Best New Horror 27

by Stephen Jones

  American adult filmmaker and actress Candida Royalle (Candice Marion Vadala, aka “Mary Pearson”, “Candice Ball”, “Bettina Mia”, “Candice Chambers”, “Sharon Lucas”, “Cyntnia Pleschette”, “Kathy Silverman”, “Jeanne Toller”, “Candida Royal”, “Candita Royale” and “Candace DeCarlo”), founder of Femme Productions, died of complications from ovarian cancer the same day. She was 64. Her porno films include Femmes de Sade and Ultra Flesh, and she also turned up in the direct-to-video Tattoo Vampire (1988).

  American actor John P. Connell died on September 10, aged 91. He appeared in the 1964 movie Fail Safe and episodes of TV’s Captain Video and His Video Rangers, Dark Shadows (1967) and the unsold pilot The Solarnauts, before becoming a prolific commercials voice-over.

  American adult film actress, producer and director Ann Perry (Virginia Ann Lindsay) died of Alzheimer’s disease on September 11, aged 79. She appeared in House on Bare Mountain (as “Ann Meyers”), Dr. Dildo’s Secret and The Toy Box (as “Meyers” again), amongst other movies. Perry created her own production company, Evolution Enterprises, in the 1970s, and she was the first woman to become president of the Adult Film Association of America (AFAA).

  Florida firefighter and singer Paul Galloway, who appeared in the 1970s low budget horror films Zaat (aka Blood Waters of Dr. Z) and J.D.’s Revenge, died the same day, aged 92. Galloway was also the unit manager on Zaat.

  Veteran American stuntwoman May (Raymond) Boss died on September 16, aged 90. The former rodeo rider made her movie debut in 1952, and her many credits include Mary Poppins, Soylent Green, Cleopatra Jones, Earthquake, Logan’s Run, The Shaggy D.A., Exorcist II: The Heretic, Return from Witch Mountain, Blow Out, Deadly Blessing, Blue Thunder, The Lost Boys, Dead Heat, Total Recall (1990), The Puppet Masters, The Relic, Soldier, Wild Wild West, Inspector Gadget, Mystery Men, The Flintstones in Viva Las Vegas, Hulk and episodes of TV’s The Bionic Woman.

  American actor and playwright Jack (Edward) Larson, who is best known for his portrayal of Daily Planet cub reporter “Jimmy Olson” in the TV series Adventures of Superman (1952-58), died at his Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home in Los Angeles on September 20. He was 87. After retiring from the screen in the mid-1960s to become a respected playwright and opera librettist, he returned more than a quarter of a century later to make guest-appearances in Superman Returns and episodes of TV’s Superboy and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. A former boyfriend of actor Mongomery Clift, Larson’s life partner, Oscar-nominated screenwriter/director James Bridges, predeceased him in 1993.

  British character actor, stunt performer and fight arranger Derek (Arthur) Ware, who choreographed the chase involving a fleet of Mini Coopers in The Italian Job (1969), died of cancer on September 22, aged 77. Founder of the stunt company Havoc, his many credits include The War Game, Witchfinder General (aka The Conqueror Worm), Krull, Willow, Revenge of Billy the Kid and episodes of Doctor Who, The Avengers (‘The Cybernauts’), Adam Adamant Lives!, Mystery and Imagination, The Changes and The Return of Sherlock Holmes. An injury ended his stunt career in 1990, after which he became a fencing coach.

  American TV paranormal investigators Mark and Debby Constantino, aged 53 and 52 respectively, died in an apparent murder-suicide the same day. Police had earlier discovered one of their daughter’s roommates murdered in another location. The married couple specialised in EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) and were featured on the Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures, along with an episode of Paranormal Challenge.

  Japanese voice actor Eiji Maruyama died on September 24, aged 84. He worked on such animated TV series as Super Sentai Zyuranger, Sailor Moon R, Pokémon, InuYasha, Yozakura Quartet and Shiki.

  American actress Catherine E. (Elizabeth) Coulson died of cancer on September 28, aged 71. She was an assistant director on David Lynch’s feature debut Eraserhead as well as a camera assistant on that film, and also appeared in The Toolbox Murders (1978) and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. However, she is best-known for her portrayal of “The Log Lady” in Lynch’s cult TV show Twin Peaks (1990-91) and spin-off movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. Coulson spoofed the role in a 2010 episode of Psych (‘Dual Spires’), and she also had a small role in the 1982 horror film Trick or Treats. She was married to Eraserhead actor Jack Nance from 1968-76.

