Roger Corman (born April 5, 1926) is an American film producer, director and actor who has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Oddly starting out with a degree in Literature from Oxford University, Corman went on to work as a story reader, then writer and rapidly into directing and producing. Some of Corman’s work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, but mainly it is rapid-fire production of genre work.

Corman invented and perfected producing scams others haven’t even thought of. One of his most famous was setting up agreements to use high-budget film sets during dark-time (midnight to dawn), write his scripts to fit the sets (often as he was shooting), and shoot on a skeleton crew with young or unknown actors. Sometimes he shot so fast he would write and shoot another entire movie just to take advantage of the remaining time he had left on the set. The natural partner to this was his focus on rough and ready genre work, but he had such a strong cinematic intelligence and an unusual sense of irony and self-mockery his work always plays. This remarkable filmmaker has mentored many film directors including Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Jonathan Demme, James Cameron, Curtis Hanson, John Sayles, and many others.

He has also helped launch the careers of actors including Jack Nicholson, William Shatner, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Talia Shire and Robert De Niro. Some of his many titles are the superb original The Little Shop of Horrors, and The Raven, The Masque of the Red Death, The House of Usher, The Pit & The Pendulum, Rock ‘n Roll High School, and Piranha. His distribution arm introduced into the US for the first time the works of Kurosawa, Bergman, Truffaut & Fellini. His biography? – How I Made a 100 Movies in Hollywood And Never Lost A Dime.

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