Film director and producer, born in Los Angeles, California, USA. He made his film debut as a director in 1955 and went on to specialize in low-cost horror films, graduating to more expensive ventures such as The Masque of the Red Death (1964). Although long ignored by serious students of film, he later gained almost cult status with the recognition that his work anticipated various themes of pop culture and had served as both a training ground and/or inspiration for a whole generation of Hollywood film-makers.
Career
Corman is probably best known for his filmings of various Edgar Allan Poe stories at American International Pictures, including House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), The Premature Burial (1962), Tales of Terror (1962) The Raven (1963), The Terror (1963), The Masque of the Red Death (1964), and The Tomb of Ligeia (1964).
He also directed one of William Shatner's early films, The Intruder (1962).
Corman was born in Detroit, Michigan and received an industrial engineering degree from Stanford University. his fastest film was perhaps The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), which was reputedly shot in two days and one night (he had made a bet that he could shoot an entire feature film in less than three days). This claim is disputed by others who worked on the film, who have called it part of Corman's own myth-building.
Corman did return to the director's chair once after 1971 with Frankenstein Unbound (1990), although this was poorly received.
A number of noted film directors have worked with Corman, including Francis Ford Coppola, Joe Dante, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Peter Bogdanovich, Jonathan Demme, Donald G. In the extras for the DVD of The Terminator, director James Cameron refers to his work for Corman as, "I trained at the Roger Corman Film School." The British director Nicolas Roeg served as the cinematographer on The Masque of the Red Death.
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