Yesterday, an absolute legend in the American film industry passed away at age 98: Roger Corman.

Although Corman did receive an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2009, he was hardly a filmmaker who cared about that little gold statue. He cared about entertaining the people in the theatre with horror, thrillers, science fiction and the sex, drug and rock ‘n roll of the 1960s and 70s counter culture.

He directed more than 50 films up until 1990 with Frankenstein Unbound, and continued to serve as producer for films his entire life. Some the works he directed included Little Shop of Horrors, Attack of the Crab Monsters, The Raven, The Wild Racers, A Bucket of Blood, A Time for Killing and the best movie title ever, Gas! -Or- It Became Necessary to Destroy the World in Order to Save It. The later was a hippie anthem about a gas created to kill off those over 25 and featured an appearance by Country Joe and the Fish.

Corman also appeared in many films, sometimes as an uncredited cameo, sometimes as himself, or a parody of his own persona. I personally liked when he played himself directing a Batman film in Looney Tunes: Back and Action. A Roger Corman-directed Batman would have been awesome.

However, he also helped launch the careers of some very well known actors, including the following:

Jack Nicholson

In Corman’s original Little Shop of Horrors, Nicholson played a brief role as the masochist undertaker at the dentist. Those who only know the movie musical, will remember it being performed by Bill Murray, but Nicholson gave it a much more psycho edge.

Sylvester Stallone

Stallone was a fledgling actor when he did a couple of films with Corman, but Death Race 2000 is such an icon of 1970s wacky races horror and action, you have to appreciate it.

Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda

Hopper and Fonda had already been pretty steady actors, but two years before their pivotal roles in Easy Rider, Corman cast them, along with Bruce Dern, in the LSD infused movie, The Trip, that came with the appropriate subtitle “a Lovely Sort of Death.” Of course, you can’t have the Easy Rider trio without Jack Nicholson. He isn’t a star, but he did write the screenplay for this one. Would you expect anything less from late 60s Jack?

Robert De Niro

De Niro had done a handful of small roles when Corman cast him as one of  the Barker boys in the 1970 film Bloody Mama, starring Shelley Winters as the infamous “Ma” Barker. Corman’s lifelong pal Bruce Dern was also in this one along with a really interesting ensemble cast.

I have to also include the trailer, because it’s classic Corman:

and Michael Hutchence?

The INXS lead singer may have already been a well known rock star by the time the final Roger Corman-directed film, Frankenstein Unbound, was released but this small role was the first of only the second of three movie roles Hutchence did. The final one, Limp, came out much later in 1999, after his death. Hutchence didn’t exactly get a career launch from Corman, but it was innovative the way Corman used a tortured talent like Hutchence to play another tortured talent of his day, poet Percy Shelley. It was Shelley’s wife Mary (played by Bridget Fonda) who wrote the novel Frankenstein. Hutchence shared the screen with some other notables, John Hurt and Jason Patric (as Lord Byron) in this scene.

Although Corman had said he wanted to be simply be remembered “as a filmmaker, just that,” he was also an inspiration to so many with imagination and ambition. It is because of his love of the genres that cared less about the critics and more about the general populist that is why he will always be a favorite.

Farewell, Mr. Corman. So many in the industry have you to thank for their continued success in the business, but so many of us who frequented the drive-ins, the dilapidated discount theatres, the horror and sci-fi fests, and the Blockbuster video rentals were inspired as well.

Thank you, King of the B’s.