By Famed B-movie king Roger Corman, whose hundreds of low-budget films launched the careers of the likes of Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese, has died. He was 98.
Corman passed away on Thursday at his home in Santa Monica, surrounded by family. He was famed for his fast-paced, low-budget genre movies and trailblazer of indie cinema.
Over time he directed 55 films and produced around 385 films over a career spanning nearly sixty years.
His notable directorial efforts include the original “The Little Shop of Horrors,” “X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes,” “Machine-Gun Kelly,” “The Terror” and noted Poe adaptations like “The Masque of the Red Death,” “House of Usher,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” and “The Tomb of Ligeia”.
As a producer his films included “Caged Heat,” “Dementia 13,” “Death Race 2000,” “Eat My Dust,” “Boxcar Bertha,” “Piranha,” “Battle Beyond the Stars,” “Munchies,” and 1994’s “The Fantastic Four”.
He also acted on screen with cameos in films like “The Godfather Part II,” “The Howling,” “Cannonball,” “The Silence of the Lambs,” “Philadelphia,” “Apollo 13,” “Scream 3,” and “Looney Tunes: Back in Action”.
He famously hired women in key executive, creative and on-screen roles at a time when studios were more discriminatory over age, race and gender.
He was co-founder of New World Pictures, founder of New Concorde and a longtime member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He scored an honorary Oscar in 2009 for his contributions to cinema.
He also imported foreign art films and effectively marketed and distributed works from the likes of Peter Weir, Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, Francois Truffaut, and Federico Fellini.
Corman is survived by his wife, producer Julie Corman, and daughters.
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