American exploitation film producer, director and screenwriter David F. (Frank) Friedman died of heart failure on 14 February, aged eighty-seven. He had lost his hearing and eyesight almost a decade before. He began his career in the early 1960s with business partner Herschell Gordon Lewis making “nudie-cuties”, before the pair moved on to horror with the infamous Blood Feast (1963). Made for just $24,500, the “first splatter film” went on to make millions. The pioneering pair followed it up with the equally gory Two Thousand Maniacs! and Color Me Blood Red, and Friedman’s numerous other cult credits include She Freak, Space-Thing, The Erotic Adventures of Siegfried, The Adult Version of Jekyll & Hyde and Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS. He was credited as executive producer on the more recent Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat, 2001 Maniacs, Crustacean (featuring writer Peter Atkins) and 2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams. Friedman’s fun 1990 autobiography was titled A Youth in Babylon: Confessions of a Trash-Film King.
Thirty-nine-year-old Perry Moore (William Perry Moore IV), who was an executive producer on The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and its two sequels, Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, died from an apparent drug overdose on 17 February, after being found unconscious in his New York apartment. Moore was also chosen by the C. S. Lewis estate to write the Official Illustrated Movie Companion to the first film. In 2009 he produced the TV documentary Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak. As a response to how gay characters were depicted in the comic book industry, Moore wrote the award-winning YA novel Hero (2007), about a teenage superhero struggling with his sexual orientation. He was voted People Magazine’s “Sexy Man of the Week” in the 19 November 2007 issue.
Hollywood press agent turned movie producer Walter Seltzer died on 18 February, aged ninety-six. His credits include The War Lord, The Omega Man and Soylent Green, all starring his friend Charlton Heston.
American former assistant director and production manager Scott Adam was killed, along with his wife and another couple, on 22 February, several days after their yacht had been hijacked by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden. Adam worked in various capacities on The Savage Bees, Day of the Animals, The Evil, The Goonies and episodes of the original V TV series before he began sailing around the world performing missionary work.
American film producer and director Gary Winick died of a brain tumour on 27 February, aged forty-nine. A pioneer in digital film-making, he found commercial success with such films as 13 Going on 30 and the 2006 remake of Charlotte’s Web.
British-born film and television director Charles Jarrott died of cancer in Los Angeles on 4 March. He was eighty-three. Jarrot’s credits include the 1968 TV movie of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde starring Jack Palance, the 1973 musical remake of Lost Horizon, Disney’s Condorman and episodes of TV’s The Unforseen, Out of This World, Haunted and Armchair Theatre (“The Picture of Dorian Gray” and “The Rose Affair”).
American director Sidney Lumet died of lymphoma on 9 April, aged eighty-six. A former actor, he began his directing career in live television in the 1950s before going on to make a string of acclaimed films. His credits include Fail-Safe (1964), The Wiz and Deathtrap (1982). Lumet had a small role in the 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate, and he was presented with an honorary Academy Award in 2005.
Japanese anime director Osamu Dezaki died on 17 April, aged sixty-seven. His TV credits include The Mighty Orbots and Bionic Six.
American TV director Charles [Friedman] Haas died on 12 May, aged ninety-seven. He began his career as an extra at Universal in 1935, and his directing credits include Tarzan and the Trappers (with Gordon Scott as Tarzan), stitched together from three unsold TV shows, plus episodes of Dick Tracy (1951), The Shadow (1954), The New Adventures of Charlie Chan, Men Into Space, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Outer Limits and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Harry Redmond, Jr., the son of special effects pioneer Harry Redmond, Sr., died of complications from heart disease on 23 May, aged 101. Redmond worked (often uncredited) with his father – who was head of special effects at RKO Radio – on such films as The Most Dangerous Game (aka Hounds of Zaroff), King Kong (1933), The Son of Kong and She (1935). He also worked on Lost Horizon (1937), Wonder Man, Angel on My Shoulder, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Bishop’s Wife (1947), The Magnetic Monster, Donovan’s Brain, Riders to the Stars and Gog. Redmond’s TV credits include Ten Little Niggers (1947), Science Fiction Theatre, The Outer Limits and the 1964 spin-off pilot The Unknown.
British film editor (Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Spy in Black) turned producer Hugh [St. Clair] Stewart died on 31 May, aged 100. After working on films with Norman Wisdom and Morecambe and Wise, his later credits as a producer included Mr Horatio Knibbles and The Flying Sorcerer for the Children’s Film Foundation.
