Movies
In Memoriam: 8 Defining Films to Remember Roger Corman
From westerns to gladiator exploitation films to post-apocalyptic action movies (and of course, plenty of horror), Corman didn’t just make off-the-wall genre films, he made them viable and rarely lost a dime on them. And above all else, he made them fun, and he gave them a spirit of enjoyability that was contagious. So, to honor Roger Corman, we here at Horror Press have compiled a list of 8 films that best embody his indelible influence on horror and science fiction.
As many Horror Press readers already know, we lost genre film legend Roger Corman last Thursday, May 9th. One of the all-time greats in Hollywood, he was known for spinning straw budgets into gold pictures, and Corman’s influence is embedded into modern filmmaking thanks to the hundreds and hundreds of films he worked on.
Starting as a production assistant turned story analyst at the bottom rungs of 20th Century Fox, Corman became the face of independent filmmaking in Hollywood from the 1950s on. With an innate vision for what gets people engaged with film, Corman was a mentalist at reading audiences and producing films that got watchers going. Corman knew what you wanted to see, sometimes before you even knew it; he wasn’t part of the genre film zeitgeist. He was the zeitgeist outright.
8 Roger Corman Movies Every Horror Fan Should Watch
From westerns to gladiator exploitation films to post-apocalyptic action movies (and of course, plenty of horror), Corman didn’t just make off-the-wall genre films, he made them viable and rarely lost a dime on them. And above all else, he made them fun, and he gave them a spirit of enjoyability that was contagious. So, to honor Roger Corman, we here at Horror Press have compiled a list of 8 films that best embody his indelible influence on horror and science fiction.
SHARKTOPUS VS PTERACUDA (2014)
It seems fair to visit one of Corman’s later works in life, since it’s a very good example of how he had the juice to make great b-movies long after he had made himself a household name. Before The Asylum and its cohorts were a gleam in the eye of the SyFy channel, Roger Corman had paved the way for them perfectly, and eventually joined them in the sharksploitation resurrection of the 2000s and 2010s.
I remember seeing Sharktopus on SyFy semi-regularly when I was younger, but its sequel is a strictly better version, with two apex predators seeing which celebrity cameos they can eat faster (Conan O’Brien gets annihilated in this one!). Vs. Pteracuda is, in a weird way, also a step up in terms of effects, even if the CGI looks rougher than sandpaper. Beyond that, it’s one of those rare gems that can laugh at itself and manages to walk the intentionally so-bad-its-good tightrope without falling into a pit of forced self-awareness.
ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS (1957) & IT CONQUERED THE WORLD (1956)
Okay, I know. I cheated, technically this makes 9 films. But I just couldn’t deny a double header of quintessential “goofy-looking monster movies”. Some of Corman’s earliest horror contributions are drive-thru shlock through and through. And that’s quite alright with me because we get giant telepathic crabs out of it!
These two feel like the best example of Corman’s ability to challenge bigger studios with smaller production values; they’re on par with contemporaries like Creature From The Black Lagoon and The Monster that Challenged the World, and every bit as enjoyable. It Conquered the World boasts one of my favorite monster designs with its strange demonic traffic cone aesthetic. It was also one of the earlier collaborations between Corman and famed character actor Dick Miller, who would reappear three years later in…
A BUCKET OF BLOOD (1959)
If there’s one way to get logged into the annals of horror history, making one of the first really solid original horror comedies is it. The film follows schmuck Walter Paisley (one of many as the name became a regular Corman movie easter egg), who struggles to find friends while surrounded by hipster artists, but discovers he excels at sculpting— but only when the clay is being molded and shaped around dead people.
Entrenched in the film’s dark humor is a solid satire about American countercultural movements, poking fun at beatniks and small, insular art scenes in a way that feels evergreen decades later. It’s a charming film about desperately seeking approval, something that Corman clearly enjoyed poking fun at given he often had to go against the grain to get his films made, and never let himself get chained up in hunting for recognition.
GALAXY OF TERROR (1981)
When we talk about Roger Corman giving life to Hollywood and creating other film legends, the example everyone will undoubtedly remember is Corman’s relationship with James Cameron. Cameron got his start as a miniatures artist while working on two films for Corman in particular: Battle Beyond the Stars, and the much more well-known Galaxy of Terror.
Galaxy of Terror is often referred to as a rip-off of Alien, mainly for its body horror and some insectoid alien motifs its got going on. But what it actually ends up being is a weird, heady, high-concept space fantasy of death that tortures its cast of characters more brutally than a xenomorph could. It’s also got some strange, nasty creature effects, and an even stranger ending. While it certainly started as an attempt to seize the popularity of Ridley Scott’s seminal sci-fi horror, Galaxy of Terror evolved into an indescribable touchstone in Corman’s filmography.
