Roger Corman (born in 1926) was revered in the 1960s as a director of distinctive horror and science fiction films. He was responsible for the Edgar Allan Poe cycle starring Vincent Price, as well as the offbeat black comedy, Little Shop of Horrors. In later decades, he has served as the hands-on producer of nearly 500 low-budget genre films, shot primarily in his makeshift studio in Venice, California or overseas in Third World nations. Corman's eye for talent is famous: such celebrated filmmakers as Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Ron Howard, James Cameron, and John Sayles all got their start in what has been called "the Roger Corman Graduate School of Film." And Corman's willingness to take a chance on distributing foreign art films -- among them Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers and Federico Fellini's Amarcord -- set the stage for later companies like Miramax, which first acquired a reputation for hipness through their connection with the grand masters of European cinema.

Several books have been written about Roger Corman as a director. But there has never been an up-to-the-minute assessment of the man behind the movies . . . until now.