The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror

by Stephen Jones

  Show business agent Sam Cohen (Samuel Charles Cohn), who represented Robert Altman, Sidney Lumet, Woody Allen, Paul Newman, Meryl Streep and Arthur Miller, amongst many others, died on May 6, aged seventy-nine. For three decades he worked at International Creative Management (ICM) and was regarded by his clients as an “auteur agent”, helping to creatively shape their careers. He also reportedly liked to eat paper.

  Prop-maker Jenny Heap, who created the Triffids for the 1962 movie The Day of the Triffids, died in May of cancer, aged seventy-one. During a varied career she taught prop and mask-making at RADA and managed the prop department at the Royal National Theatre. She later became a touring production manager.

  Film and TV producer Mort Abrahams died after a long illness on May 28, aged ninety-three. He began his career with the 1950 series Tom Corbett Space Cadet, and he went on to produce or executive produce such TV series as Tales of Tomorrow, Route 66 (including “Lizard’s Leg and Owlet’s Wing” with Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Lon Chaney, Jr) and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. His movie credits include Doctor Dolittle (1967), Planet of the Apes (1967), the sequel Beneath the Planet of the Apes, and Rhinoceros.

  Producer and director Don Edmonds died of liver cancer on May 30, aged seventy-two. Best known for directing the cult softcore“Nazisploitation” movies Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1975) and Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976), his other directing credits include the 1980 horror film Terror on Tour and he worked in various production capacities on Home Sweet Home, The Night Stalker, Skeeter and Last Gasp. In the 1980s he was vice-president of production at Producers Sales Organization (PSO), where he was responsible for such movies as Short Circuit and Clan of the Cave Bear. As an actor, Edmonds appeared in Gidget Goes Hawaiian, Disney’s Son of Flubber, Home Sweet Home, Last Gasp, and episodes of TV’s Men Into Space and The Munsters.

  British art director Bob (Robert) Bell, who worked on such Gerry Anderson TV shows as Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons and U.F.O., died on June 6. Bell’s other credits include Thunderbird 6, Doppelgänger (aka Journey to the Far Side of the Sun) and The New Avengers; he was assistant art director on the 1980 series Hammer House of Horror, and he created the matte paintings for Clive Barker’s Nightbreed.

  Canadian TV director and producer Allan [Winton] King died of brain cancer on June 15, aged seventy-nine. He directed episodes of Friday the 13th: The Series, the new Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Dracula: The Series, The Odyssey and Kung Fu: The Legend Continues.

  British producer and cinematographer Peter [Austin Harely] Newbrook, best known for his only directing credit on the underrated 1973 horror film The Asphyx, died of a heart attack on June 19, aged eighty-eight. Newbrook produced and contributed the original story to the legendary 1965 SF musical Gonks Go Beat, and his other credits as a producer include Corruption and Incense for the Damned (both with Peter Cushing), and Crucible of Terror (with Mike Raven). He photographed The Black Torment, Corruption and Crucible of Terror, and worked as a camera operator on Hammer’s Dick Barton Strikes Back.

  American music manager, recording executive and film producer Allen Klein died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease on July 4, aged seventy-seven. During an often controversial career, the former New Jersey accountant managed the affairs of such recording artists and groups as Donovan, Connie Francis, The Animals, The Rolling Stones and three out of four of The Beatles (his involvement reportedly contributed to the break-up of the Fab Four). He also produced a number of movies, including Alejandro Jodorowsky’s religious fantasy The Holy Mountain.

  Eighty-six-year-old George [William] Fullerton, who partnered electric guitar pioneer Leo Fender in the manufacturing of the Telecaster and Stratocaster guitars, died of congestive heart failure the same day in Fullerton, California.

  Film and TV producer Ted [Adams] Swanson, whose credits include Island Claws (co-scripted by Ricou Browning), The Presence (aka Danger Island) and The Tale of Sweeney Todd, died on July 23, aged seventy-two. Swanson also worked in various production capacities (often uncredited) on The Omega Man, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Harry and the Hendersons and Jaws The Revenge.

  Italian-born first assistant director Tony (Antonio) Brandt died on July 25, aged seventy-nine. He worked as an additional assistant director on Apocalypse Now, and his other credits include She (1982), Warrior of the Lost World, Roger Corman’s Frankenstein Unbound, F/X 2 and The Eighteenth Angel.

