The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 2003, Volume 14

by Stephen Jones

  Tokyo-born child actor Peter Miles (Gerald Perreau-Saissine) died of cancer on August 3rd, aged 64. The brother of actresses Gigi Perreau and Janine Perreau, he appeared in such films as Abbott and Costello in Hollywood and Who Killed “Doc” Robbin? (aka Sinister House). Under the name “Richard Miles” he appeared on US TV in the 1950s, was the author of several novels, and scripted the 1963 movie They Saved Hitler’s Brain (aka Madmen of Mandoras).

  Three-foot, two-inch actor Joshua Ryan Evans, who portrayed Timmy the living doll on the daily NBC-TV show Passions, died on August 5th of complications related to a congenital heart condition while undergoing a hospital procedure. Bizarrely, the 20-year-old actor’s evil character also died in that same day’s episode of the soap opera. The diminutive Evans, who suffered from achondroplasia, a genetic disorder which restricted his growth, had a recurring role in TV’s Ally McBeal, appeared in Poltergeist: The Legacy and played the young Grinch in Dr Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000).

  Television actor Matthew Robinson, Jr. died of Parkinson’s disease the same day, aged 65. Best know for his recurring role as Gordon on TV’s Sesame Street from 1969–71, he also scripted the 1972 movie The Possession of Joel Delaney.

  88-year-old veteran American character actor Jeff Corey, who became a top acting coach after he was blacklisted for ten years in 1951, died on August 16th due to complications from a fall at his Malibu home earlier in the week. He moved to Hollywood in the early 1940s, where he appeared in small roles in You’ll Find Out, The Reluctant Dragon, The Devil and Daniel Webster, The Man Who Wouldn’t Die and Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. After serving as a combat photographer in the Navy during World War II, he resumed his career in such films as Miracle on 34th Street, The Next Voice You Hear, Superman and the Mole Men, Lady in a Cage, Mickey One, Seconds, In Cold Blood, The Boston Strangler, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, The Premonition, Oh God!, Jennifer, Battle Beyond the Stars, The Sword and the Sorcerer, Conan the Destroyer, Creator and The Judas Project, along with the TV movies Something Evil, Curse of the Black Widow, Cry for the Strangers and The Lottery. He also voiced the character of Silvermane in the animated Spider-Man series. As a drama teacher, Corey’s students included Anthony Perkins, James Dean, Jane Fonda, Leonard Nimoy, Roger Corman, Rob Reiner and Jack Nicholson.

  Mexican actress Alicia Montoya died of a bronchial infection on August 17th, aged 82. The daughter of actress Maria Tereza Montoya, her films include The Vampire (1957), The Vampire’s Coffin and Santo versus the Martians.

  Prolific American character actor Dennis Fimple died on August 23rd, aged 61. His films include The Spectre of Edgar Allan Poe, King Kong (1976), Creature from Black Lake, The Shadow of Chikara, The Evictors, Bug Buster, Fangs and Rob Zombie’s long-delayed House of 1000 Corpses. On TV he appeared in Automan, Battlestar Galactica, Twilight Zone, Quantum Leap, Weird Science and Sabrina The Teenage Witch.

  Massachusetts fisherman Craig Johnstone Kingsbury, who was hired to coach Robert Shaw in the local accent for Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975), died in a nursing home on August 29th, aged 89. He had a small role in the film as fisherman Ben Gardner, whose severed head is discovered in the underwater wreckage of his boat.

  68-year-old American stage, film and TV actor Ted Ross, who won a Tony Award in 1975 for his portrayal of the Cowardly Lion in the Broadway musical The Wiz, died in a nursing home on September 3rd, after suffering a stroke in 1998. His films include the 1978 version of The Wiz, plus Amityville II: The Possession, Arthur 2: On the Rocks and The Fisher King.

  Mexican wrestler Nathaniel Leon (aka “Frankenstein”) died on September 5th, aged 85. Often cast as the villain, his many film credits include Locura de Terror, Samson vs the Vampire Women, Santo contra el Cerebro Diablico, Samson in the Wax Museum, Santo vs el Estranglador, Las Mujeres Panteras, Aranas Infernales, Madam Death, Dr Satan y la Magia Nera, Incredible Invasion (with Boris Karloff), Secret of Death, Santo contra el Jinetes del Terror, La Venganza de las Mujeres Vampiro, Chabelo y Pepito vs los Monstruos, Los Vampiros de Cocoyacan and Capulina vs los Monstruos.

  Radio actor Jackie Kelk died of a lung infection on September 5th, aged 81. He starred in the title role in Terry and the Pirates, and was Jimmy Olsen on the Superman radio series for seven years.

