< Roger Corman, the B-movie legend who launched A-list careers, dies at 98

AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:

Producer and director Roger Corman has died. Over the course of his career, Corman filled America's drive-ins with hundreds of B movies with titles such as "Sharktopus," "Teenage Doll" and "The Terror." The trailers and titles were often better than the movies, but Roger Corman was also a major figure in American independent film. As NPR's Neda Ulaby reports, Corman died at the age of 98 at his home in Santa Monica, and he left behind a colorful legacy.

NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: Roger Corman was educated at Stanford and Oxford Universities before he became the dean of Grind house.

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ROGER CORMAN: The first film I ever made was a picture called "Monster From The Ocean Floor."

ULABY: Back in 1990, Roger Corman told NPR about picking up the newspaper one morning in the early 1950s and reading about a company that had just invented a miniature submarine.

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CORMAN: I finished breakfast, called them up, said I was an independent filmmaker and would be interested in having their submarine in my picture.

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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) What do you call that thing anyway?

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) That's my submarine.

ULABY: Putting free stuff in the flix he pumped out for cheap became Corman's trademark, along with lots of little-known starlets in even littler outfits...

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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) A story of a beautiful Apache woman who brought men...

ULABY: ...Filmed on even littler budgets. Roger Corman's thrift was legendary. Dick Miller acted in that 1955 Western and dozens of other Corman films.

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DICK MILLER: I played an Indian in my first picture. About halfway through, he asked me - he said, would you like to play a cowboy? I said, you're doing another movie already? He says, no, in the same movie. So I wound up playing a cowboy and an Indian in my first movie.

ULABY: That's Miller talking to WHYY's Fresh Air in 2004. Corman released as many as eight pictures a year. Once as a joke, he borrowed a set - for free, of course - and shot a movie in two days and one night.

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CORMAN: Possibly the fast pace, the insane schedule brought something to the picture that made it the more or less cult film it became.

ULABY: The original black and white "Little Shop Of Horrors."

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JACK NICHOLSON: (As Wilbur Force) Oh, goody, goody, here it comes.

ULABY: It didn't hurt that the film featured a young Jack Nicholson playing a masochistic dental patient.

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NICHOLSON: (As Wilbur Force, laughter). Oh, my God, don't stop now.

ULABY: Nicholson showed up in a raft of Corman pictures, including a relatively well-regarded series based on works by Edgar Allan Poe. But Roger Corman was mostly synonymous with schlock.

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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #4: (As character) The student nurses, four girls on their own. Once you've met them, you'll never forget them.

ULABY: Student nurses, biker gangs or the homicidal hot rod movie "Death Race 2000."

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CORMAN: The drivers are scored not only on how fast they can drive and how many other drivers they could hit but also how many pedestrians they could kill. The picture was the biggest success we had ever had, and it led to all kinds of jokes that entered our era, such as, 10 points for the little old lady and so forth.

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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #5: (As character) All right, all right. And yessiree, a clean hit.

ULABY: Roger Corman received an honorary Oscar in 2009 for producing and directing over 300 films and fostering the careers of Ron Howard, John Sayles, Sylvester Stallone and James Cameron.

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JAMES CAMERON: Probably all of his movies combined would not have cost as much as "Avatar."

ULABY: Cameron told NPR in 2010 that Corman produced his first full length feature, "Piranha Part Two: The Spawning," and taught him an essential lesson.

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CAMERON: Your will is the only thing that makes the difference in getting the job done, one's will. It teaches you to improvise and, in a funny way, to never lose hope because you're making a movie, and the movie can be what you want it to be.

ULABY: The movies Roger Corman willed into being are their own loopy, glorious world of teenage cavemen, X-ray eyes and humanoids from the deep. Neda Ulaby, NPR News.

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