  Emmy Award-winning American TV producer Harvey Frand died of respiratory failure on July 28, aged sixty-eight. His many credits include the 1980s revival of The Twilight Zone, The Pretender, Strange World, and the new series of Battlestar Galactica and The Bionic Woman, along with the TV movies New Eden and Painkiller Jane.

  Legendary British film producer Harry Alan Towers died of pneumonia and heart failure in Toronto, Canada, on August 2. He was eighty-eight. A genius for putting together co-production deals, Towers made more than 100 films around the world, from Austria to Zimbabwe (many scripted under his pseudonym “Peter Welbeck” and starring his wife, actress Maria Rohm). Among his numerous credits are The Anatomist, The Face of Fu Manchu and its four sequels (all starring Christopher Lee), Circus of Fear (aka Psycho-Circus), Sumuru (aka The Million Eyes of Sumuru), Rocket to the Moon, House of 1,000 Dolls (with Vincent Price), The Girl from Rio (aka Future Women), Deadly Sanctuary, Jesus Franco’s Night of the Blood Monster and Count Dracula (1970), Dorian Gray (1970), King Solomon’s Treasure, The Shape of Things to Come, Gor and Outlaw of Gor, Howling IV: The Original Nightmare, Edge of Sanity, The House of Usher (1989), The Phantom of the Opera (1989), Masque of the Red Death (1990), Buried Alive (with John Carradine), The Lost World (1992) and Return to the Lost World, Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady and Incident at Victoria Falls (both starring Lee as Holmes), Dance Macabre, The Mummy Lives (with Tony Curtis!), Night Terrors, The Mangler (based on the story by Stephen King), Pact with the Devil, She (2001) and Sumuru (2003). Always happy to recycle properties he had the rights to, Towers made three not-quite-star-studded versions of Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians (aka And Then There Were None) in 1965, 1974 and 1989, and he was developing a new version of Fu Manchu at the time of his death.

  Reclusive director, producer and screenwriter John Hughes [Jr] (aka Edmond Dantès), who was responsible for such iconic 1980s comedies as The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, died of a heart attack while walking in Manhattan on August 6. He was fifty-nine. Hughes’ credits also include Weird Science and the remakes of Miracle on 34th Street (1994), 101 Dalmations (1996), Flubber (1997) and Just Visiting (2001).

  British film producer [Anthony Simon] Clive Parsons died of pancreatic cancer on August 12, aged sixty-six. His credits (with business partner Davina Belling) ranged from the softcore comedy Rosie Dixon – Night Nurse, through Lindsay Anderson’s Britannia Hospital, to the low-budget horror films Half Light and Splintered.

  Widely regarded as revolutionizing the music industry as a pioneer of electric guitar design and recording technology, Les Paul (Lester William Polsfuss) died of complications from pneumonia on August 13, aged ninety-four. A former performer in the early 1950s with a string of hits, including “Mockin’ Bird Hill”, “Vaya Con Dios” and “How High the Moon” with his then-wife Mary Ford, Paul created the Gibson Les Paul, one of the most iconic electric guitars ever made, as well as inventing tape echo, sound-on-sound recording and multitrack technology.

  British TV director/producer John [Steven Rule] Stroud died of a brain tumour on August 15, aged fifty-four. His credits include the 1980s children’s anthology series Spooky, So Haunt Me, Bugs and the superhero comedy My Hero.

  American cinematographer Richard Moore, whose single directing credit was Circle of Iron (aka The Silent Flute) starring David Carradine and Christopher Lee, died on August 16, aged eighty-three. The co-creator (with Robert Gottschalk) of the anamorphic wide-screen Panavision format, he worked uncredited as an underwater camera operator
on Thunderball, and his other credits include The Wild Angels, Devil’s Angels, Wild in the Streets and Myra Breckinridge.

  American make-up artist Michael R. Thomas (aka Mike Thomas) died following a minor hospital procedure on August 24, three days before his sixtieth birthday. He had suffered from a heart condition for a few years. During the mid-1960s he made himself up as a dancing Frankenstein Monster for the live TV show Disc-O-Teen, and Thomas was a regular at horror movie fan conventions made up as Bela Lugosi’s Dracula or Ygor. As a make-up artist he worked on such movies as The Wonderful Land of Oz (1969), The Sentinel, The Wiz, Wolfen, Ghostbusters, Fear City, My Demon Lover, Fatal Attraction, Ghostbusters II, PlayMate of the Apes, The Lord of the G-Strings: The Femaleship of the Ring, Dr Horror’s Erotic House of Idiots, The Stepford Wives (2004), Bite Me!, An Erotic Werewolf in London, Disney’s Enchanted and the 2007 version of I Am Legend. As an actor he appeared in many of these films, and also turned up in Fanny Hill Meets Dr Erotico (as The Monster), Titanic 2000, Erotic Witch 2: Book of Seduction, Mistress Frankenstein (in various roles, including The Monster again), Witchbabe: The Erotic Witch Project 3, Vampire Vixens, Spiderbabe, Rectuma, The Ghosts of Angela Webb, Shock-O-Rama, Skin Crawl, Sculpture and House of the Wolf Man (as Dracula).

