Corman, Roger (William)

(born April 5, 1926, Detroit, Mich., U.S.) U.S. film director and producer. He directed his first films, Five Guns West and Apache Woman,in 1955, and by 1960 he was one of the most prolific makers of low-budget “exploitation” films. His film versions of stories by Edgar Allan Poe, including The House of Usher (1960) and The Masque of the Red Death (1964), won him a cult following as a master of the macabre. In 1970 he formed New World Pictures, an independent distribution company that produced the work of such struggling young directors as Peter Bogdanovich, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorsese.

Corman, Roger (1926– ) movie director, producer; born in Los Angeles. He made his film debut as a director in 1955 and went on to specialize in cheapie horror movies, graduating to more expensive films such as The Masque of the Red Death (1964). Although long ignored by serious students of the movies, he gained almost cult status with the recognition that his movies had anticipated various themes of "pop culture" and had served as both a training ground and/or inspiration for a whole generation of Hollywood moviemakers.