After studying engineering (a subject he said was ideally suited to making low-budget films on a tight schedule), Roger Corman attempted to break into films by the tried and trusted method of working as a messenger for 20th-Century Fox, eventually rising to the position of story analyst. He started direct involvement in films in 1953 as a producer and screenwriter, making his debut as director in ...
show all After studying engineering (a subject he said was ideally suited to making low-budget films on a tight schedule), Roger Corman attempted to break into films by the tried and trusted method of working as a messenger for 20th-Century Fox, eventually rising to the position of story analyst. He started direct involvement in films in 1953 as a producer and screenwriter, making his debut as director in 1955. Between then and his official retirement in 1971 he directed dozens of films, often as many as six or seven per year, typically shot extremely quickly on leftover sets from other, larger, productions. His probably unbeatable record for a professional 35mm feature film was two days and a night to shoot the original version of "The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)", though several other films were made in less than a week. In the early 1960s, his budgets got bigger (though never big), when he made a series of adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe stories starring Vincent Price . Apart from "Frankenstein Unbound (1990)", he retired from directing in 1971 to concentrate on production and distribution through his company New World (and later Concorde), making low-budget exploitation films and using the profits to distribute distinguished art films. Apart from making dozens of enormously entertaining films (there are amazingly few duds in his output), Corman's place in film history is assured simply through his unrivalled eye for talent - among many world-class names who were employed by him at a very early stage in their careers are Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, James Cameron , Peter Bogdanovich, Joe Dante and many others - which means that his influence on modern American cinema is almost incalculable.
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