British film and TV director Pat Jackson (Patrick Douglas Selmes Jackson), reportedly the last surviving director of the 1967–68 TV series The Prisoner, died on 3 June, aged ninety-five. He also directed the 1961 crime film Seven Keys (which appears to be an uncredited version of the much-filmed Seven Keys to Baldpate) and the lively horror comedy What a Carve Up! (aka No Place Like Homicide!), starring Sidney James and Kenneth Connor.
American writer, producer and director Leonard B. (Bernard) Stone died of heart failure on 7 June, aged eighty-seven. He began his career scripting Abbott and Costello’s later films (including Africa Screams), before creating such TV shows as McMillan & Wife, and writing and producing episodes of Get Smart, The Snoop Sisters and Holmes and Yo-Yo. Stone’s other credits include the Get Smart movies, The Nude Bomb and Get Smart Again!. From 1951–53 he was married to actress Julie Adams.
Swedish cinematographer [Erling] Gunnar Fischer died of an infection on 11 June, aged 100. He is best known for his twelve collaborations with director Ingmar Bergman, including The Seventh Seal, The Magician and The Devil’s Eye.
American movie producer Laura [Ellen] Ziskin died on 12 June, aged sixty-one. She had been battling breast cancer for seven years. Responsible for the blockbuster Spider-Man (2002) and its two sequels, her other credits include Eyes of Laura Mars, Fail Safe (2000) and the 2012 franchise re-boot The Amazing Spider-Man, plus episodes of the 2003 Tarzan TV series.
Film and TV producer Christopher [Elwin] Neame, the son of director and cinematographer Ronald Neame, died in France of an aneurysm the same day. He was sixty-eight. Starting out as a clapper boy at Hammer on Dracula Prince of Darkness and Rasputin the Mad Monk, Neame worked as an uncredited assistant director on Frankenstein Created Woman, Quatermass and the Pit (aka Five Million Miles to Earth) and The Devil Rides Out and as a production manager on Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb, Fear in the Night, Demons of the Mind and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell. He was also an associate producer on Tigon’s The Beast in the Cellar and production manager/designer on the sexy sci-fi comedy Zeta One. The first of his three autobiographies, Rungs On a Ladder (2003), was about his time at Hammer. Neame’s godfather was Noël Coward.
Michael J. Hein, founder of the New York City Horror Film Festival in 2002, died of a heart attack on 9 July, aged forty-one. He contributed special effects make-up to Metamorphosis: The Alien Factor, Class of Nuke ’Em High Part II: Subhumanoid Meltdown and Out of Darkness, and scripted, produced and directed the 2001 horror film Biohazardous.
American TV producer and writer Sherwood [Charles] Schwartz, who created such series as It’s About Time, Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch, died on 12 July, aged ninety-four. A former joke writer for Bob Hope’s radio show, his other credits include the comedy 1983 TV movie The Invisible Woman. Schwartz also created the theme tunes to a number of his shows.
Japanese film and TV animator Toyoo Ashida, who directed the 1985 anime, Vampire Hunter D, died on 23 July, aged sixty-seven. His many other credits include the Space Battleship Yamato, Ulysses 31 and Fist of the North Star (1986).
Cyprus-born film director Mihalis Kakogiannis (aka
Michael Yannis/Michael Cacoyannis), who directed the Oscar-winning Zorba the Greek (1964), died in Athens, Greece, on 25 July. He was eighty-nine. Kakogiannis made an uncredited appearance in the 1948 body-swap comedy Vice Versa and he also scripted, produced and directed the 1967 counter-culture SF comedy The Day the Fish Came Out.
Canadian-born film and TV director Silvio Narizzano died in London on 26 July, aged eighty-four. After producing a 1952 series of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for Canadian television, he moved to the UK, where he directed Hammer’s Fanatic (aka Die! Die! My Darling) and worked uncredited on an episode of Space Precinct. Narizzano’s low budget Las flores del vicio (aka Bloodbath, 1979) starred Dennis Hopper and was filmed in Spain.
Polly Platt (Mary Marr Platt), who was married to director Peter Bogdanovich from 1962 until 1972, died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease) on 27 July, aged seventy-two. Her various credits in the movie industry include being Nancy Sinatra’s stunt double in The Wild Angels, production co-ordinator on Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, co-story writer and production designer of Bogdanovich’s Targets (starring Boris Karloff), production designer on The Man With Two Brains and The Witches of Eastwick, and executive producer of the 2011 A&E documentary Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel.
