Celebrate Roger Corman’s 94th Birthday This Weekend with Shout! Factory’s Streaming Corman Marathon
Photo via Getty Images, Andreas RentzB-movie maestro Roger Corman turns 94 this weekend, and we can only hope that he’s being safely kept in isolation somewhere like the national treasure he is, given the current viral pandemic. Shout! Factory, however, will not be losing out on the opportunity to celebrate Corman’s incredibly prolific life and times, as they will host a two-day marathon of Corman movies via their Shout! Factory TV app and web channel, April 4 and 5. Everything from Chopping Mall to Starcrash will be featured in the marathon, along with the 13-part documentary series Cult-Tastic: Tales From the Trenches with Roger and Julie Corman. In honor of the occasion, Shout! whipped up the following sizzle reel:
Corman has proven to be as long-lived as he is prolific as an artist, or “craftsman” as he apparently prefers. According to the official IMDB count, he’s credited with personally directing more than 50 films, and has produced more than 400 of them from 1954 to the modern day. Many of those features were cheap B-movies made on the fly and making just enough profit to turn the next film around, but Corman’s work was also instrumental in bringing works by directors such as Akira Kurosawa to the U.S. Moreover, the list of actors and directors who received their first chances at exposure via Corman features includes the likes of Jack Nicholson, Peter Bogdanovich, Joe Dante, Jonathan Demme, Ron Howard, James Cameron and dozens of others. Few Hollywood careers have influenced so many others, which was recognized with an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2009. And through it all, Corman has never truly retired.
The Corman birthday marathon will begin on Saturday, April 4 at 12 a.m. PT and continues through the rest of the weekend, and can be viewed on ShoutFactoryTV.com; Shout! Factory TV’s Roku, Amazon Fire, Apple TV, and Android apps; and the following digital streaming platforms: Twitch, Samsung TV Plus, Comcast Xfinity, Xumo, and STIRR.
Following is the complete list of films that will be featured, including several that have subsequently seen themselves become episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000, including Starcrash and Avalanche.
Corman Birthday Marathon
Deathsport
Crazy Mama
Saturday the 14th
Chopping Mall
Munchies
Sorceress
Attack of the Crab Monsters
Deathstalker II
Avalanche
Pit Stop
Warlords of the 21st Century
Starcrash
Nightfall
Eat My Dust!
The Wasp Woman (1959)