PLANT FOOD
King of the B Movies Roger Corman has died aged 98. Disdainful towards Hollywood meddling after they bungled one of his earliest scripts, he took it to release his products under his own watch and churned out in rapid fire low-budget monster horrors (The Little Shop of Horrors), Vincent Price-flaunted Poe adaptations (House of Usher, The Masque of the Red Death), and biker counterculture ventures (The Wild Angels). He pioneered distributing foreign films by Bergman and Fellini in the US, and New Hollywood would not exist without him – he took a chance on mentoring Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Jonathan Demme, and MC Ren when no one else did.
Into the 70s, he had a hand in sci-fi racer Death Race 2000 and Ramones romp Rock ‘n’ Roll High School. The Hollywood heavyweights he mentored repaid the favour and he made cameos in many of their own classics including The Godfather Part II, The Silence of the Lambs, and Apollo 13. The Little Shop of Horrors being remade in the 80s meant that Frank Oz and Levi Stubbs worked on the same project, which is the most important legacy of all. He was a low-budget hit for five teams, including Cesar Romero’s Orange Wedges and Where’s My Damn List?
Roger Corman
5 April 1926 – 9 May 2024, aged 98
5 TEAMS (💀💀💀💀💀 5 POINTS)