Roger Corman - Career

Career

Corman began to direct films in the mid-1950s, including Swamp Women (1955). In his early period, he produced up to nine movies a year. His fastest film was perhaps The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), which was reputedly shot in two days and one night. Supposedly, he had made a bet that he could shoot an entire feature film in less than three days. Another version of the story claims that he had a set rented for a month, and finished using it with three days to spare, thus pushing him to use the set to make a new film. (This is a variation of the story behind 1963's The Terror, much of which was filmed in two leftover days with Boris Karloff and Jack Nicholson, after The Raven, which featured them both, wrapped with two days to spare.)

In addition to producing and directing films for American International Pictures (AIP), Corman also partially funded other low budget films released by other film companies. In 1959 Corman founded Filmgroup with his brother Gene, a company producing or releasing low budget black and white films as double features for driven-ins and action houses. Finding that black and white double features were not as successful as colour films, Corman returned to AIP, and Filmgroup ceased operation in 1962.