  American character actor Zale Kessler died the same day, aged 76. He appeared in several Mel Brooks comedies, including Dracula: Dead and Loving It, along with The Clonus Horror, The Attic, The Poughkeepsie Tapes and Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse. On TV, Kessler was in episodes of Darkroom and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, and he voiced “Daddy Dracula” in the 1988 animated TV movie Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School.

  American actress Pat Woodell (Patricia Joy Woodell), who co-starred in the 1972 Filipino movie The Twilight People, died on September 29, aged 71. A regular on TV’s Petticoat Junction (1963-65) as “Bobbie Jo Bradley”, she also appeared in The Woman Hunt and an episode of The Munsters.

  57-year-old British character actor Alex Giannini (Alexander Von Giannini), who portrayed the Penguin in a touring production of Batman Live in 2011, died on October 2. As “Sandy Fontaine” he was the lead singer in the 1980s rockabilly group Coast to Coast, while as “Alex Richardson” he starred in the short horror film Left Hand Drive, based on the story by Christopher Fowler. Giannini was married to Harry Secombe’s daughter, Jennifer, since 1998.

  Former Walt Disney child actor turned assistant director and producer Kevin (Anthony) “Moochie” Corcoran died of colorectal cancer on October 6, aged 66. As an actor he appeared in Old Yeller, The Shaggy Dog (1959), Swiss Family Robinson and Babes in Toyland (1961), before moving behind the camera. Corcoran was an associate producer on Return from Witch Mountain, Herbie Goes Bananas and the Herbie, the Love Bug TV series, and was a first assistant director on Mrs Santa Claus and episodes of TV’s Quantum Leap. He was named a Disney Legend in 2006, and returned to acting three years later in the spoof It Starts with Murder!.

  Welsh character actor Richard Davies (Dennis Wilfred Davies), best remembered for his role as sarcastic science teacher “Mr. Price” in the LWT comedy series Please Sir! (1968-72), died of Alzheimer’s disease on October 8, aged 89. He was also in The Night My Number Came Up, Twisted Nerve, The Mutations (aka The Freakmaker) and Blue Blood, along with episodes of TV’s The Snow Queen (1955), Out of the Unknown (Frederik Pohl’s ‘The Midas Plague’), Robert’s Robots, Whoops Apocalypse and Doctor Who.

  Former Hollywood child star Joan Leslie (Joan Agnes Theresa Sadie Brodel) died on October 12, aged 90. She played opposite such actors as Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda, Randolph Scott and Fred Astaire, and in 1979 she appeared in an episode of TV’s The Incredible Hulk. After retiring from the big screen in the mid-1950s, she designed a line of her own branded clothes.

  American character actor and teacher Richard (Bruce) Hyde, who appeared as “Kevin Riley” in the original Star Trek episodes ‘The Naked Time’ and ‘The Conscience of the King’, died of throat cancer on October 13, aged 74.

  American character actor and talent agent Marty Ingels (Martin Ingerman), the second husband of actress Shirley Jones, died of a massive stroke on October 21, aged 79. His credits include William Castle’s The Busy Body, The Picasso Summer (scripted by a pseudonymous Ray Bradbury), Parasomnia and episodes of TV’s The Addams Family, Bewitched, The Ghost Busters, The Munsters Today and What a Dummy.

  Irish-born Hollywood star Maureen O’Hara (Maureen FitzSimons) died in her sleep in Boise, Idaho, on October 24. She was 95. Her many credits include the 1939 version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (opposite her mentor Charles Laughton’s Quasimodo), Sinbad the Sailor, Miracle on 34th Street (1947), Bagdad (with Vincent Price) and Flame of Araby (with Lon Chaney, Jr.), She was finally awarded an Honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement in 2014.

  40-year-old British-born actor and model Sam Sarpong committed suicide by jumping off the Colorado Street Bridge in Pasadena, Califo
rnia, on October 26. He appeared in Nailed (2006), Marked, Farm House, Single Black Female, The House That Jack Built and the 2014 short film Ross and Gil Are Zombies.

  American fashion model and actor Scott Wells, who portrayed a teenage Lex Luthor in the 1988-89 TV series Superboy, died of complications from a stroke on October 28. He was 54. Wells also appeared in episodes of The Bionic Woman and Beauty and the Beast, and he left Los Angeles in 1998 to join a drug and alcohol abuse recovery programme.

  American character actor Al Molinaro (Umberto Francesca Molinaro), who played diner owner “Al Delvecchio” in the ABC-TV sitcom Happy Days (1974-84) and various spin-offs, died in hospital of a gall bladder infection on October 30, aged 96. His other credits include the TV special It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane…It’s Superman! (1975) and Disney’s Freaky Friday (1976), as well as episodes of Get Smart, Bewitched and Fantasy Island.

