The Best New Horror 2

by Ramsay Campbell

  Best known for his starring role in Chariots of Fire, British actor Ian Charleson died on January 6th from AIDS. He was 40, and also appeared in Opera and Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes.

  Veteran comedy actor Terry-Thomas died on January 8th, aged 78. He had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease for many years. His long list of credits includes tom thumb, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, Munster Go Home!, Danger: Diabolik, The Abominable Dr Phibes, Dr Phibes Rises Again, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1977) and Vault of Horror.

  Film and TV actor Gordon Jackson died on January 15th, aged 66. His many film appearances include Meet Mr Lucifer, The Quatermass Experiment, Scrooge, Madam Sin, Spectre, The Medusa Touch and The Masks of Death.

  Veteran actress Barbara Stanwyck died on January 20th from congestive heart failure. She was 82. She appeared in Flesh and Fantasy and William Castle’s The Night Walker as well as the early ’70s TV movies The House That Would Not Die and A Taste of Evil.

  Madge Bellamy, who co-starred with Bela Lugosi in White Zombie (1932) died on January 24th, aged 89.

  Hollywood actress Ava Gardner, once voted the world’s most beautiful woman, died of pneumonia at her London home on January 25th. She was 67. The star of more than 60 films, her credits include Spooks Run Wild and Ghosts on the Loose (both with Bela Lugosi), One Touch of Venus, Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, On the Beach, Seven Days in May, Earthquake, The Bluebird (1976) and The Sentinel.

  The same day, British character actor Ian Dudley Hardy was killed near London when a tree uprooted by the storms struck his car. He was aged 79 and was featured in the 1936 Things to Come.

  German-born actor Henry Brandon died of a heart attack in Los Angeles on February 13th, aged 77. He portrayed Captain Lasca in the 1939 serial Buck Rogers with Buster Crabbe and the following year played the oriental mastermind in The Drums of Fu Manchu. His numerous other film credits include Laurel & Hardy’s Babes in Toyland, Doomed to Die, Tarzan and the She-Devil, War of the Worlds, The Land Unknown, Scared Stiff, Captain Sinbad, Search for the Evil One and Assault on Precinct 13.

  Character actor Gary Merrill died on March 5th from cancer. He was 74. His numerous credits include The Mysterious Island, The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die, Destination Inner Space, Earth II and The Power.

  French model and actress Capucine (Germaine Lefebvre) killed herself on March 17th. She was 57. Among her many international films were The Pink Panther and Arabian Adventure (with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing).

  Hollywood goddess Greta Garbo died on April 15th from undisclosed causes. She was 84. Born Greta Gustafson in Sweden, she starred in a number of movies for MGM during the late 1920s and early ’30s until her early retirement in 1941. She appeared with Bela Lugosi in Ninotchka (1939) and turned up in the 1974 gay sex film Adam and Yves.

  Paulette Goddard, actress and former wife of Charlie Chaplin and Burgess Meredith (amongst four husbands), died on April 23rd after a brief illness. She starred in more than forty movies, including Chaplin’s Modern Times and alongside Bob Hope in the two classic horror comedies, The Cat and the Canary (1939) and The Ghost Breakers (1940). Her last film was the 1972 TV movie, The Snoop Sisters.

  Actor Albert Salmi and his wife were found shot dead on April 23rd in an apparent murder-suicide. He was 62, and his credits include The Ambushers, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Empire of the Ants, Dragonslayer, Kung Fu II, The Coming and Superstition (aka The Witch).

  David Rappaport, the diminutive star of Time Bandits, TV’s The Wizard and the nine-hour National Theatre version of Illuminatus, committed suicide on May 2nd in Los Angeles. The 38-year-old, 3 ft 11 ins actor was suffering from depression and was found dead from a gunshot wound. His other movies include The Bride and Sword of the Valiant.

  Actress Susan Oliver died on May 10th of cancer, aged 53. Amongst her many TV credits was the Star Trek pilot The Cage/Menagerie as well as such films as The Monitors, Change of Mind and Murder By Decree.

  Singer and entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr. died on May 16th from throat cancer. He appeared in One More Time and Poor Devil (both with Christopher Lee), Alice in Wonderland (1985) and episodes of TV’s Wild, Wild West, Batman, I Dream of Jeannie and Fantasy Island.

  Jill Ireland, British-born actress and wife of Charles Bronson, died of cancer on May 18th, aged 54. She began her career as a Rank starlet and married actor David McCallum in 1957. They divorced ten years later. Her films include Someone Behind the Door, The Karate Killers and TV’s The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything, along with episodes of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Star Trek and Night Gallery.

