Who is Roger Corman?
It depends when you ask. In the beginning, he was cinema’s King of the B’s. In his directing youth, he was a legend of thrift. His first film, Monster from the Ocean Floor (1953) cost $15,000. One of his most famous, the original Little Shop of Horrors (1960), was shot in two days. Roger Corman raced from one film to the next in that feverish beginning. Jon Davidson, a fan and later colleague, recalls that early work as “action painting. You had the feeling that people were running.” In 1960, 20 films into his career, Corman changed. The House of Usher was a Poe adaptation of chilly decadence. It took 15 days to make, but it wasn’t cheap. Corman had found something he wanted to say. He spent the early Sixties making more Poe, developing as a director, till he had crafted a classic. The Masque of the Red Death (1964) was a gory art film, an articulation of the attraction of evil. Corman had attained icy perfection. He changed again. With collaborators including Jack Nicholson, Peter Fon