  Dick (Richard J.) Berg, a pioneer of 1970s made-for-TV movies, died on September 1 of complications from a fall, aged eighty-seven. A former scriptwriter, he executive produced such TV films and mini-series as The Spell, Night Cries, Are You in the House Alone? and Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles.

  American film and TV director/producer/screenwriter Arnold Laven died of pneumonia on September 13, aged eighty-seven. A former script supervisor and co-founder of the independent Levy-Gardner-Laven production company, he directed The Monster That Challenged the World and produced The Vampire (both 1957). His TV credits include episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Ghost Story, Shazam!, Planet of the Apes, Isis, The Six Million Dollar Man, Fantasy Island (including the “Vampire” episode), Turnabout, Time Express (starring Vincent Price) and The Greatest American Hero.

  American film producer Melvin Simon died of pancreatic cancer on September 16, aged eighty-three. While an executive at Columbia Pictures, he founded AVCO Embassy Pictures in 1967 and produced a number of films during the 1970s and 1980s, including Dominique (aka Dominique is Dead), The Manitou, Love at First Bite, When a Stranger Calls (1979), UFOria and the Porky’s series. With his younger brother Herbert, Simon developed shopping mall sites, including the Mall of America near Minneapolis, which opened in 1992.

  Romanian-born British film editor Teddy Darvas died on September 27, aged eighty-four. His credits include Gonks Go Beat, The Man Who Haunted Himself, Tales from the Crypt (1972), The Amazing Mr Blunden and Dark Places.

  Veteran British film producer, cinematographer, screenwriter and director Robert S. (Sidney) Baker who, with his business partner Monty Berman, was a low-budget rival to Hammer Films in the late 1950s and early 1960s, died on September 30, aged ninety-three. Among the many “B” movies produced by Baker and Berman were Blood of the Vampire, The Trollenberg Terror (aka The Crawling Eye), The Flesh and the Fiends (aka Mania/ The Fiendish Ghouls) and What a Carve Up! (aka No Place Like Homicide), and the pair also co-directed Jack the Ripper (1959) and The Hellfire Club (both of which Baker photographed). He later went on to co-produce the TV series The Saint and The Persuaders, both with star Roger Moore.

  French-born Hollywood agent and film producer Alain Bernheim died of complications during kidney dialysis in Paris on October 2, three days before his eighty-seventh birthday. As a talent agent he represented such writers as Gore Vidal, Pierre Boulle and Jean-Paul Sartre, along with film directors Jules Dassin, Louis Malle, Nicholas Ray, John Frankenheimer and Joseph Losey. During the communist witch-hunts in America, Bernheim represented a number of blacklisted talents.

  Italian exploitation writer, producer and director Rino Di Silvestro died of cancer on October 3, aged seventy-seven. His credits include the prison sexploitation films Women in Cell Block 7 and SS Special Section Women, plus the 1976 horror movie Werewolf Woman (La lupa mannara).

  American make-up artist Bob (Robert A.) Westmoreland died of a heart attack in Hawaii on October 6, aged seventy-four. He was the make-up supervisor on Close Encounters of the Third Kind (which he also had a cameo in), and his other credits include Love Me Deadly, the TV movie Satan’s Triangle, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Ravagers, 1941, The Island and Twilight Zone The Movie.

  Barry [Leopold] Letts, a former actor-turned-TV producer/director/writer, died of cancer on October 9, aged eighty-four. He appeared in such series as The Moonstone (1959), Invisible Man (1959), City Beneath the Sea and The Avengers before moving to the other side of the camera. Letts produced the 1973 BBC series Moonbase 3, Sexton Blake and the Demon God, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1982) The Invisible Man (1984) and nearly 130 episodes of Doctor Who between 1967 and 1981, many of which he also directed. In the 1990s he scripted a couple of BBC Radio 2 serials for Jon Pertwee’s Doctor, The Paradise of Death and Doctor Who and the Ghosts of N-Space, which he subsequently novelized. The 2009 Doctor Who special, The Waters of Mars, was dedicated to Letts’ memory.

