Roger Corman: cinema's pulp genius whose talent to shock was rocket fuel
Peter Bradshaw
Roger Corman: a career in pictures
Roger Corman, Hollywood mentor and king of the B-movie, dies aged 98
March 2024
Week in geek
Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four movie is notoriously terrible – do we really want it resuscitated?
Calls are growing for the 1994 film to be freed from YouTube hell – but is it there because evil Hollywood execs tried to kill it, or is it just a really bad film?
April 2021
Monte Hellman obituary
Monte Hellman, cult director and Reservoir Dogs executive producer, dies aged 91
February 2021
How we made
How we made: Jane Asher and Roger Corman on The Masque of the Red Death
‘I hated the bath scene. They stuck awful little modesty circles on my nipples and they kept floating off’
January 2021
The Masque of the Red Death review – horribly apt Poe adaptation
Roger Corman’s 1964 cult classic about a medieval pestilence closing in on a decadent count played by Vincent Price has uncomfortable resonance
June 2018
Stealing screen time: Ocean's 8 and the rise of female crime gangs
The star-studded reboot follows a tradition of criminal equality on the big screen, from Girl Gang and The Bling Ring to Steve McQueen’s upcoming Widows
January 2018
Hitchcock, Hepburn and Dirty Harry: vintage movie posters – in pictures
Produced for classic films such as Psycho, Roman Holiday and The Italian Job, these rare original Hollywood posters are now all worth a pretty penny as cultural antiques
April 2017
Film blog
Jonathan Demme: 'A storyteller of bold and muscular force'
Silence of the Lambs director Jonathan Demme dies aged 73
March 2017
B-movie king Roger Corman: ‘Death Race isn’t an essay on violence – it’s an action comedy’
With the release of Death Race 2050, a remake of his cult classic, the veteran director talks about the film’s political undertones – and how he became the king of trash
September 2016
Film blog
Curtis Hanson: a thrilling film-maker and effective exponent of mainstream Hollywood style
Hanson got Meryl Streep whitewater rafting, Eminem to act and brought James Ellroy’s cult novel LA Confidential brilliantly to life on film
December 2014
Philip French's classic DVD
Six Gothic Tales review – Philip French on Roger Corman’s elegant adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe
This box set featuring six of Poe’s horror stories starring Vincent Price are a chilling treat, writes Philip French
September 2014
Philip French's classic DVD
The Pit and the Pendulum review – Philip French on Roger Corman's low-budget, hair-raising Poe adaptation
This Blu-ray version with plenty of extras does full justice to Corman's low-budget, hair-raising Poe adaptation, writes Philip French
December 2013
A look back
From the Observer archive, 23 December 1984: Clive James savages The Evil Dead
Clive James is repulsed by Sam Raimi's controversial 'video nasty' debut and similarly unimpressed by Gremlins
September 2013
Philip French's classic DVD
The Fall of the House of Usher
Philip French admires a chilling exercise in atmospherics from Roger Corman, master of the low-budget shocker