  Comedian and actor Max Wall died on May 22nd after falling outside a restaurant in London’s Strand. He was aged 82. His movie credits include the Pythonesque fantasy Jabberwocky.

  Debonair British actor Sir Rex Harrison died from pancreatic cancer on June 2nd, aged 82. Although his career alternated between stage and film productions on both sides of the Atlantic, he is best remembered for his Oscar-winning role as Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady (1964). His other movie credits include Blithe Spirit, The Ghost and Mrs Muir, Midnight Lace and Doctor Dolittle.

  Veteran character actor Jack Gilford died the same day from cancer. He was 81. His many credits include They Might Be Giants, Catch 22, Caveman, Cocoon and Cocoon the Return.

  British character actor Raymond Huntley died in June, aged 86. He played Dracula on the stage between 1928–30, and he appeared in such movies as The Ghost of St Michaels, The Ghost Train, Passport to Pimlico, I’ll Never Forget You, Meet Mr Lucifer, The Black Torment and Hammer’s remake of The Mummy (1959).

  Actor Leonard Sachs died from kidney failure on June 15th, aged 82. His occasional film appearances included Taste of Fear (aka Scream of Fear), The Gamma People, The Giant Behemoth, Konga and Thunderball, as well as TV’s Dr Who and 1984.

  British actress Anna Palk died on July 1st from cancer. She was 48. Her many credits include The Earth Dies Screaming, The Skull, Fahrenheit 451, The Frozen Dead, Tower of Evil (aka Horror of Snape Island) and The Nightcomers.

  Actor Howard Duff died on July 8th of a heart attack, aged 76. He appeared in the 1953 film Spaceways, plus Oh, God Book II, Monster in the Closet and numerous TV series.

  Irene Champlin, who played Dale Arden in the 1950s Flash Gordon TV series, died on July 10th, aged 59.

  Leading lady Margaret Lockwood died on July 15th. She was 73. Despite attracting the attention of Hollywood with her starring role in Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, most of her films were made in Britain, including Dr Syn (1937), A Place of One’s Own and The Slipper and the Rose.

  American comic actor Eddie Quillan, aged 83, died on July 19th of cancer. Besides appearing in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and The Grapes of Wrath, he also turned up in Brigadoon, The Ghost and Mrs Chicken, Angel in My Pocket, Jungle Queen, Jungle Raiders and TV’s The Darker Side of Terror.

  Actress Elizabeth Allan, who co-starred with Bela Lugosi in Mark of the Vampire and also appeared in The Phantom Fiend (aka The Lodger, 1935), died on July 27th. She was 80.

  Jill Esmond died on July 28th. The 82-year-old actress was the first wife of Laurence Olivier, and her credits include FP1 Does Not Reply and 13 Women.

  Actor Maurice Braddell died the same day, aged 89. He played Dr Harding in the 1936 version of Things to Come.

  Nina Bara, who portrayed the regular villainess, Tonga, in the ’50s TV show Space Patrol, died on August 15th of cancer. She was 66. She also starred in Missile to the Moon.

  Black actor Raymond St Jacques, aged 60, died on August 27th from cancer of the lymph glands. He portrayed Martin Luther King in The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover, and other credits include Change of Mind, The Eyes of Laura Mars, They Live and Search for the Gods, as well as numerous TV appearances.

  Hollywood star of the 1930s and ’40s Irene Dunne died on September 4th from heart failure at the age of 88. She appeared in 13 Women, A Guy Named Joe, It Grows on Trees and the James Whale version of Sho
wboat.

  British character actress Athene Seyler died on September 11th, aged 101. She appeared in the 1935 version of Scrooge and played Mrs Karswell in Night of the Demon (aka Curse of the Demon).

  Former child actor Jackie Moran died on September 20th from cancer, aged 65. Best remembered as Buddy Wade in the original Buck Rogers serial (1939), he also featured in Meet Mr Christian, Henry Aldrich Haunts a House and Hop Harrigan.

  British actress Jill Bennett committed suicide on October 4th, aged 59. She appeared in The Skull, The Nanny, Britannia Hospital, For Your Eyes Only, The Anatomist and Full Circle (aka The Haunting of Julia).

  Radio entertainer and straight man Richard Murdoch died of a heart attack on October 9th. He was 83, and his film credits include The Terror (1938) and The Ghost Train (1941).