  American stage and film actor Cliff Gorman died of leukaemia the same day, aged 65. His movies include Justine, All That Jazz, Night of the Juggler and Angel.

  British stage and screen actress Katrin Cartlidge, best known for her appearances in Mike Leigh’s films, died of complications from pneumonia and septicaemia on September 7th, aged 41. Her other credits include From Hell and the Channel Four TV production of Cinderella (2000).

  55-year-old British film and TV character actor Michael [John] Elphick, who fought a long battle against alcoholism, died on September 8th after collapsing two days earlier. He appeared in such films as Hamlet (1969), Cry of the Banshee (with Vincent Price), Blind Terror (aka See No Evil), O Lucky Man!, The Elephant Man, Gorky Park and I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle.

  Oscar-winning American actress Kim Hunter (Janet Cole), best remembered for her role as Dr Zira in Planet of the Apes and the sequels Beneath the Planet of the Apes and Escape from the Planet of the Apes, died of an apparent heart attack on September 10th, aged 79. A victim of the Communist blacklist in the 1950s, Hunter’s other films include Val Lewton’s The Seventh Victim (her screen debut for David O. Selznick, who changed her name), A Matter of Life and Death (aka Stairway to Heaven), Lilith, The Kindred, Two Evil Eyes and such TV movies as Bad Ronald, Dark August and The Golden Gate Murders. Early in her career she appeared on stage in Arsenic and Old Lace at the Pasadena Playhouse.

  American character actor James Gregory died on September 16th, aged 90. A former stockbroker, he appeared in The Manchurian Candidate, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, $1,000,000 Duck, The Strongest Man in the World and the TV movie Miracle on 34th Street (1973). He also played Dean Martin’s boss, Macdonald, in the three 1960s Matt Helm sci-spy spoofs, The Silencers, Murderers Row and The Ambushers.

  Hungarian-born actor Sandor Eles died of a heart attack in London in September, aged 66. His film and TV credits include And Soon the Darkness, Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady, Hammer’s The Evil of Frankenstein and Countess Dracula, and the Czech Mate episode of Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense.

  American-born film actor Al Matthews died of cancer in Spain on October 6th. He appeared in The Final Conflict, The Sender, Superman III, Aliens, Riders of the Storm and the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies.

  British stage and screen actress Phyllis Calvert (Phyllis Bickle) died in her sleep on October 8th, aged 87. A leading lady of the 1940s, her later films included Twisted Nerve (1968) and she starred on stage in adaptations of Peter Pan and Blithe Spirit.

  54-year-old actress Teresa Graves, who starred as a jive-talking Countess Dracula opposite an embarrassed-looking David Niven in the 1974 film Vampira (aka Old Dracula), died on October 10th following a fire in her Los Angeles apartment. A regular on TV’s Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In (1968–72), she also starred as an undercover cop on the police series Get Christie Love! (1974-75). Graves gave up acting in the early 1980s to become a Jehovah’s Witness.

  American character actor Keene Curtis died of Alzheimer’s disease on October 13th, aged 79. A regular on the TV series The Magician (1973), he also appeared in such TV films as Stowaway to the Moon, Strange New World and Modesty Blaise (1982), plus the movies Heaven Can Wait and Sliver.

  86-year-old Louisiana radio disc-jockey Horace Lee Logan, who gave Elvis Presley, Hank Williams and Johnny Cash their first big breaks, died the same day after battling pancreatitis and acute respiratory distress. He was the first person to announce “Elvis has left the building”.

  October 13th also saw the death in a fire at his Hollywood Hills home of 84-year-old TV actor Dennis Patrick, who appeared in episodes of The Twilight Zone, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and was a regular in the 1960s Dark Shadows (plus the 1970 fea
ture House of Dark Shadows). Among his other credits are Daddy’s Gone a-Hunting, Dear Dead Delilah and Nightmare Honeymoon. The actor had been battling cancer and kidney failure.

  Former Honolulu police officer turned actor Kam Fong (Kam Fong Chun), who played Detective Chin Ho Kelly on TV’s Hawaii Five-O from 1968–78, died after a long battle with lung cancer on October 18th, aged 84.

  Veteran French actor Bernard Fresson, whose credits include The Tenant and Brotherhood of the Wolf, died on October 20th, aged 71.

  American TV soap opera actress Barbara Berjer died of pneumonia the same day, aged 82. Her character was so popular on Another World that, after she was killed off, viewer demand meant she came back as a ghost.

  Canadian-born character actor George Hall died of complications from a stroke in New York City on October 21st, aged 85. Best known for his stage roles, he portrayed the 93-year-old Indy on the 1990s TV series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.

