Roger Corman never made a great movie. None of his films won awards, and they rarely got good reviews, when they were reviewed at all.
Corman made movies that were fun. He made horror movies, westerns, sci fi—name a genre, especially a genre that filled out the bottom of a double bill at the drive-in, and Corman probably made a movie in it.
But if Corman, who died May 9 at his home in Santa Monica, California, never made a great movie, that does not mean he was not a great filmmaker. In fact, if you add up the A-list Hollywood careers that Corman helped launch—actors, directors, producers, and writers by the dozens—careers that might never have flourished had he not encouraged them in the first place—by that metric, Corman might be one of history’s greatest moviemakers.
