The prolific low-budget producer Roger Corman has died at 98, leaving behind a legacy far greater than the 491 titles that he produced. Corman’s great gift to us all is his mentorship of young and talented filmmakers. Filmmakers who got their first assignment from Corman (called “the Corman Film School”) include Oscar winning directors James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme, Curtis Hanson, Ron Howard and Martin Scorsese. Not to mention cult directors Paul Bartels and Monte Hellman. And Chinatown screenwriter Robert Townsend.
Jack Nicholson first got some attention playing the masochistic dental patient in Corman’s 1960 Little Shop of Horrors. Nicholson showed up again in Corman’s 1967 The Wild Angels (biker gangs), 1967 The Shooting (trippy Western) and 1967’s LSD flick The Trip (psychedelics), all before Easy Rider sparked his stardom in 1969..
Corman’s formula was to make lots of cheap exploitation films for the teenage audience. Low cost meant low risk, and low risk attracted financing.. In one four-year period, he produced The Student Nurses, Private Duty Nurses, Night Call Nurses and Candy Stripe Nurses – and 21 other movies! The signatures of Corman’s mostly shameless and delicious exploitation movies are that 1) they don’t have fancy production values; 2) they are fast-paced and not too long; and 3) they’re a kick.
As a teen myself, I remember seeing Corman’s Boxcar Bertha, a tale of a Depression Era labor organizer, at a drive-in, chiefly motivated by the urge to see Barbara Hershey’s breasts (nudity was then unusual in American movies). With Boxcar Bertha as his calling card, its young director (Martin Scorsese) had the cred to make his breakthrough film Mean Streets and to follow it with Taxi Driver, New York, New York, The Last Waltz and Raging Bull.
Probably the best movie that Corman has produced was Saint Jack (1976), directed by Peter Bogdanovich. Corman had given Bogdanovich his start, and in the intervening twelve years Bogdanovich’s star had risen (The Last Picture Show, What’s Up, Doc?, Paper Moon) and fallen (Daisy Miller). Ben Gazzara and Denholm Elliott delivered great performances in this story of a hustling American expat running a GI brothel in Singapore during the Vietnam War.
In the 70s, Corman combined making lowbrow American movies with distributing highbrow foreign films, including Bergman’s Cries and Whispers, Fellini’s Amarcord, Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzawa and Schlondorff’s The Tin Drum. In one decade, he distributed more Best Foreign Film Oscar winners than all the Hollywood studios combined.
We’ll miss you, Roger!