CHOPPING MALL (1986)
Another film that has Dick Miller, albeit this time in a smaller role, Chopping Mall was produced by Roger’s wife, Julie Corman. Still, his spirit is very much in this one with all the camp it has to offer. The premise? An enterprising mall tries to move into the 21st century early and employs a series of cutting-edge security robots to keep it clear. They, of course, promptly short-circuit during a thunderstorm and begin to murder teenage stragglers who stayed in the mall after hours.
B-movie juggernaut Jim Wynorski directed this one and actually got his start as a publicist for Corman before moving up in the film world of the 1980s and 90s. Wynorski once said that Corman “taught [him] all the lessons on how to make a film and how to make it look expensive when you don’t have a lot of money”, which is as good a praise as any filmmaker can get.
SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE II (1987)
When Deborah Brock approached Roger Corman with a proposal for a Slumber Party Massacre follow-up, he recognized the need to get a sequel off the ground after the first film’s success. What he financed was a fun rock-and-roll slasher film and a cult classic that’s easy to fall in love with.
This time around, the dead killer from part 1 has reincarnated into a greaser ghost with a giant drill guitar, prone to giving his victim’s hallucinations. Some crazy visuals like being attacked by a raw undead chicken, the world’s nastiest pimple effect, and the movie pausing to do an honest-to-God, full-on music video starring the killer are only a few of the delightful samplings the film has to share. It’s an off-kilter slasher that demands to be seen, and one of those ventures that had his distinct brand of equal parts sleaze and spirit ingrained in it.
THE RAVEN (1963)
Among Corman’s many horror endeavors, his Edgar Allan Poe adaptations with American International Pictures left some of the biggest impacts. Among them, The Raven holds a special place in my heart. Corman “extrapolates” Poe’s poem to tell a story about dueling wizards in a gothic castle, complete with dinky rotoscoped spell effects and hilarious dialogue. It also has ace performances from Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre, the latter being a mainstay of the producer’s films.
The Raven also stands as a testament to Corman’s uncanny ability to “thin the paint” as he phrased it, spreading resources between movies; it was one of three films that were all shot on the same set, and all within the same month according to Jack Nicholson, alongside The Terror and The Haunted Palace.
MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (1964)
That being said, there is only one choice for his ACTUAL best Poe adaptation, and for that matter what I would qualify is his best film on a technical level. Masque of the Red Death is undoubtedly the most visually striking film he’s ever directed. It’s a colorful, evocative piece that perfectly captures the nature of the original short story it’s based on, in which a mysterious guest terrorizes medieval nobles trying to weather a plague as peasants suffer outside the castle walls.
Unfortunately for the lecherous Prince Prospero, death comes for everyone, and Corman makes it look incredible (especially when he’s terrorizing Hazel Court as the villainous Juliana). All of the cinematography here comes together to make the perfect storm of gothic atmosphere you need to pull off this story: the lighting, the costuming, and the set design, in particular, are off the charts, and that’s all capped off by the performance of a prime Vincent Price. Keep an eye out for repertory screenings of the film as we move into late May and June, because theatres ought to be playing Masque to pay homage. It’s wholly worth the price of admission, even 60 years after the fact.
***
Rest in peace, Roger Corman. Thanks for making the world a more campy, more silly, more fun, and when you really wanted to, more beautiful place. You will be missed, by friends and fans the world across. And, as always, happy watching horror fans.
I don’t know about you, but it feels like I stepped out of the theater after seeing Wolf Man, blinked, and suddenly it was September. It’s been a very busy year in general, but as always, especially so for the horror genre. We’ve had some misses and some hits, but overall, I’d say it’s been a strong year (though maybe not quite as strong as 2024 and its deluge of incredible movies).
Though your mind might still be primarily occupied with a more recent release, there have been a lot of incredible movies to hit both theaters and especially streaming services like Shudder in 2025. So, we here at Horror Press have decided to put together a shortlist of the best horror the year has had to offer so far.
The Best Horror of 2025 So Far
Feel free to wave this list in the face of your friends who say that all the horror they’ve watched this year is bad. Or just to celebrate because your favorite made the cut! Without further ado, let’s start with…
Dangerous Animals
Fun and insane animal horror movies are so hard to come across these days, but Dangerous Animals chums the waters with some fresh meat for the subgenre. Sean Byrne, best known for his work on the Australian sleeper hit The Loved Ones, tells a story reminiscent of Wolf Creek on the high seas.
