Happy 94th Birthday, Roger Corman! Born today in 1926 as Roger William Corman, this American entertainment businessman, actor, screenwriter, film producer and director has been called "The Pope of Pop Cinema" and is known as a trailblazer in the world of independent film.
Much of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of low-budget cult films adapted from the tales of American writer, poet, editor and literary critic Edgar Allan Poe.
Among his credits, Corman is best known for producing and directing the 1964 Pathécolor American/British horror/drama film 'The Masque of the Red Death'.
The film was based upon Poe's eponymous 1842 Gothic horror fiction short story, and also incorporates a subplot based on another Poe tale, the 1849 horror fiction short story Hop-Frog.
Another subplot is drawn from the 1891 didactic fiction novel Torture by Hope by French symbolist writer Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam.
The evil Prince Prospero (Vincent Price), a medieval Italian prince, devoted to the pursuit of evil and the worship of Satan, enjoys the high life in his eerie country castle as the Red Plague destroys the peasant population around him.
The film is the seventh of a series of eight Corman film adaptations largely based on Poe's works made by American International Pictures (AIP).
Corman mentored and gave a start to many young film directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, James Cameron, John Sayles and Ron Howard. Corman was highly influential in the New Hollywood filmmaking movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
He also helped to launch the careers of actors like Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, Bruce Dern, Sylvester Stallone, Diane Ladd, and William Shatner.
Corman has occasionally taken minor acting roles in the films of directors who started with him, including 'The Manchurian Candidate', 'The Godfather Part II', 'The Silence of the Lambs', 'Philadelphia' and 'Apollo 13'.
In 2009, Corman was awarded an Honorary Academy Award "for his rich engendering of films and filmmakers." This occurred at the 81st Academy Awards in late February.
Corman is also the author of his 1990 biographical book How I Made A Hundred Movies In Hollywood And Never Lost A Dime.
Corman has been active from 1954–present.
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