20 A-Grade Facts About B-Movie Legend Roger Corman

Roger Corman is an absolute legend. He’s widely known as the king of B-movies, the Pope of Pop Cinema, yet his career and legacy deserve the sort of respect descriptions like that don’t really capture. He is also a highly creative experimental filmmaker, a legend of independent cinema, and a mentor to some of the best directors and actors of recent decades. As the late The Silence of the Lambs’ director Jonathan Demme put it, “Roger is arguably the greatest independent filmmaker the American film industry has ever seen and will probably ever see.” Not bad for the producer of Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda.

For us here at Cracked, Corman is one of the minds behind the best Fantastic Four movie out there. Not Fanfourstick, not even those other two, The Bland One and The Less Bland One. Indeed, we’ve discussed Corman before, since in 1994 he produced the unreleased Fantastic Four movie — which yes, you can watch right now. But Roger Corman’s career is much larger and more impressive than what Johnny Storm’s moans of pleasure would make you believe. The man was ahead of almost every trend in cinema: from horror comedies, women’s prison flicks, and trippy counterculture biker and psychedelic movies, to gritty gangster biopics, lavish Gothic horror, and artsy French cinéma — if it rocks, Corman directed it, envisioned it, or promoted it. Let us take a look, then, at 20 awesome Roger Corman facts.