  Former American child actor Charles Herbert (Saperstein) died of a heart attack on October 31, aged 66. He appeared in The Monster That Challenged the World, The Colossus of New York, The Fly (1958, with Vincent Price), Bert I. Gordon’s The Boy and the Pirates and William Castle’s 13 Ghosts (1960), along with episodes of TV’s Science Fiction Theatre, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, One Step Beyond, Men Into Space, Shirley Temple’s Storybook, The Twilight Zone (Ray Bradbury’s ‘I Sing the Body Electric’) and The Outer Limits. Herbert’s career ended in the late 1960s, and his life descended into poverty, drugs and alcohol for nearly forty years.

  American character actor Gregg Palmer (Palmer Lee) died of a heart attack the same day, aged 88. A former radio announcer, during the 1950s he was a contract player at Universal where he appeared in such movies as Francis Goes to West Point, Son of Ali Baba and The Creature Walks Among Us. His other credits include Zombies of Mora Tau, From Hell It Came, Walt Disney’s The Shaggy Dog and The Absent-Minded Professor, Scream (1981), Early Warning (1981) and numerous Westerns, while his voice can be heard in Abbott and Costello Go to Mars. On TV he was in episodes of World of Giants, Get Smart, Tarzan (1967-68), The Wild Wild West, Star Trek and Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

  73-year-old Fred Thompson (Freddie Dalton Thompson), a former United States Senator who appeared in movies and on TV, died after a recurrence of lymphoma on November 1. A regular on NBC’s Law & Order (2002-07) and spin-off shows, his other credits include The Hunt for Red October, Cape Fear (1991), Thunderheart, Sinister and an episode of the American Life on Mars.

  Character actor (Philip) Stephen Hancock, who portrayed “Ernie Bishop” in the British soap opera Coronation Street for almost a decade, died the same day, aged 89. He was also in episodes of The Avengers, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (1963) and Tales of the Unexpected.

  Mexican singer-songwriter and character actor José Ángel Espinosa “Ferrusquilla” died of a stroke on November 6, aged 96. His movies include Gigantes planetarios, El planeta de las mujeres invasoras, Los jinetes de la bruja, House of Evil (with Boris Karloff) and Mary Mary Bloody Mary (with John Carradine).

  Icelandic-born Gunnar Hansen, the man behind the skin-masked “Leatherface” in Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), died of pancreatic cancer in Maine on November 7, aged 68. The six-foot, four-inch actor also appeared in such direct-to-video movies as The Demon Lover, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Campfire Tales, Mosquito, Freakshow, Repligator, Hellblock 13, Hatred of a Minute, Witchunter, Rachel’s Attic, Next Victim, Chainsaw Sally, Murder-Set-Pieces, Wolfsbayne (aka Aconite), Apocalypse and the Beauty Queen, The Deepening, Debbie Rochon Confidential: My Years in Tromaville Exposed!, Swarm of the Snakehead, Brutal Massacre: A Comedy, Shudder, Gimme Skelter, Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre, Won Ton Baby! and It Came from Trafalgar, along with the sequel/reboot Texas Chainsaw 3D. Hansen also wrote the original script for the 2016 movie Death House.

  40-year-old American actor Nathaniel Marston died on November 11 after sustaining injuries in a car accident on October 30 in Reno, Nevada. A regular on ABC-TV’s soap opera One Life to Live (2001-07), he suffered a broken back and broken neck amongst other injuries in the collision, and was fighting pneumonia, a heart infection and an irregular pulse. Marston appeared in the 1996 witchcraft movie The Craft.

  British character actor Warren Mitchell (Warren Misell), best known for his role as Cockney bigot “Alf Garnett” in the TV series Till Death Us Do Part (1966-75), In Sickness and in Health (1985-92) and various spin-offs, died after a long illness on November 14, aged 89. He was in the films The Trollenberg Terror (aka The Crawling Eye), Unearthly Stranger, Help!, The Night Caller (aka Blood Beast from Outer Space), Jabberwocky, A Christmas Carol (2000) and Hammer’s The Stranglers of Bombay, The Curse of the Werewolf and Moon Zero Two. Mitchell appeared as comedy villain “Ambassador Vladimir Jiroslav Brodny” in two episodes of The Avengers, and his other TV credits include episodes of Gaslight Theatre, Out of the Unknown (Ray Bradbury’s ‘The Fox and the Forest’) and Gormenghast (with Christopher Lee).

