A Wasted Life: R.I.P.: Roger Corman

Tuesday, May 14, 2024

R.I.P.: Roger Corman

Roger Corman

5 April 1926 — 9 May 2024

One of the greats has left us: Roger Corman, filmmaker extraordinaire — "The Pope of Pop Cinema", "The Spiritual Godfather of the New Hollywood", and "The King of Cult". As a director, producer, studio head, distributor, actor and mentor, he influenced Hollywood and movie-making far more than he will probably ever be given credit. Corman entered the biz as a messenger in the mail room at 20th Century Fox and worked his way up to story reader before, feeling somewhat shafted by his experience on Henry King's The Gunfighter (1950 / trailer), he took off for Europe for a few years. Returning to return to Hollywood to sell his first script, which eventually became Nathan Juran's Highway Dragnet (1954 / full movie), Corman soon produced his first movie, Wyott Ordung's Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954 / trailer), and a year later he directed his first feature film, Five Guns West (1955 / full movie). And thus an unstoppable creative force came into being...

Screw "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon", when it comes to Hollywood and movies, one can probably play "Two Degrees to Roger Corman". (BTW: According to The Oracle of Bacon, Roger Corman was in Apollo 13 [1995 / trailer] with Kevin Bacon — a degree of one. In turn, as we already knew, the director of Apollo 13, Ron Howard, made his directorial debut with Grand Theft Auto [1977 / trailer], on which Roger Corman was the executive producer, after starring in the Roger Corman production Eat My Dust [1976 / trailer]).
To do a Career Review of all the movie projects that Roger Corman was involved in exceeds our current abilities. Thus, we list below only the movies that he was involved in that we have reviewed here at a wasted life... We are sure we have missed a few.