Peter Bogdanovich , Ron Howard and Jonathan Demme , who usually features Corman making a cameo in his films. movies, like in The Silence of the Lambs. When they asked her to stretch a little more with her salary, her answer was always the same: “With what you are learning, you would have to pay me.” Scorsese remembers Corman’s curious advice with some fondness: “Marty, when you make a movie you need a killer first reel, because people want to know what’s going on, and a great last scene, so they’re happy. The in-between It doesn’t matter too much,” he told her during the filming of Bertha’s Train . “It’s probably the wisest reasoning I’ve ever heard,” recalls Scorsese.

Roger Corman wrote (assisted by Jim Jerome) an interesting book about his filmmaking, “How I Made a Hundred Films in Hollywood and Never Lost a Penny”, rich in anecdotes. He has continued to be active until a very old age, mainly producing fantasy-themed TV movies, or by-products designed for the DVD market. He has even announced that he would produce remakes of Poe’s versions of him, though he is aware that he will have a hard time replacing the once-in-a-lifetime Price. His last work as a filmmaker was the uninspired 1990’s The Resurrection of Frankenstein , where a 21st century scientist is transported back in time to the time of Mary Shelley .