All is art. . .the rest is graham crackers. —from A Bucket of Blood

The constraining shoestring budget of the B-film usually forced a film director to confine himself to a minimal structure (i.e., H. G. Lewis’gore mania and Russ Meyer’s boob erotica). But Roger Corman, director of 45 films in 12 years, smiled at mere economic limitations and tackled nearly every genre imaginable. Although Corman worked with the speed of a prolific hack, his style of combining social statement with tongue-in-cheek candor, marks him as thegreatest filmmaker for teenagers in the entire history of drive-in cinema.