Mention the name Roger Corman and you conjure up a whole world of movie-making: screaming young women in tight sweaters, lumbering monsters creeping out of shadows, shock movie posters. Yet beyond that somewhat sentimentalized image of the “King of the Bs” was a producer who prospered at a time when so much of Hollywood was collapsing, all the while nurturing talents ranging from Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich and Jonathan Demme to Jack Nicholson, Pam Grier and Robert De Niro; eventually, even Ingmar Bergman and Akira Kurosawa would be associated with him. Alex Stapleton’s engaging and well-informed study offers a rich context for assessing Corman’s importance for cinema, with insightful and often hilarious testimony from friends and disciples.

Following Corman’s World, we’ll present a rare screening of Roger Corman’s The Intruder (1962, 84m), starring William Shatner as a mysterious man who arrives in a small Southern town on the eve of integration.