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Roger Corman |
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Director / Producer |
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1926 - |
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Born April 5,
Detroit, Michigan, USA |
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Key
Production Country: USA |
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Key Genres:
Horror,
Costume Horror,
Gothic Film, Science Fiction, Horror Comedy,
Crime, Drama, Crime Drama |
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Key
Collaborators: Daniel Haller (Production
Designer), Dick Miller (Character Player), Floyd Crosby
(Cinematographer), Vincent Price (Leading
Player), Ronald Sinclair (Editor), Jonathan Haze (Leading Character Player),
Ronald Stein (Composer), Charles B. Griffith (Screenwriter), Anthony Carras (Editor), Les Baxter (Composer) |
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Highly
Recommended: The Intruder (1961), The
Tomb of Ligeia (1965) |
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Recommended:
Fall
of the House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), X: The
Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963) |
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Worth
a Look: It Conquered the World
(1956), Machine Gun Kelly (1958), A Bucket of Blood (1959), The Premature Burial (1962), The
Haunted Palace (1963), The Masque of the Red Death (1964),
The Wild Angels (1966), The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967) |
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Approach with Caution: Day the World Ended
(1956), Not of This Earth (1957), Rock All Night (1957), The Little Shop
of Horrors (1960), Tales of Terror (1961), The Raven (1963), The Trip
(1967), Bloody Mama (1970) |
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Links: [
Amazon
] [
IMDB ] [
TCMDB ] [
All-Movie
Guide ] [
Senses of Cinema: Great Directors ] [
Film Reference ] [
Salon
Feature ] [
Bright
Lights Film Journal Interview (1974) ] [
Images Journal Interview ] [
Wikipedia ] [
Guardian Article (2011)
] [
Age Article (2006) ] [
Telegraph Article (2007) ]
[
A.V. Club Interview (2010) ] |
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Books:
[
Roger Corman: Metaphysics on a Shoestring ] [
Roger Corman (Pocket Essential Series ]
[
Roger Corman: Interviews ] [
Roger Corman: The Best of the Cheap Acts ] [
How
I made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime ] [
The
Films of Roger Corman: Shooting My Way Out of Trouble ] [
Roger
Corman: An Unauthorized Biography of the Godfather of Indie Filmmaking ] [
Roger
Corman: Blood-Sucking Vampires, Flesh-Eating Cockroaches, and Driller
Killers ] |
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"Roger
Corman's outstanding achievement to date is The Masque of the
Red Death, but on the whole he seems much more stronger
visually than dramatically. His acting is usually atrocious, and
his feeling for dialogue uncertain. It is quite possible that he
is miscast, like
Mankiewicz,
Wyler, and
Wise, as a director, when he would
be much more effective as a producer."
-
Andrew
Sarris (The American Cinema, 1968) |
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"Though, for most of his prolific directing career, Corman
churned out sci-fi, horror, westerns and teen melodramas for the
drive-in crowd, inventive pragmatism and absurdist irony ensured
that they were not only entertaining and to-the-point but
surprisingly intelligent: highpoints include the hilariously
bitchy Sorority Girl, the taut gangster sagas Machine
Gun Kelly and The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, a
visually elegant series of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, and the
metaphysical fable: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes." -
Geoff
Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999) |
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"Backhandedly
dubbed by critics "the King of Schlock" and "the
Orson Welles of Z-Pictures,"
Corman has become a symbol of the creativity available to those
willing to accept the economic limitations of working outside
the mainstream... Corman hit his artistic stride in the early
1960s with a series of seven flamboyantly artificial color
horror films, loosely based on Poe and ranging in tone from
slightly tongue-in-cheek to openly parodic." -
Ed
Lowry (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers,
1991) |
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"A low-budget producer/director who has visual flair and a sense
for telling even the most absurd story." -
William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978) |
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"Other
writers, producers, and directors of low-budget films would
often put down the film they were making, saying it was just
something to make money with. I never felt that. If I took the
assignment, I'd give it my best shot." -
Roger Corman |
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Please
note that the rating given for this director (see top-right) is based
only on the films we have seen (listed above). Films by this director
that we haven't seen include Five Guns West (1955), Swamp Women (1955),
Apache Woman (1955), The Gunslinger (1956), The Oklahoma Woman (1956),
Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957), Carnival Rock (1957), Naked Paradise
(1957), Sorority Girl (1957), Teenage Doll (1957), The Undead (1957),
Viking Women and the Sea Serpent (1957), War of the Satellites (1958),
I, Mobster (1958), Teenage Caveman (1958), She Gods of Shark Reef
(1958), Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959), The Last Woman on Earth
(1960), Ski Troop Attack (1960), The Wasp Woman (1960), Atlas (1961),
Creature From the Haunted Sea (1961), Tower of London (1962), The Terror
(1963), The
Young Racers
(1963), The Secret Invasion (1964), Target: Harry (1969), Gas-s-s-s
(1970), The Red Baron (1971), and Frankenstein Unbound (1990). |
| Swamp Women (1955) |
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"Although
this American film-maker became a powerful and innovative
independent producer, forever encouraging new young talent
tom the American cinema, for most of us he will remain the
man who directed all those tremendously enjoyable, and
increasingly good 'Edgar Allan Poe' horror films of the
1960s, the inhabitants of whose coffins never rested in
peace and whose heroines tottered tremulously across the
CinemaScope screen, brushing aside the Pathecolor cobwebs
and doing the very things liable to end them up on a slab at
the mercy of some madman... At the beginning of his career,
Corman quickly became known as the 'King of the Z-Movies',
making exploitational subjects that abounded in black
humour, had often been rushed out in less than a week in
front of cardboard scenery, and almost all made money."
-
David Quinlan, Quinlan's Film
Directors: The Ultimate Guide to the Directors of the Big
Screen |
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●
Oddities
and One-Shots |
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●
501 Movie Directors: A
Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers |
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See Also |
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Dario Argento |
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Jack
Arnold |
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Peter Bogdanovich |
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Tim
Burton |
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John Carpenter |
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Brian De Palma |
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Terence Fisher |
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Monte Hellman |
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Robert Rodriguez |
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Ernest B. Schoedsack |
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Edgar G. Ulmer |
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Edward D. Wood Jr. |
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Roger Corman's Favourites |
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Avatar (2009)
James Cameron,
Battleship Potemkin (1925)
Sergei Eisenstein,
Citizen Kane (1941)
Orson Welles,
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
David Lean,
On the Waterfront (1954)
Elia Kazan.
Source: Rotten Tomatoes (2011) |
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