“His films were revolutionary and iconoclastic, and captured the spirit of an age,” their statement said.

Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro are among the actors he helped develop. Directors James Cameron and Martin Scorsese cut their teeth on his films.

Many of his films became cult classics and he became famous for the speed at which he worked, often making two films at the same location and at the same time, in order to save money.

Roger Corman was born in Detroit on 5 April 1926. His father, William, was an engineer and he had intended to follow in his footsteps.

However, while studying at college, he became attracted to film-making and after a spell working for General Motors quit his job and went to work at 20th Century Fox as a messenger boy.

Having failed to make much progress, he set off for Europe where among other things, he briefly studied English literature at Oxford. He returned to the US with ambitions to become a screenwriter.

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