Italian film director and journalist Gualtiero Jacopetti, who created the exploitation “Mondo” genre with his 1962 documentary Mondo Cane (A Dog’s Life), died on 17 August, aged ninety-one. The film was a huge commercial success and led to a number of similar “shockumentaries” in the mid-1960s. J. G. Ballard incorporated the director’s aesthetics into his fragmentary novel The Atrocity Exhibition (1970).
Scottish-born BAFTA and Emmy Award-winning TV and film director Alastair Reid died the same day, aged seventy-two. His credits include The Night Digger (scripted by Roald Dahl), Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1980, starring David Hemmings), Artemis 81, and two episodes of Tales of the Unexpected.
Iranian-born Reza [Sayed] Badiyi, who holds the Directors Guild of America record for directing more television episodes than anybody else, died in Los Angeles on 21 August, aged eighty-one. He shot the iconic “wave curl” title sequence for Hawaii Five-0 and the opening sequence for Get Smart. His numerous other credits include episodes of Mission: Impossible, The Magician, The Six Million Dollar Man, Man from Atlantis, Holmes and Yo-Yo, The Incredible Hulk, The Phoenix, Superboy, Dinosaurs, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Nowhere Man, Viper, Baywatch Nights, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Mortal Combat: Conquest, Sliders and Early Edition. Badiyi also directed the 1972 TV movie The Eyes of Charles Sands, and he was assistant director on Carnival of Souls (1962), in which he made an uncredited appearance as a bus ticket customer.
Veteran American TV director Charles S. Durbin (Charles Samuel Dubronevski) died on 5 September, aged ninety-two. He helmed episodes of such shows as Tales of Tomorrow (including an adaptation of Cyril M. Kornbluth’s “Little Black Bag”), Tarzan (1966), The New People, Ghost Story, Kung Fu, Man from Atlantis, Tabitha, Supertrain, Herbie the Love Bug and Starman, along with the TV movies Cinderella (1965), Death in Space and Topper (1979). In 1958 Durbin was blacklisted for four years by the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
American underground film-maker, comics artist and teacher George (Andrew) Kuchar, died of prostate cancer on 6 September, aged sixty-nine. He began making 8mm films in the 1950s with his twin brother Mike, and his numerous experimental and avant-garde short films include such titles as The Slasher, I Was a Teenage Rumpot, The Fall of the House of Yasmin, Route 666, Hush Hush Sweet Harlot, Planet of the Vamps, Kiss of Frankenstein and The Fury of Frau Frankenstein. In 1975 he published a cartoon biography of H. P. Lovecraft in Arcade #3, which offended many fans of the writer.
Highly-respected Hollywood producer and studio executive John Calley died of cancer after a long illness on 13 September, aged eighty-one. His film credits include The Loved One, 13 (aka Eye of the Devil), Castle Keep and Catch-22. After leaving the movie industry in 1980 for more than a decade, he returned to produce The Da Vinci Code and its sequel, Angels & Demons. Calley received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 2009 from The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences. His second wife was actress Meg Tilly.
Canadian film producer John Dunning died on 19 September, aged eighty-four. He co-founded Cinepix (later Lions Gate Films) in 1962, and his movie credits include The Sensual Sorceress, Death Weekend, David Cronenberg’s Shivers and Rabid, My Bloody Valentine (1981 and 2009 versions), Happy Birthday to Me, Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, Whispers and The Incredible Adventures of Marco Polo and His Journeys to the End of the Earth.
Fritz Manes, a boyhood school friend of Clint Eastwood who went on to produce a number of the actor’s movies, including Firefox, Tightrope and Pale Rider, died on 27 September, aged seventy-nine. He also produced Ratboy (1986), directed by Eastwood’s former girlfriend, Sandra Locke.
Fifty-six-year-old technology guru Steve Jobs (Steven Paul Jobs), who co-created Apple Computer Inc. in 1977 with Steve Wozniak, died of respiratory arrest stemming from a metastatic pancreatic tumour on 5 October. He had been diagnosed with a rare form pancreatic cancer in 2003. In 1986, Jobs purchased a computer graphics firm from George Lucas and renamed it Pixar Animation Studios. In 1991 the company signed a deal with Disney, and Jobs is credited as an executive producer on Toy Story (1995).
Welsh-born TV director and scriptwriter [Alan] Paul Dickson died on 6 October, aged ninety-one. An award-winning documentary film-maker, he also helmed episodes of Colonel March of Scotland Yard (starring Boris Karloff), The Avengers, The Champions, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and Department S. In 1956 Dickson directed the low budget SF film Satellite in the Sky.
