Legendary “B” movie director and producer Roger Corman passed away last Thursday, 9 May 2024, at the age of 98.  His career spanned an uncountable number of films (estimates vary wildly; even Corman didn’t know how many he’d made), and he launched hundreds of careers.

Readers most likely know Corman from The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), which spawned a Broadway musical and a popular film adaptation of the musical in 1986.  His influence reached even broader than that one bit of comedy horror genius, and Corman worked with some of the greatest actors in Hollywood.

Last month I reviewed A Bucket of Blood (1959), a kind of proto-Little Shop featuring a would-be Beatnik stumbling into a career as a sculptor with a rather lethal methodology.  The trope of the homely nerd staggering blindly (and often painfully) into stardom and/or super powers would be repeated time and again, including in Troma Entertainment’s The Toxic Avenger (1984)  Corman was not involved with that film, but his influence is evident nonetheless.

Corman was one of the greats.  Hey may have had a reputation as a purveyor of trash, but he never lost money on a film (with the exception of a personal art film, which ultimately did make money about twenty years after its release!).  He used every method at his disposal to cut down on budgets, even cutting films to 78 minutes so they could be mailed to theaters in four film canisters instead of five.

Rest in Peace, Roger Corman.