Will the real Roger Corman stand up? A man who made "a record number of Z-grade horror films"? An adjective for rapidly assembled B-movies? Or post-war America’s only true Renaissance man? There is little doubt he is the master of the six-day shoot, and that thrift plays a major part in his Termite Art; but his films stand testament to the hubris of creativity, of tonal complexity, and the cultural worth of genre cinema. Corman stands as a creative force in both art and business, outstripping even his contemporary John Cassavetes in his role as outsider; a pugnacious maverick with an acute eye for talent, while remaining resolutely independent. What is commonly glossed over is Corman’s uncanny prescience, his unnerving ability to sense change – whether it be attitudes to race, the legitimacy of counter-culture, or the changing sensibilities of cinematic morality. Easy Rider simply would not have happened without The Wild Angels; Rosemary’s Baby would remain an oft-thumbed pulp paperback if his Poe cycle hadn't reinvested horror with the pathological horror of sexual dysfunction; as for the Godfather, he set that up in the 50s… It is hard to think of another talent who has collapsed the boundaries between high and low art with such chutzpah, investing pulp with art well before this became a postmodern staple. As progenitor of New American Cinema, he gave Scorsese, Coppola, Bogdanovich and Dante their initial breaks, while re-evaluating the genres they would work in through his own overlooked directorial works a decade earlier. Then there is his New World Pictures production company: the first to release Bergman’s Cries and Whispers and Federico Fellini's Amarcord in the US – while funding Student Nurses and Women in Cages. Who would have thought that a one-time Navy-enlisted graduate, a mere runner for 20th Century Fox, a schoolboy enamoured with the Gothic romanticism of Edgar Allen Poe, would change how America saw itself, reflected through outsiders and bigots, acid trips and sensuous dolly shots. Corman also reminded genre cinema how to use colour: an audacity equal to Wild Beasts' rejection of naturalism. So, will the real Roger Corman stand up? Come and see…