  A body found in the desert north of Las Vegas was identified seventeen days later on October 22nd as former Our Gang child actor, Jay R. Smith, who appeared as Freckles in the series of shorts between 1925 and 1929. 87-year-old Smith died of multiple stab wounds inflicted by a homeless person he had let stay in his house.

  Hellraising Irish actor Richard Harris died on October 25th, aged 72. He had been undergoing chemotherapy for Hodgkin’s disease since the summer. The star of such films as The Bible . . . In the Beginning, the musical Camelot (as King Arthur), 99 and 44/100% Dead, Gulliver’s Travels (1976), Orca Killer Whale and Tarzan the Ape Man (1981), in recent years he appeared as Professor Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (in which he had to be doubled in some scenes). He had a pop hit in 1968 with Jimmy Webb’s ballad “MacArthur Park”, and his second wife from 1974–81 was actress Ann Turkel.

  47-year-old American actress Cheryl “Rainbeaux” Smith, whose credits include The Phantom of the Paradise, The Legendary Curse of Lemora, Massacre at Central High, The Incredible Melting Man, Fantasm Comes Again, Laserblast, UFOria and Parasite, also died on October 25th, of complications from hepatitis exacerbated by long-time drug abuse.

  84-year-old American actress Peggy Moran (Marie Jeanette Moran), who appeared in several horror and Western films in the 1930s and 1940s, died the same day of complications from injuries suffered in a car crash. Dubbed “The Shrieking Violet”, her credits include Universal’s The Mummy’s Hand, Horror Island and the serial Drums of the Congo. Moran’s movie career ended in 1943 after she married director Henry Koster (who died in 1988), and a bust of her head appeared in every movie he made after they were married.

  Veteran American character actor Lawrence (Larry) Dobkin died of heart failure on October 28th, aged 83. His films include Whirlpool, DOA, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Angels in the Outfield, Riders to the Stars, Them!, Sabaka, The Lost Missile, The Ten Commandments, The Cabinet of Caligari (1962) and Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time. He also appeared in episodes of TV’s Superman (1953), Space Patrol, Voyagers!, Knight Rider and Star Trek The Next Generation.

  39-year-old skydiver Mike Barber was presumed dead on October 28th, two days after his parachute landed in the ocean instead of on the beach while shooting a stunt for the Bruce Willis film Tears of the Sun.

  Run-DMC rapper Jason “Jam Master Jay” Mizell was shot dead in a Queens, New York, recording studio in an apparently drug-related killing on October 30th. He was 37.

  86-year-old Italian leading man Raf (Raffaele) Vallone died on Hallowe’en. A former journalist, his credits include Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die, A Thousand and One Nights, and a 1960 Italian TV adaptation of Jane Eyre.

  Indonesian-born Hong Kong martial arts star and director Lo Lieh (Wong Lap-Dat) died of a heart attack on November 2nd, aged 62. He appeared in more than 100 films, including Human Skin Lanterns, Black Magic II, Three Fantastic Supermen in the Orient, The Battle Wizard and Ghosts Galore.

  Prissy American character actor Jonathan Harris (Jonathan Charasuchin), best known for his role as the cowardly yet nefarious Dr Zachary Smith on the CBS-TV series Lost in Space (1965–68), died of a blood clot in his heart while undergoing therapy for a chronic back problem in hospital on November 3rd, three days before his 88th birthday. On TV he was the voice of the evil Lucifer on Battlestar Galactica (1978–79), a regular on Space Academy (1977–79), and guest-starred in Lights Out, Twilight Zone, Land of the Giants, Bewitched, The Ghost and Mrs Muir, Get Smart and Night Gallery. Harris also voiced characters for Disney’s A Bug’s Life and Toy Story 2, plus the 2001 short Hubert’s Brain. He reprised his role as Dr Smith for the NBC-TV movie, Lost in Space: The Journey Home. “Never fear, Smith is here!”

  The same day saw the death of 71-year-old Scottish-born “skiffle” singer-songwriter Lonnie Donegan (Anthony Donegan), whose music inspired the Beatles. Donegan, who collapsed while halfway through a British tour, is best remembered for such songs as “Rock Island Line”, “Cumberland Gap”, “My Old Man’s a Dustman” and “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour (On the Bedpost Overnight)”.

  Billy Mitchell, a singer with 1950s doo-wop group the Clovers, died of cancer on November 5th, aged 71. He was the lead singer on Lieber and Stoller’s “Love Potion No.9”. After leaving the group in 1962, Mitchell worked at a Washington, D.C., hospital until his retirement in 1992.