Yugoslavia-born cinematographer Andrew Laszlo (András László) died in Montana on 7 October, aged eighty-five. After beginning his career in documentaries (including The Beatles at Shea Stadium), he worked on Miracle on 34th Street (1973), The Dain Curse, The Funhouse, Southern Comfort, Streets of Fire, Remo: Unarmed and Dangerous, Poltergeist II: The Other Side, Innerspace, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and Ghost Dad.
Iranian-born Hollywood costume designer Ray Aghayan (Reymond G. Aghayan) died on 10 October, aged eighty-three. His credits include Our Man Flint, In Like Flint and Doctor Dolittle (1967), along with more than a dozen Academy Awards shows. He won an Emmy Award with his lifetime partner Bob Mackie for the costumes in an all-star TV version of Alice Through the Looking Glass (1966).
Prolific British TV director Peter Hammond (Peter Charles Hammond Hill) died on 12 October, aged eighty-seven. A former actor (the 1949 Helter Skelter, Hammer’s X The Unknown), he began directing in the early 1960s and his credits include episodes of Out of This World (hosted by Boris Karloff), The Avengers, Out of the Unknown, Wuthering Heights (1978), Tales of the Unexpected, Shades of Darkness, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. In 1987, Hammond also directed the Holmes TV movie The Sign of Four and the BBC mini-series Dark Angel (aka Uncle Silas), based on the Gothic novel by J. Sheridan Le Fanu.
British-born film producer Richard Gordon died in New York City on 1 November, aged eighty-five. Along with his older brother Alex, Gordon moved to the US in 1947, starting up his own distribution company, Gordon Films, on the East Coast. This resulted in him entering into co-production deals with various European companies, and he produced or executive produced such films as The Haunted Strangler (aka Grip of the Strangler, starring Boris Karloff), Fiend Without a Face, Corridors of Blood (with Karloff and Christopher Lee), First Man Into Space, The Playgirls and the Vampire, Devil Doll (1964), Curse of the Voodoo (aka Curse of Simba), The Projected Man, Naked Evil (aka Exorcism at Midnight), Island of Terror (starring Peter Cushing), Secrets of Sex (aka Bizarre), Tower of Evil (aka The Horror of Snape Island/Beyond the Fog), Horror Hospital (with Michael Gough), The Cat and the Canary (1978) and Inseminoid (aka Horror Planet). Gordon also “presented” such films as Mete
mpsyco (aks Tomb of Torture) and Cave of the Living Dead to the American market. He became Bela Lugosi’s agent in the 1950s, and after a UK theatrical tour of Dracula flopped in 1951, he came up with the story idea for the comedy Mother Riley Meets the Vampire (aka My Son the Vampire) starring the ailing actor.
Hollywood costume designer Theadora Van Runkle (Dorothy Schweppe) died of lung cancer on 4 November, aged eighty-two. Best known for her designs for Bonnie and Clyde, Bullitt and The Godfather Part II, she also worked on Myra Breckinridge, Johnny Got His Gun, Peggy Sue Got Married and White Dwarf, along with the TV series Wizards and Warriors.
British TV producer and director Mark [William] Hall died after a short illness on 17 November, aged seventy-five. With his college friend Brian Cosgrove, Hall formed their own animation company, Cosgrove Hall Productions, in 1976, and together they created such children’s shows as Jamie and the Magic Torch, Creepy Crawlies, The Wind in the Willows, Count Duckula, Oh! Mr Toad, Danger Mouse, Noddy’s Toyland Adventures, Fantomcat and Truckers, Soul Music and Wyrd Sisters (all based on novels by Terry Pratchett). Hall also co-produced TV movies of Cinderella (1979), The Pied Piper of Hamelin (1981), The Wind in the Willows (1983), The Reluctant Dragon (1987) and Roald Dahl’s The BFG (1989).
British film production designer Syd Cain died on 21 November, aged ninety-three. His credits include Fahrenheit 451 (based on the novel by Ray Bradbury), Billion Dollar Brain, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy and TV’s The New Avengers. As an art director, Cain also contributed to The Road to Hong Kong, Dr No and Live and Let Die, and he worked in various capacities on Uncle Silas (1947), The Gamma People, Supergirl, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Neverending Story III: The Return to Fantasia, GoldenEye and Tarzan and the Lost City.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 23 (Mammoth Books) Page 64