  Indian-born Saeed Jaffrey died of a brain haemorrhage in London the same day. He was 86. The Bollywood actor appeared in The Man Who Would Be King, Sphinx and an episode of ITV’s Tales of the Unexpected.

  American actor and presenter Don Lamond (Donald Robert Heilman) died of congestive heart failure on November 15, aged 88. He was the son-in-law of “Stooge” Larry Fine, and is credited with resurrecting the comedy trio’s career durng the 1950s and ‘60s by hosting a Three Stooges show on Los Angeles’ KTTV Channel 11. Lamond had small rolls in Space Master X-7, Have Rocket – Will Travel, The Angry Red Planet, The Three Stooges in Orbit, The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze and an episode of TV’s The Invaders, and he narrated The Three Stooges Meet Hercules.

  Italian actress Nicoletta (Rangoni) Machiavelli died in Seattle, Washington, the same day, aged 71. She appeared in the 1960s Bond spoofs Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die and Matchless, along with the 1970 experimental film Necropolis and The Man with the Transplanted Brain.

  German-born Hollywood leading man Rex Reason (Rex George Reason, Jr., aka “Bart Roberts”) died of bladder cancer in California on November 19, aged 86. The baritone-voiced actor’s movie credits include Universal’s This Island Earth and The Creature Walks Among Us. Reason retired from the screen in the early 1960s to become a real estate broker.

  Rugged Australian-born leading man Keith (Joseph) Michell, who starred in The Hellfire Club (1961) with Peter Cushing, died in London on November 20, aged 88. He was also in a TV version of Wuthering Heights (1962) and episodes of Dow Hour of Great Mysteries and BBC Play of the Month (‘The Tempest’).

  Spanish-born leading man Germán (Horacio) Robles, the closest Mexico got to a genuine horror star, died of complications from peritonitis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in Mexico City on November 21, aged 86. Best known for his role as that country’s most famous vampire, “Count Karol de Lavud” in The Vampire (1957) and The Vampire’s Coffin (1958), his other movie credits playing a vampire include El castillo de los monstruos, The Curse of Nostradamus, The Blood of Nostradamus, The Monsters Demolisher and Genii of Darkness. Robles also appeared in The Brainiac, The Living Head, Los murciélagos, Neutron Battles the Karate Assassins, Rocambole contra la secta del escorpión, Los vampiros de Coyoacán, Secta satanica: El enviado del Sr. and El secreto. He was also a popular Spanish language dubbing actor, providing the Spanish voice for Bill Nighy’s “Davy Jones” in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End and KITT the car in TV’s Knight Rider.

  Indian-born British actor Robin Stewart, who appeared in the popular TV sitcom Bless This House (1971-76), died on November 22, aged 69. Stewart began his career as a child actor, appearing in the eight-part children’s serial Masters of Venus (1962). His other film credits include The Haunted House of Horror (aka Horror House) and Hammer’s The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (as “Leyland Van Helsing”, the son of Peter Cushing’s character). Stewart also worked as a voice actor on such cartoons as A Christmas Carol (1982) and Sherlock Holmes and the Valley of Fear,
Sherlock Holmes and the Sign of Four and Sherlock Holmes and the Baskerville Curse (all featuring Peter O’Toole as Holmes).

  American actor Al Markim (Alfred D. Moskowitz), who starred as Venusian sidekick “Astro” in the early live TV series Tom Corbett, Space Cadet (1951-55), died on November 24, aged 88. During its history, the popular children’s SF show ran on all four networks of the day: CBS, NBC, ABC, Dumont and then NBC again.

  Former Hollywood child actor Larry Olsen, who starred as “Curley” in the old dark house mystery Who Killed Doc Robbin (aka Sinister House, 1948) featuring George Zucco, died the same day, aged 77. He also made an uncredited appearance in Brigadoon before leaving showbusiness in the 1950s.

  British actress Beth Rogan (Jennifer Puckle) died on November 25, aged 84. A former Rank starlet, her few film credits include the Ray Harryhausen version of Mysterious Island (1961). She retired from the screen in the 1960s and married into high society.

  Australian actor Kerry (James) Casey, who portrayed “Goldar” in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie (1995), died the same day, aged 61.

  American actor Robert “Bob” Christopher (Robert Hall), who co-starred in and produced Jerry Warren’s Frankenstein’s Island (1981), died after a brief illness on November 27, aged 93. He was also in Spook Chasers, The Disembodied, Terror of the Bloodhunters, Warren’s Creature of the Walking Dead, Agent for H.A.R.M. and I Dismember Mama, along with an episode of TV’s Men Into Space.