Through his prolific career in independent film as a director and producer, the late Roger Corman (1926-2024) carved a gigantic niche in the industry. For the first three Wednesdays in July, TCM dives into Corman’s massive body of work in both disciplines. While he would eventually be well known for crafting low-budget B movies, Corman’s journey into film wasn’t linear, by any means.
Roger Corman was born in Detroit on April 5, 1926. Following his graduation from Beverly Hills High School in Beverly Hills, California, he headed to Stanford University to study structural engineering. During his time there, he enrolled in the V-12 Navy College Training Program (designed to create additional officers within this military branch) and would serve in the United States Navy in the mid-1940s. Upon his return to Stanford, he completed his Bachelor of Science degree.
Corman would have an extremely brief stint in the engineering profession before he realized his passion for moviemaking, landing a job in the mailroom of 20th Century-Fox. Though he eventually became a story reader at the studio, this achievement was compounded by the lack of credit given to him for concepts he provided for the film The Gunfighter (1950). He left the studio and gave higher education another shot, this time studying English literature at the University of Oxford. Yet, he wasn’t done with the movie business. He sold a script he wrote to United Artists, which eventually was made into 1954’s Highway Dragnet, with Corman serving as an associate producer, kicking off a multifaceted career into high gear. Corman’s first official production would come that same year with Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954).
Under his own production company, Palo Alto Productions, Corman used the success of his previous film to produce The Fast and the Furious (1954), which sold to legacy studio American Releasing Corporation due to their offer to advance Corman funds to make more films. Corman’s first directorial effort, Five Guns West (1955), was for ARC, and his connection to the studio would remain quite strong.
Though the budgets for many of the films he did for ARC (which eventually would be renamed American International Pictures) and other studios were low in comparison to the standards set by the major ones, Corman applied quite a frenetic energy to the cinematography. Using devices such as bright primary colors and off-kilter camera tricks to convey madness, stress, anger and an unyielding desire for control, his efforts are displayed masterfully throughout the films he directed.
He quickly established himself as a reliable trailblazer in cinema, working efficiently on successful low-budget films produced for the drive-in theater market, which hit its peak years in the late 1950s into the early 1960s. In 1959, AIP offered Corman a $50,000 budget to make a movie in five days. He accepted the challenge and directed A Bucket of Blood (1959) starring Dick Miller as a beatnik busboy who is mistaken for an artist after he accidentally kills a cat and covers it in clay. The success of the film led to Corman filming The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) on the same sets, with the film becoming a sleeper hit and cult classic featuring Jack Nicholson in one of his earliest roles.
In X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963), physician James Xavier (Ray Milland) has developed an experimental eye drop that allows the user to have X-ray vision. Once he loses funding from the medical outfit he works for, the doctor keeps up with the experimentation, using himself as the test subject. Though his seemingly altruistic motive to gain this otherworldly ability sounds like a good idea in theory, the constant usage of the eye drops not only affects his sight but his personality and mental faculties. The accidental death of a colleague (Harold J. Stone) and the threat of an investigation for malpractice by the head physician in charge are incidents that start to push Xavier over the edge. Disgraced from his position, he is forced to go on the run in an attempt to escape further scrutiny and potential prosecution. While moonlighting as a carnival act, an unscrupulous worker (Don Rickles) links up with him and is all too eager to cash in on what he thinks is the perfect con game and attempts to blackmail Xavier. However deeply damaged his eyesight is, the all-consuming lust for power continues to dominate Xavier’s mind. Yet, the return of fellow scientist Diane Fairfax (Diana Van der Vlis) to his life to assist doesn’t stop the doctor’s complete mental spiral.
While Corman’s dip into the science fiction, crime drama and Western genres lasted for several years, he changed direction again. Corman would head into horror—gothic horror to be exact. Adapting works of Edgar Allan Poe, he utilized the talents of Vincent Price and directed eight films in the 1960s featuring Poe’s signature creepy, macabre, bone-chilling, scream-worthy moments. In House of Usher (1960), also known as The Fall of the House of Usher and based on Poe’s 1839 short story, Philip Winthrop (Mark Damon) heads over to the crumbling, yet sprawling mansion his lost love Madeline Usher (Myrna Fahey) lives in with her brother Roderick (Price). While Philip intends to take Madeline away to be married, Roderick can’t help but insist that his sister remains in the family estate, as no Usher can, must or will ever leave.
The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) is loosely based on Poe’s 1842 short story and set in 16th-Century Spain in the equally enormous home of Nicholas Medina (Price) as Francis Barnard (John Kerr), brother of his late wife Elizabeth (Barbara Steele), comes looking for answers about his sister’s death. Both films touch on Poe’s common themes involving family secrets, mental disorders, trauma, curses, control, revenge and oppressively tight interpersonal relationships. As outsiders, Francis and Philip are attempting to infiltrate the delicate dynamics of each clan, disrupting the rather controlled chaos respectively orchestrated by Roderick and Nicholas.
Each film also has a woman who takes her own revenge against her personal oppressor, with both Elizabeth and Madeline succeeding with unexpected results and losing themselves in the process. Corman displays each of these themes with thought and rationale on top of the potential shock value, not merely for its own sake. You can catch several other films in the “Poe Cycle” on July 10, including The Raven (1963) and The Masque of the Red Death (1964).
Over these three days, experience 18 total films directed or produced by Corman, which also include The Wasp Woman (1959), Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961), The Wild Angels (1966) and Bloody Mama (1970). Our final night of programming on July 17 features a number of films produced by Corman and with direction by notable filmmakers in the early stages of their careers: Francis Ford Coppola's Dementia 13 (1963), Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets (1968), Martin Scorsese with Boxcar Bertha (1972), Jonathan Demme’s Caged Heat (1974) and Piranha (1978) directed by Joe Dante. These films are just a fraction of the extensive projects Corman worked on, yet they can serve as your own personal course on one of the masters of filmmaking.