  Tough-guy character actor Robert Tessier died on October 11th from cancer, aged 56. With his shaved head and muscular build, he often portrayed villains in such movies as The Velvet Vampire, Doc Savage The Man of Bronze, Starcrash, Billion Dollar Threat, The Sword and the Sorcerer, The Lost Empire and Double Exposure.

  French leading actress Delphine Seyrig died from lung disease on October 15th, aged 58. She appeared in Last Year in Marienbad, Mr Freedom, The Milky Way, Donkey Skin, Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Popular Press (as Frau Dr Mabuse) and the haunting Daughters of Darkness (as the vampirish Countess Bathory).

  Hollywood star Joel McCrea died on October 20th of pulmonary complications. He was 84. In a career that spanned four decades, he appeared in such classics as Sullivan’s Travels and Ride the High Country, as well as The Most Dangerous Game, Bird of Paradise (with Lon Chaney, Jr) and The Unseen.

  Character actress Freda Jackson died the same day at the age of 82. During the 1960s she appeared in a number of horror and fantasy movies including Shadow of the Cat, Hammer’s The Brides of Dracula, Die, Monster, Die! (aka Monster of Terror, with Boris Karloff), plus two Ray Harryhausen extravaganzas: Valley of Gwangi and Clash of the Titans.

  Italian leading actor Ugo Tognazzi died from a cerebral haemorrhage on October 27th, aged 68. He appeared in Toto in the Moon, My Friend Dr Jekyll, The Ape Woman, Barbarella (as Mark Hand), The Master and Margarita and La Grande Bouffe, amongst others.

  Spanish-American bandleader Xavier Cugat died on the same day from heart failure, aged 90. He appeared in many of the MGM musicals of the ’40s, as well as The Monitors and The Pyx.

  Veteran character actor Harry Lauter died on October 30th, aged 76, from heart failure. His numerous movie credits include The Flying Disc Man from Mars, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Canadian Mounties vs. Atomic Invaders, It Came from Beneath the Sea, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, The Creature with the Atom Brain, The Werewolf, Escape from the Planet of the Apes and Superbeast.

  British actress Valerie French died on November 3rd from leukaemia. She was 59. Amongst her credits were The 27th Day, The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake and TV’s The Prisoner.

  Musical comedy star Mary Martin died the same day of cancer, aged 76. The mother of actor Larry Hagman, she first starred on Broadway in One Touch of Venus and went on to be identified in the American public’s mind as the definitive Peter Pan.

  Will Kuluva died from an embolism on November 6th. He was 73. In 1964 he appeared in the Leo G. Carroll role in The Man from UNCLE TV pilot, which later became the feature To Trap a Spy. His many other small screen credits include Twilight Zone, Wild, Wild West and Beauty and the Beast.

  American comedienne and original Ziegfeld girl Eve Arden (Eunice Quedens) died on November 12th from heart disease, aged somewhere between 78 and 88. She appeared in Whistling in the Dark, One Touch of Venus, Sergeant Deadhead, The Strongest Man in the World and Pandemonium as well as the boxoffice hit Grease and TV’s Alice in Wonderland.

  Meghan Robinson, actress and founding member of Charles Busch’s Theater-in-Limbo, died on November 18th of AIDS. She was 35 and co-starred with Busch in the off-Broadway comedies Psycho Beach Party and Vampire Lesbians of Sodom.

  David White, who portrayed Larry Tate in the long-running TV series Bewitched, died on November 26th of a heart attack. He was 74.

  31-inch tall actress Tamara de Treaux, who played the title role in E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, died from heart and respiratory problems on November 28th. She was 31. She also appeared in Ghoulies and Rockula.

  Leading film and TV actor Robert Cummings, aged 80, died of kidney failure and pneumonia on December 2nd. He began his film career in 1935 and starred in Flesh and Fantasy, The Lost Moment, Heaven Only Knows, For Heaven’s Sake, Free for All, Dial M for Murder and Five Golden Dragons (with Christopher Lee).

  Veteran character actor Edward Binns died on December 4th from a heart attack. He was 74. Amongst his numerous credits are Curse of the Undead, Fail Safe, Hunter, The Power Within and Diary of the Dead.

  Hollywood leading lady Joan Bennett died of a heart attack on December 7th, aged 80. She made her movie debut in 1915 and appeared in Alice in Wonderland (1927 short), The Man Who Reclaimed His Head, The Secret Beyond the Door, For Heaven’s Sake, House of Dark Shadows and Suspiria. Between 1966–71 she played Elizabeth Collins Stoddard in the TV series Dark Shadows, and also appeared in the TV movies The Eyes of Charles Sand and This House Possessed.

