"King of the B-movie" was an honorary title that he was only too happy to endorse and commercialize. In the 1950s, Corman churned out one exploitation picture after another for American International Pictures—if possible, in just two days and one night. But alongside dozens of entertaining and sensational genre films, his filmography also contains more than a dozen cult classics.

House of Usher, shot in color with a considerably higher budget, was a major financial gamble, but the film’s success marked the beginning of one of the greatest multi-film actor/director collaborations in the horror genre: the one between Corman and Vincent Price. The colorful and baroque visual splendor, the successful balance of atmosphere and design, and the infusion of Gothic horror with a melancholy and existential dread made Corman, surprisingly, an “auteur” of the better B-movie—in other words, B+.

This, among other things, led to him being able to make a film for a major studio like Fox in 1967. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre is a subversive and intelligent gangster film that is somewhat unjustly forgotten. The experience, however, left Corman disgusted with the incredible waste of time and money that goes hand in hand with typical big Hollywood productions. He ultimately found greater satisfaction in founding his own production company, New World Pictures.