  Italian cinematographer Franco Villa (aka “Frank Town”) died on October 12. After working as a camera assistant during the 1950s on such films as My Friend Dr Jekyll, his exploitation credits include Asylum Erotica (aka Slaughter Hotel), Jungle Master, The Return of the Exorcist, Giallo a Venezia, Patrick Still Lives, A Girl for Satan and a number of Spaghetti Westerns.

  Daniel Melnick, film producer and the former head of production at MGM and Columbia studios, died of lung cancer on October 13, aged seventy-seven. Credited as the creative force behind the comedy sci-spy TV series Get Smart (1965–70), his film credits include Straw Dogs, All That Jazz, Altered States, Get Smart Again! and Universal Soldier The Return.

  American film and TV director [Abraham] Paul Wendkos died of a lung infection on November 12, aged eighty-four. He had earlier suffered a stroke. Wendkos’ many credits include Gidget and its two sequels, Fear No Evil, The Brotherhood of the Bell, The Mephisto Waltz, Haunts of the Very Rich, The Legend of Lizzie Borden, Good Against Evil, The Bad Seed (1985), From the Dead of Night and episodes of The Wild Wild West and The Invaders.

  Hollywood costume designer Robert Turturice, who was president of the Costume Designers Guild from 1992 to 1996, died of a heart attack on December 15. He was sixty. Turturice began his career designing the costumes for the 1975–76 Filmation TV series The Ghost Busters, and his other credits include The Star Wars Holiday Special, Big-Top Pee-Wee, Solar Crisis, Fade to Black, Joel Schumacher’s infamous Batman and Robin and The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas.

  Roy E. [Edward] Disney, the nephew of Walt Disney who led two successful shareholder revolts at the family’s company, died of stomach cancer on December 16, aged seventy-nine. The son of Roy O. Disney, who co-founded the company with his brother Walt, Roy E. Disney was elected to the Board of Directors in 1967. In 1984, having led a campaign to replace Walt Disney’s son-in-law, Ron Miller, because he felt that he was guiding the company in the wrong direction, he returned as vice chairman of the Board and head of the Animation Department. Almost twenty years later he helped remove Disney chairman and CEO Michael Eisner, the man he had brought in after the previous shareholder revolt. Among the films he presided over were Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and Fantasia 2000.

  British production designer Peter Murton died just before Christmas. He began his career in the art department in the mid-1940s, working his way up to art director on such films as Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure, Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Goldfinger, Thunderball, Night Watch and Stargate. As a production designer, his credits include The Ruling Class, The Possession of Joel Delaney, The Man with the Golden Gun, Dracula (1979), Superman II, Superman III, Sheena, King Kong Lives, Popcorn and the Disney theme park attraction From Time to
Time (featuring Jeremy Irons as H.G. Wells). In later years Murton was a guest speaker at a number of James Bond-themed events.

  USEFUL ADDRESSES

  THE FOLLOWING LISTING OF organizations, publications, dealers and individuals is designed to present readers and authors with further avenues to explore. Although I can personally recommend most of those listed on the following pages, neither the publisher nor myself can take any responsibility for the services they offer. Please also note that the information below is only a guide and is subject to change without notice.

  —Editor

  ORGANIZATIONS

  The Australian Horror Writers Association (www.australianhorror.com) is a non-profit organization that formed as a way of providing a unified voice and a sense of community for Australian (and New Zealand) writers of horror/dark fiction, while furthering the development and evolution of this genre within Australia. AHWA aims to become the focal point and first point of reference for Australian writers and fans of the dark side of literature, and to improve the acceptance and understanding of what horror is to a wider audience. For more information mail to: Australian Horror Writers Association, Post Office, Elphinstone, Victoria 3448, Australia. E-mail: ahwa@australianhorror.com

  The British Fantasy Society (www.britishfantasysociety.org) was founded in 1971 and publishes the newsletter Prism and the magazines Dark Horizons and New Horizons, featuring articles, interviews and fiction, along with occasional special booklets. The BFS also enjoys a lively online community – there is an e-mail news-feed, a discussion board with numerous links, and a CyberStore selling various publications. FantasyCon is one of the UK’s friendliest conventions and there are social gatherings and meet-the-author events organized around Britain. For yearly membership details, e-mail: secretary@britishfantasysociety.org.uk. You can also join online through the CyberStore.