Roger Corman

Stories

A wild ride with the master of micro-budget movies

Right now, Roger Corman’s legacy is filling our Fridays with micro-budget movies.
Corman died in 2024, at 96, but his films persist. They were huge in quantity, mixed in quality, tiny in cost. And they launched great careers.
On April 10, for instance, two films — “The Wild Angels” (shown here) at 8 p.m. ET and “The Trip” at 11:30 — will show us Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson, before “Easy Rider.”
On April 17, we see early work of Peter Bogdanovich (Targets,” 8 p.m.) and Francis Coppola (“Dementia 13,” 1 a.m.). A week later, it’s Martin Scorsese’s “Boxcar Bertha,” at 8. Those three men have gone on to get 15 best-director Oscar nominations, winning three times. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / April 8, 2026
Stories

These movie masters started with micro-budgets

Where do the great filmmakers come from?
Baseball has its minor leagues, NASCAR has county fairgrounds, music has juke joints and dive bars. And for a time, filmmakers had Roger Corman.
Now that will be noted in a cable marathon. In eight hours (starting at 8 p.m. ET, July 17), Turner Classic Movies has the first films of Francis Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Joe Dante, Jonathan Demme and Peter Bogdanovich (whose “Targets,” with Boris Karloff, is shown here). Read more…

By Mike Hughes / July 9, 2024
Stories

He was a micro-budget movie master

Hollywood has people who think big, talk big, spend big. Budgets soar.
But then there was Roger Corman, who died last month at 98. He made kinda-good movies on really awful budgets. Now they’re featured in three Wednesday marathons on Turner Classic Movies.
Wedged into 28 hours on July 3, 10 and 17 will be 18 movies – some of them scary (including “Masque of the Red Death,” shown here) some of them frantic, none of them expensive. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / July 1, 2024
News and Quick Comments

Corman mastered micro-budget movies

Roger Corman – who died recently at 98 – will probably be remembered most for all the great careers he launched.
This was the guy who gave many people their directing debuts. That included James Cameron, Ron Howard, Jonathan Demme. Joe Dante, Peter Bogdanovich and more.
But something else made him stand out: He was the master of getting something for (almost) nothing.
Corman (shown here) had an engineering degree and a sophisticated manner, but his specialty was making entertaining schlock on tiny budgets. In a world now stuffed with people dreaming of making movies on their smartphones, he was someone to sort of emulate. Later, I’ll have a longer commentary on his life and work. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / May 13, 2024