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Roger Corman’s Best Movies

The Roger Corman way: Fast, wild, economical, and, most importantly, profitable. Variety has a thorough tribute to Corman’s career as an eminent influential and iconoclastic producer outside the Hollywood system, but suffice to say, Corman helped bring horror, sci-fi, and action into the mainstream with his productions from mid-century on. Naming a few of them: House of Usher, the original Little Shop of Horrors, The Trip (we paid tribute to this counterculture curiosity in our book Rotten Movies We Love), and Death Race 2000. And through his independent production companies — training ground and incubators for young filmmakers — Corman paved the way for the career launches of Martin Scorsese (Boxcar Bertha), Francis Ford Coppola (Dementia 13), Peter Bogdanovich (Targets), Ron Howard (Grand Theft Auto), Joe Dante (Piranha), Jonathan Demme (Caged Heat), and James Cameron (he worked on miniatures for Corman, and would go on to direct the second Piranha movie, before The Terminator). Even today, Little Shop of Horrors is a musical anchor of Broadway, and Corman’s 1954 The Fast and the Furious was title-repurposed for the modern franchise.

Below, we’re highlighting every Roger Corman production with a Tomatometer score, just the beginning to his vast filmography of nearly 400 productions and 60 of his own directorial works.