Though now best known as a producer, in which capacity he started the careers of innumerable directors, Roger Corman also directed several films himself, particularly from the mid 1950s to the early 1970s. Here we showcase the diversity of his work.
Sorority Girl
Roger Corman | USA | 1957 | 61 minutes
A poor-little-rich-girl feels alienated by her mother and enacts a string of revenges on her fellow pupils at a girls’ boarding school. However, she is outcast when one of her stunts nearly drives a girl to suicide.
The Intruder
Roger Corman | USA | 1962 | 84 minutes
A man in a gleaming white suit comes to a small Southern town on the eve of integration. He calls himself a social reformer. But what he does is stir up trouble – trouble he soon finds he can’t control.
William Shatner is the man in the white suit.
Corman later identified The Intruder as the only film he directed which lost money at the box-office.
The Tomb of Ligeia
Roger Corman | USA | 1964 | 81 minutes
A man’s obsession with his dead wife drives a wedge between him and his new bride.
Vincent Price plays the man in one of his many collaborations with Corman adapting the work of Poe.
The Wild Angels
Roger Corman | USA | 1966 | 93 minutes
Corman’s cycle film, with Peter Fonda and Bruce Dern as Hells Angels.
The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
Roger Corman | USA | 1967 | 100 minutes
Chicago February 14th 1929. Al Capone finally establishes himself as the city’s boss of organised crime. In a north-side garage his hoods, dressed as policemen, surprise and mow down with machine-guns the key members of Bugs Moran’s rival gang. The film traces the history of the incident, and the lives affected and in some cases ended by it.
Frankenstein Unbound
Roger Corman | USA | 1990 | 82 minutes
The ultimate weapon which was meant to be safe for the mankind produces global side effects including time slides and disappearances. The scientist behind the project and his car are zapped from the year 2031 to 1817’s Switzerland where he finds Dr Victor Frankenstein and his contemporaries.
Adapted from Brian Aldiss’s novel this is Corman’s last directorial effort to date.
Raul Julia, John Hurt, and Bridget Fonda star.