A surfer and her boyfriend fall prey to a boat captain who promises a thrilling cage diving experience, but with a catch: he secretly enjoys torturing people before feeding them to sharks. Jai Courtney shines as the antagonist Tucker, whose mealy-mouthed grins and demented demeanor sell the danger our leads are in.
Clown in a Cornfield
The pick for the best slasher offering this year (until Black Phone 2 releases, #JoeHillHypeTrain) is a no-brainer. Shudder has finally delivered the long-awaited adaptation of Adam Cesare’s Clown In A Cornfield. And helmed by Eli Craig of Tucker & Dale vs. Evil fame no less! In the now dead hamlet of Kettle Springs, Missouri, a group of teens run afoul of its former mascot Frendo. While it initially presents itself as a basic corn-fed killer clown movie, if you stick with it, you’ll find it’s actually much more clever and thrilling than it lets on.
Predator: Killer of Killers
When I say Dan Trachtenberg does not miss, he does not miss in the slightest. The current creative director of the Predator franchise, fans of the series have been eating good ever since his work on 2022’s Prey, and have Predator: Badlands to look forward to early next month.
While Predator: Killer of Killers could have easily been a cheap animated film to tide over fans while they wait for Badlands, it proved to be one of the best films in the franchise yet. An anthology film featuring Yautja hunting throughout human history and across cultures, the animation here is slicker than slick. Killer of Killers delivers the action horror that everyone has been asking for from the franchise for years.
The Ugly Stepsister
When I heard The Ugly Stepsister was a collaboration between a bevy of film institutes and production companies across four different Nordic countries, I wondered what made it so special. What I saw explained it. While it is technically Cinderella, it’s specifically a retelling of Aschenputtel, one of the original and much darker iterations of Cinderella collected by the Brothers Grimm. And dark this is.
Told from the perspective of Cinderella’s stepsister Elvira, we watch her spiral as she tries to beautify herself in the ugliest of ways, all in an effort to secure a wealthy male suitor. Truly inspired costuming, grotesque body horror played for both shock and laughs, and a dead-on sense of comedic timing make this one a very memorable watch.
Weapons
Director Zach Cregger’s sophomore outing in the horror genre following his smash hit Barbarian is well-loved, and for good reason. This time, Weapons shines a spotlight on lives in a small town, and how they intersect, trying to make sense of a horrifying incident: the disappearance of 17 children who run out the front doors of their homes in the dead of night.
Cregger dances deftly on the line between horror and comedy in a way I can only describe as masterful, creating a film that is both viciously funny and aggressively disturbing. Where the film goes is a curveball, even for those who have seen the trailers, and a delightful one at that, since Weapons brings a new horror icon to the stage.
Companion
And speaking of Zach Cregger, this sci-fi horror is another one of his productions. If you’ve somehow avoided seeing anything about Companion until now and don’t know what it’s about, keep it that way and go watch it immediately. The ad campaign spoiled it, but the story is undeniably enthralling even if you know where it’s going. This movie features what is, by far, Sophie Thatcher’s most dynamic performance yet, supported by a stellar cast and the film’s pitch-black humor.
Fréwaka
The first Irish-language horror film is also one of the nation’s best cinematic offerings yet. A gripping and immersive folk horror film, it follows a home nurse named Shoo assigned to a superstitious older woman named Peig who lives on the edge of a remote village. Shoo soon begins to see dark ongoings in her dreams and waking life, plagued by the same mysterious group that Peig has been dealing with her entire life.
Fréwaka is a precision-made film, chock full of high impact editing and cinematography. It evokes a kind of existential monster, both man-made horrors of human cruelty and the mythological ones that lie deep in belief and the dark corners of Irish folklore. In short, unsettlingly effective.
Ash
Flying Lotus’ directorial career has been a point of interest for me ever since the genre shapeshifter that was Kuso and the demented parody that was his segment “Ozzy’s Dungeon” in V/H/S/99. And even with the high hopes those ventures gave me, Ash is so much more than I could have expected.
After astronaut Riya wakes up to nightmares of bodies being melted and screams of agony, she finds herself as one of only two survivors in a mission to colonize a planet gone horribly wrong. Ash is a lovely middle point between Event Horizon and The Void, a mixture that is sure to please those of us who like our science fiction dripping with an evil atmosphere and dark visuals. It also boasts some of the best color grading and lighting in any film this year.
Sinners
If you haven’t seen Sinners already, what have you been up to? Brain science? Rocket surgery? Here, visionary director Ryan Coogler tells the tale of a repressed young black man in 1930s Mississippi, trying to break away from his preacher father’s restrictive ways. His journey to do so lands him a performance at a juke joint out in the woods, one he plays so well that it lures in an ageless and relentless vampire.
