July 22, 1996

Roger Corman, the king of "schlock" horror films, was born in Los Angeles on April 5, 1926. He began life in the cinema as a scriptwriter. But, after his first screenplay was altered by a film studio, he started producing, writing and directing his own films independently. His first movie as a director was the B-movie western, Five Guns West (1955). 1955 was the year Corman invented his patented formula for making quick B-movies. However, Corman was not the usual low-budget filmaker. Unlike the famed director of bad movies, Ed Wood Jr., Corman's stories featured interestingly offbeat stories, bizarre characters and excellent use of cinematography and special effects. The film classics that Corman made during the 60's include Little Shop of Horrors (1960), The House of Usher (1960) and the frequent Edgar Allan Poe stories, The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) and The Raven (1963).

Though many of these films were made during short three-week periods, on extremely low budgets, they have become classics of the horror film genre. Then in 1970 Corman, troubled by studio interference in both the content and budgets of his work, formed New World Pictures. It offered a chance for him to exert total control of his film productions. New World distributed exploitation fare, but also distributed many great foreign film works from the likes of Ingmar Bergman, Francois Truffaut and Federico Fellini. Corman has made over 200 films in his lifetime, more than 90 of which turned a profit. However, he's more well-known as the man who gave a starting point to people who later became the great actors and directors of the past three decades. Among them, Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Nicholson, John Sayles, Dennis Hopper, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, to name a few. That is certainly the main reason why he's one of the greatest filmakers in the past 100 years of cinema.

"And That's the double truth, Ruth!!!" - Samuel L. Jackson in Do The Right Thing (1989).

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