Legendary directors who got their starts working on B movies

Cameron has made some of the biggest epics of all time, and he’s been a hitmaker time and time again. This is, after all, the guy who directed “Titanic” and “Avatar,” two of the highest-grossing movies in history (the latter the highest-grossing movie in history not adjusted for inflation). Here is a name we will evoke time and time again on this list: Roger Corman. Corman was a producer, director, and writer who gave countless talented people their start on his cheap B-movies. Cameron cut his teeth as a special effects artist for Corman (i.e., making stuff look as good as possible for as little money as possible), which led to his directorial debut: a sequel to a “Jaws” ripoff in “Piranha 2: The Spawning.” While many Corman alums maintain an affinity for their time in his stable of creators, Cameron did not enjoy making “Piranha 2” and tried to have his name taken off of it.

Yes, even a maestro of moviemaking like Scorsese started in the B-movie world. Originally, Scorsese was able to make a low-budget indie drama called “Who’s That Knocking at My Door.” He may have been serious-minded, but when Scorsese couldn’t find a distributor, he ran into exploitation distributor Joseph Brenner, who effectively told him, “Throw in a nude scene and I’ll get it in theaters.” Then, after a couple of years, unable to get something off the ground, Scorsese directed a movie for Corman. That got the ball rolling; Scorsese was able to make “Mean Streets,” and the rest is history.

Dante is the antithesis of Cameron. He seemed to really enjoy his time under Corman and always maintained his affinity for B-movies and Hollywood ephemera. His movie “Matinee” is largely a love letter to schlockmeisters like William Castle. Dante and director Allan Arkush began by cutting trailers for Corman, and then Corman put them in charge of the movie he made as a bet to create the cheapest film in the history of his production company. That movie was “Hollywood Boulevard,” and it was almost a Corman movie clip show. Then, Dante directed the original “Piranha,” and he’s never asked to take his name off it.

The late Demme directed “The Silence of the Lambs,” which would be sufficient cultural cache. He also directed “Philadelphia,” “Married to the Mob,” and more. He was working in the Corman mines for longer than most, though. Demme worked on six films over five years under Corman, starting off as a writer before moving to directing. That includes directing perhaps the quintessential “women in prison” movie, “Caged Heat.” And yes, in the B-movie world “women in prison” was once a full-on sub-genre.

Bogdanovich was working as a film writer, which is to say he wrote about movies. Then, yes, one day he ran into Roger Corman. As the story goes, the famed-but-aging actor Boris Karloff owed Corman a couple of days of work. Corman told Bogdanovich that if he could make a movie using Karloff and stayed under budget, he could direct a movie for him. That movie was “Targets.” It turned out pretty well for a movie that was doing stuff like illegally filming on the freeway. Bogdanovich’s next film was “The Last Picture Show,” and two actors won Oscars.

Roger Corman is in the movie “The Godfather Part II.” You can probably guess at this point why Coppola made that happen. In the 1970s, Coppola had as good a decade as any director has ever had: Two “Godfather” movies, “The Conversation,” and “Apocalypse Now.” Before all that, though, Coppola was Corman’s assistant, doing assorted jobs on different movies. Corman’s eye for talent won out again. The two were working on “The Young Racers,” one of the movies Corman also directed. Unsurprisingly, he went so under budget he offered Coppola the money he had saved to make a horror movie if he wanted. Coppola wrote “Dementia 13” in one day, directed it in nine, met his wife in the process, and did well enough he never had to direct for Corman again. That was, in essence, Corman’s pitch by the way: Do well enough working for me and you’ll graduate to not working for me.

Hey, a guy who didn’t work for Corman to start his career. Instead, he hustled money to put together his first couple of movies, low-budget B-movies that he directed, edited, and produced. “Fear and Desire” and “Killer’s Kiss” have largely been forgotten, with “The Killing” often seen as the beginning of Kubrick’s career, a career that only spanned 13 films. However, those two B-movies served as his calling card.