  Norma Lee Clark, who starred in the TV series Captain Video and His Video Rangers, died of cancer on November 8th, aged around 75. For more than thirty years she was Woody Allen’s personal assistant and wrote fifteen Regency romance novels under her own name and the pseudonym “Megan O’Connor”.

  26-year-old former child actor and rap singer Merlin Santana, who was a regular in TV’s The Cosby Show, was shot dead by a woman while sitting in the passenger seat of a car in South Los Angeles on November 9th.

  American character actor Parley Baer, who portrayed Mayor Arthur J. Henson in TV’s The Addams Family (1964–66), died of complications from a stroke on November 11th, aged 88. A previous stroke in 1997 ended his more than sixty-year career in such films as The Brass Bottle, Two on a Guillotine, The Gnome-Mobile, Time Trackers and the TV movies Halloween with the New Addams Family, The Time Machine (1978) and Cry for the Strangers. He also appeared in episodes of Thriller, The Outer Limits, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Land of the Giants, Project UFO, The Incredible Hulk, Shadow Chasers, Quantum Leap, The Flash and the revived Twilight Zone. Baer was also the voice of Ernie, the Keebler Elf, in the Keebler cookie commercials.

  Baritone Billy Guy, who began his career with R&B group The Robins singing Leiber and Stoller’s “Riot in Cell Block No.9” and “Smokey Joe’s Café”, and later co-founded the Coasters, died of heart disease on November 12th, aged 66. His distinctive voice can be heard on such 1950s hits as “Searchin” and “Yakety Yak”.

  57-year-old music producer and founding member of California folk-rock group We Five, Michael Stewart died on November 13th after a long illness. In the mid-1960s, We Five had hits with “You Were on My Mind” and “Let’s Get Together”, and Stewart later produced albums and singles for Billy Joel and Tom Jones, among others.

  Hollywood musical-comedy star of the 1940s Eddie Bracken died from surgery complications on November 14th, aged 87. He voiced the role of Archy in the 1971 animated movie Shinbone Alley and late in his career he appeared in episodes of TV’s Tales from the Darkside (“A Case of the Stubbons”), Amazing Stories (“Boo”) and Monsters (“The Maker”).

  Academy Award-winning Hollywood star James Coburn died unexpectedly of a heart attack on November 18th, aged 74. He portrayed super-cool secret agent Derek Flint in the 1960s sci-spy adventures Our Man Flint and In Like Flint. His other films include The Loved One, The President’s Analyst, Looker, Hudson Hawk, The Nutty Professor (1996) and Disney’s Monsters Inc. He also helped with the story for the martial arts fantasy The Silent Flute (aka Circle of Iron). On TV Coburn appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Men Int
o Space, The Twilight Zone, Noah’s Ark (1999) and the Dean Koontz adaptation Mr Murder, he hosted the ABC anthology series Darkroom (1981–82), was the voice of Looten Plunder in the animated series Captain Planet and the Planeteers, and executive produced the 2001 miniseries of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon.

  American actress and World War II pin-up model Adele Jergens died on November 22nd, aged 84. Her film credits include Columbia’s Western serial Black Arrow, A Thousand and One Nights, Down to Earth, The Crime Doctor’s Diary, Radar Secret Service, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man and The Day the World Ended (1955). From 1949 she was married to actor Glenn Langan (who died in 1991).

  59-year-old actor and retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Richard C. Stilwell, Jr. was killed in a car crash in Los Angeles on November 23rd. After earning a Silver Star for gallantry in Vietnam, he became an actor, appearing in such films as Beneath Loch Ness, Mimic 2 and Bug.

  German actor Wolfgang Preiss died on November 27th, aged 92. Best known for playing Nazis on screen, he also appeared as super-criminal Dr Mabuse in a series of films in the early 1960s – The 1,000 Eyes of Dr Mabuse, The Return of Dr Mabuse, The Invisible Dr Mabuse, The Testament of Dr Mabuse, Dr Mabuse vs Scotland Yard and The Secret of Dr Mabuse – plus Mill of the Stone Women, The Mad Executioners, The Cave of the Living Dead, The Boys from Brazil and Dr M.

  British leading man John Justin (John Justinian de Ledesma) died on November 29th, aged 85. Best known for his stage roles, he appeared in the films The Thief of Bagdad (1940), The Sound Barrier and Lisztomania. Justin also portrayed the vampire father of Dorabella in a 1977 episode of the BBC-TV series Supernatural, and the living-dead villain in the 1979 BBC adaptation of J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Schalcken the Painter. The second of his three wives was actress Barbara Murray.