Legendary Director, Producer, and Consultant Roger Corman Dies at Age 98

The legendary director, producer, distributor and consultant died at the age of 98. Roger Corman. His career spanned seven decades and included over 500 production credits. During this time, he was a pioneer in giving opportunities to future Hollywood stars and directors such as Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern, Peter Fonda, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, Peter Bogdanovich, Gale Anne Hurd, John Sayles, Ron Howard and Jonathan Demme, who started their careers under his tutelage.

Created at the end of the golden age of the big studios, Roger Corman He took from them the productive style he gave with a single difference: making all the films that would have been impossible in the Mecca of cinema. Most of Corman’s films have been heavily criticized, except by fans of the genre.

In 1960, Corman began a series of films based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe. This period was called “Gothic horror cinema”. The most famous were “The Pendulum”, “Mask of the Red Death”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, “The Tomb of the Ligeira” and “The Raven”. Although Poe’s work had already been adapted into a film, it was Corman who popularized the cursed writer.

In 2002, at the age of 74, Roger Corman was in Mar del Plata as part of the International Film Festival. He stayed at the Hermitage Hotel where he was met by the media and his fans who were always asking him for pictures and autographs. In his master class, Corman talked about his previous trips to Argentina and highlighted collaborations with Héctor Olivera, for example “The Hunter of Death” (1983). At the conference, the director expressed: “Now that the exchange situation is beneficial and taking into account the excellent quality of Argentine technicians, it is possible that we will restore this co-production scheme .The five or six we did together in the 80s and early 90s were very successful in the United States.

What did Corman contribute to our country?

For eight years, North American films were made that offered a source of work with a certain regularity and regularity to an industry that in those years was not going through its best time. Héctor Olivera said a few years ago that they were “vital to keep the studios (Baires) open.” In Babilonia Gaucha, Corman broke with some fear of American producers filming in Argentina. It opened a door through which, later, taking advantage of the favorable economic situation, a long series of foreign films in: The Mission (Roland Joffé, 1986), with Robert De Niro, Jeremy Irons and Liam Neeson , nominated for seven Oscars; Crazy Factory (Gung Ho, Ron Howard, 1986), with Michael Keaton; Naked Tango (Leonard Schrader, 1991), with Vincent D’Onofrio; and Highlander 2 (Highlander II: The Quickening, Russell Mulcahy, 1991), with Sean Connery, Virginia Madsen and Christopher Lambert.

“It was an honor to know him. He was a good friend. “My childhood was shaped by sci-fi movies and Edgar Allen Poe epics,” said John Carpenter, director of “Halloween,” “The Thing” and other classic horror and action films, on Twitter. “I’ll miss you, Roger.”.

Throughout his life, Corman was recognized for his contributions to cinema. In 2009 he won Dear Oscar, Last year he received the Honorary Palme d’Or at Cannes from Tarantino and the Los Angeles Press Club also gave him the Distinguished Reporter Award, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Producers Guild gave him similar honors.

Roger Corman remained until the end as a loved and respected man both by those who learned the trade with him and by the viewers who knew his unique combination of sensitivity and cinephile confidence. There’s a reason we’re talking about the man who titled his memoirs”“How I made a hundred movies in Hollywood and didn’t lose a hundred.”