Michael B. Jordan, Jack O’Connell, and Wunmi Mosaku lead an all-star cast through a mystical horror story with purpose. It explores the meaning of culture, religion, music, and the Black American experience—all while delivering one of the best vampire films of all time. The showstopping original soundtrack by Ludwig and Serena Göransson that it boasts isn’t half bad either.
Bring Her Back
I won’t mark this with the caveat of “so far”—this will be the most disturbing film you see this year. Bring Her Back blew any expectations you might have had from the Phillipou Brothers’ Talk To Me out of the water. While the premise of an orphaned brother and sister who are sent to live with an off-kilter foster mother and another mute child she’s fostering might seem predictable, this film is anything but.
It’s truly an emotionally draining watch, blow after blow with both the physical and emotional trauma it puts its characters through, and forces you to watch. It refuses to let you breathe for even a minute in its final act. It’s definitively Sally Hawkin’s finest hour as an actress, and beyond this short list, it’s firmly some of the best horror of all time.
2024 was pretty damn swamped with horror. Longlegs, Heretic, Nosferatu, I Saw the TV Glow…even over halfway into 2025, fans are still catching up on every horror flick they might have missed last year. Early on, though, we were given one of the best horror-rom-coms of the 21st century…and no one seemed to really care. Did people stop liking fun? It seems to be the only explanation for why this movie did not catch on more. Directed by Zelda Williams and written by the legendary Diablo Cody, Lisa Frankenstein was designed to be a cult classic, and should be remembered as one.
A Vibrant 80s Aesthetic That Screams Originality
One thing to note about this movie right off the bat is how unapologetically itself it is. The film is an absolute vibe, boasting an original aesthetic. There is so much 1980s nostalgia saturating the mainstream (cough, cough, Stranger Things), so it could be hard to imagine why we need another tongue-in-cheek horror-comedy set in the era. Lisa Frankenstein takes a completely original approach to the 80s. Its fashion and music concern themselves with the alternative, new wave-ish, goth-y side of the decade. It does not glorify what was big and popular, but rather picks it apart in ridiculously kitschy designs.
The film feels like a mix of Tim Burton’s brightest, suburban aesthetics, mixed with the grittier side of 80s culture and music. It is a bit of a, dare I say it, Frankenstein’s monster of a wavelength. With such striking originality, it’s hard to say why exactly the film did not find its way into viewers’ hearts.
The Bride of (Lisa) Frankenstein
The leads in the film are both phenomenal. Kathryn Newton is funny and full of life as the protagonist, who feels like a more light-hearted version of Wednesday Addams. Cole Spruce is phenomenal as the creature, playing an old-school, lovable monster. They truly play the movie as equal parts Edward Scissorhands and Juno. Speaking of…
Diablo Cody’s Cinematic Universe: A Horror-Comedy Legacy
What really puts this film on the next level is its writing. The film is written by the legendary Diablo Cody, creator of classics such as Jennifer’s Body and Juno. The film continues her legacy of teen-centric stories, combining drama, comedy, and, more often than not, bloody horror. Her originality shines through in this film without a doubt, with the humor evoking a distinctly mid-2000s indie flick feel.
Additionally, in an interview with Deadline, Diablo Cody said, “…this movie [Lisa Frankenstein] takes place in the same Universe [Jennifer’s Body]. Jennifer’s Body is of course revered as a classic horror-comedy, blending brutal supernatural lore with a ton of humor. That movie has a much higher fan base than Lisa Frankenstein, however, Cody has confirmed that these films share the same Universe. This alone should give fans of the genre another chance to consider this movie. Plus, with news of a potential Jennifer’s Body 2, Lisa Frankenstein could potentially be part of what one day may be an iconic trilogy.
A Deeper Love Letter to Art and Creation
For all the pomp and frills of teen dramedy, romcom-ishness (new word!) and bloody horror, Lisa Frankenstein has some more to say than what meets the eye. The movie is not just a romance between Lisa and The Creature. It is a romance between Lisa and art itself.
Lisa’s character is an artist from the beginning, sewing and designing her own art and fashions, fascinated by the art surrounding her. She has a passion for art and art history, and desires to create. In a sense, through her sewing and construction, The Creature is an art piece. The movie is literally a romance between her and the act of human creation.
In one of the movie’s best sequences, Lisa has a dream sequence in which she is married to the bust of The Creature, and the room is decorated like George Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon. This iconic short film from the turn of the 20th century remains one of the most impactful and inspirational films ever made, helping to pioneer narrative storytelling in film. By referencing and paying homage to this movie, Lisa Frankenstein draws a throughline between Lisa’s creation and the creation of art as a whole. This is a movie that understands its place in film history and appreciates the importance of creation on both a Divine and human creative level.
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