Had Peter Jackson been in America, we bet he would have started off working for Corman. Jackson is a New Zealander, though. He’s best known for his Hobbit-infused movies, and his first prominent movie was “Heavenly Creatures,” which he still made in New Zealand but popped as a serious prestige drama. However, he started his career with three low-budget exploitation movies. Those films are “Bad Taste,” “Meet the Feebles,” and “Braindead.’ They are raunchy, gross-out movies, a far cry from “Lord of the Rings.” “Bad Taste,” in particular, has more in common with the works of John Waters than high fantasy.

De Palma’s movies always felt pulpy and exploitation-adjacent, so it’s no surprise that’s where he started his career. He made his own experimental stuff, and also jumped into collegiate experimental stuff as well. For example, he co-directed “The Wedding Party,” with one of the other directors being his collegiate film professor. What is notable is that De Palma was the first filmmaker to notice another young New York talent: Robert De Niro.

Frankly, even “Halloween,” the movie that codified the American slasher, is a B-picture. One, it’s about a killer with a knife terrorizing a suburban town. Two, Carpenter was paid $10,000 to write, direct, and score the movie, and it was distributed by Compass International Pictures, not exactly a powerhouse. However, this was also Carpenter’s third feature. “Assault on Precinct 13” was even more barebones, and “Dark Star” was essentially an expanded student film. All of them are genre pictures, and two of them are quite good (and the other one is “Dark Star”).

Hey, a female director! Now, we will note Corman wasn’t against giving female directors work. His wife, Julie, was his producing partner, and Corman was happy to hire anyone with talent if they could get the work done quickly and cheaply. It’s just that women who worked for Corman didn’t pop in the same way many male directors did, and the prominent female directors didn’t necessarily do the same genre, B-movie pathway. B-movies and “women’s pictures” didn’t have much overlap. Bigelow, however, has spent her career as an action director, a particularly tough one at that. Her first movie, “The Loveless,” was an exploitation throwback. It’s a biker movie, a genre that was popular in the heyday of exploitation movies. Corman made several of them.

Hanson may not be as big of a name as, say, Coppola or Bigelow, but in his career he delivered movies like “LA Confidential,” “Wonder Boys,” and “8 Mile.” Not bad for a high school dropout who got his start working for a movie magazine. Then, Corman gave him a chance to direct, with Hanson making his debut with 1972’s “Sweet Kill.” After that, it would be a bit until Hanson got another chance to direct, but he persevered. Arguably, Hanson’s next two films were also B-movie adjacent. He made the “Hey, karate is popular” action movie “The Little Dragons,” and then directed the brain-dead sex comedy “Losin’ It.”

Stone made his name as a writer before finding acclaim (and controversy) as a director. His first project, though, he both wrote and directed. “Seizure” is a somewhat meta horror movie about a horror writer whose nightmares come to fruition. It seems to be barely a movie. Mary Woronov, a B-movie staple and Corman favorite, asserted that the gangster Michael Thevis used investing in the production as a way to launder money.

Shea is not as big a name, but we wanted to include another female director, and Shea is one who got her start as a director under Corman. A marginally successful actor (who by her own account didn’t really like acting), Shea met Corman, started as a writer for him, and then got a chance to direct. A later addition to the Corman school, she made her debut with 1987’s, ahem, “Stripped to Kill.” Did she also direct the sequel “Stripped to Kill II: Live Girls?” Of course! Then, she directed the well-received thrillers “Streets” and “Poison Ivy.”

We’re including Miller because, frankly, “Mad Max” is a B-movie. It’s an Australian action film set in a dystopian future made by a guy who had been working in the medical profession. “Mad Max” was made by an unknown for A$400,000 (Australian dollars, that is to say). Miller just happened to deliver a B-movie that birthed a massive franchise.

Howard is an interesting one to end on because, of course, he was a famous child actor. When it came to directing, though, he didn’t start with some studio movie or big-budget offering. Corman sent him a script for a mindless car-centric action comedy called “Eat My Dust!” Howard said he’d star in it if he could direct a movie for Corman. Corman told him to write up a draft for a project and they’d go from there. Also, Corman had a title sitting around from when he was trying to name “Eat My Dust!”: “Grand Theft Auto.” And that’s how Howard came to star in one car-centric action comedy for Corman and then star and direct a second car-centric action comedy for Corman in “Grand Theft Auto.”