17 Roger Corman Movies You Should Watch Right Now

One of Corman’s early movies that displayed his characteristic mixture of camp, humor, and creepiness, A Bucket of Blood is about a beatnik whose accidental killing of his landlady’s cat transforms him into an actual murderer.

Corman notably directed the “Poe cycle”—a sequence of eight movies based on the stories of Edgar Allen Poe—and The Fall of the House of Usher is one of the more memorable in that sequence. It features a performance by the always-great Vincent Price.

Another Poe movie worth watching, Corman’s Pit and the Pendulum brings Price back to the big screen for more creepy action.

Yet another film in Corman’s Poe cycle, The Raven is more comedic than scary but it’s still a worthy entry in the filmmaker’s oeuvre.

Corman produced the first film ever made by Francis Ford Coppola. Dementia-13 is a low-budget horror film about murder and marital strife. Coppola would use his time with Corman to hone skills he later used to make some of the most popular movies of all time.

Considered one of the finest of Corman’s “Poe cycle,” The Masque of the Red Death is a great-looking movie and yet another fun performance from Price.

Another Poe movie, this film features an early screenplay by Robert Towne, who would later go on to write Chinatown.

This biker movie directed by Corman stars Peter Fonda, features a script partially written by Peter Bogdanovich, and has heavy counterculture vibes. A very fun watch.

Corman’s mid-Sixties film about Al Capone and other gangsters in the Twenties includes early performances by then relatively unknown actors Jack Nicholson and Bruce Dern.

A precursor to Easy Rider, this trippy counterculture Corman film was written by Jack Nicholson and is all about LSD. What’s not to like?

Corman produced this first movie directed by Peter Bogdanovich, who would go on to become a prominent member of the New Hollywood movement. Bogdanovich later directed several classics, including The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon.

Corman’s crime exploitation picture about a real-life woman who helped her bank-robbing sons carry out their crimes features an early performance by a young Robert de Niro and also stars Shelley Winters and Bruce Dern.

Corman produced Bertha, one of Martin Scorsese’s first features. The film would help establish Scorsese before he rocketed to fame with his next film, Mean Streets.

Corman helped finance Ingmar Bergman’s 1972 movie about three sisters dealing with death. Corman later distributed the picture in the U.S. through his New World Pictures production company. The film would go on to win a number of Academy Awards.

Corman produced this early film by Jonathan Demme (of The Silence of the Lambs), an exploitation movie about female convicts in prison.

Fondly remembered as one of the best B-movies to come out of Corman’s New World Pictures studio, Death Race 2000 stars David Carradine (of Kung Fu) as a racer involved in a dystopian...well, death race.

Frankenstein Unbound was the last film that Corman personally directed.