  Tough-guy actor and pro-wrestler Mike Mazurki (Mikhail Mazurski) died on December 9th, aged 82, after a long illness. He made his screen debut in 1934 and went on to appear in Dr Renault’s Secret, Henry Aldrich Haunts a House, The Canterville Ghost (1943), Murder, My Sweet (as Moose Malloy), Dick Tracy (1945, as Splitface), The Horn Blows At Midnight, Sinbad the Sailor, Around the World in 80 Days, Zotz!, Alligator, Amazon Women On the Moon and Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy (1990).

  FILM/TV TECHNICIANS:

  “The dean of Hollywood art directors”, Lyle Wheeler, died of pneumonia on January 10th, aged 84. During a career that spanned 25 years and more than 400 films, he received 24 Academy Award nominations and won 5 times. His numerous credits include Gone With the Wind, Rebecca, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Cleopatra and Marooned.

  Low budget director William J. Hole, Jr. died from respiratory failure on February 11th. He was 71. Among his credits are The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow, The Devil’s Hand, Face of Terror and Man in Outer Space.

  Acclaimed British screenwriter, director and producer Michael Powell died on February 19th of prostate cancer. He was 84. With the late Emeric Pressburger he made 14 movies, including the classic fantasies A Matter of Life and Death (aka Stairway to Heaven), The Red Shoes, Tales of Hoffman and The Boy Who Turned Yellow. His other credits included the Academy Award-winning 1940 fantasy The Thief of Bagdad and the 1960 chiller Peeping Tom.

  Writer/producer Aubrey Wisberg died of cancer in New York on March 14th. He was 78. Besides being involved with such diverse projects as The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945) with Jack Benny and Hercules in New York (1969) with Arnold Schwarzenegger, he formed Mid-Century Productions with Jack Pollexfen in 1950. Over the next few years they turned out such “classics” as The Man from Planet X, Captive Women, The Neanderthal Man and Port Sinister.

  Cinematographer Karl Brown died March 25th, aged 93. He created double printing, first used in D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916) and helped develop the minature projection system used for King Kong (1933). During the late ’30s and early ’40s Brown wrote several low budget films featuring Boris Karloff as a mad scientist, including The Man They Could Not Hang, The Man With Nine Lives and Before I Hang.

  Milton S. Gelman, producer and chief writer on NBC-TV’s The Man from UNCLE for nearly four years, died on May 2nd following heart surgery. He was 70.

  British film designer Tony Masters, aged 70, died in May in the South of France. Married to actress Heather Sears, he entered the film industry in 1946 and was production designer on more than 60 movies including 2001: A Space Odyssey, for which he won a BAFTA Award and was nominated for an Oscar.

  Puppeteer and creator of the Muppets, Jim Henson,
died of a bacterial infection on May 17th, aged 53. After working in television during the late 1950s and early ’60s, his career took off with Sesame Street and The Muppet Show. Later television shows included Fraggle Rock, The Ghosts of Faffner Hall and The Storyteller, while his movie credits boasted The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, The Muppets Take Manhatten, The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, Dreamchild, The Witches and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

  Early special effects expert Theodore J. Lydecker died from cancer on May 25th, aged 81. Best known for his work with his brother Howard (who died in 1969) on the Republic serials of the 1930s–’50s, his credits include Dick Tracy (1937), The Adventures of Captain Marvel, Captain America, The Lady and the Monster, The Catman of Paris, Valley of the Zombies, King of the Rocket Men, The Invisible Monster, Zombies of the Stratosphere, Tobor the Great and Panther Girl of the Congo, amongst numerous others.

  Sir James Carreras, who headed Hammer Films from 1949–1980, died on June 9th. He was 81. Carreras built Hammer during the post-war years, but it was the release of The Quatermass Experiment (aka The Creeping Unknown) in 1955 that gave the company its direction and success, finally resulting in the Queens Award to Industry during the late ’60s.

  Veteran Disney art director Al Roelofs died on July 2nd from a stroke. He was 83, and his many credits include The Island At the Top of the World, Charley and the Angel, Escape from Witch Mountain, The Black Hole, Tron etc.

  Still photographer/montage expert Robert Coburn died on July 3rd, aged 90. He worked on King Kong (1933).

  TV director Philip Leacock died on July 14th from collapsed lungs, aged 73. His numerous credits include Baffled, When Michael Calls, Dying Room Only, The Curse of King Tut’s Tomb and Three Sovereigns for Sarah.

  Pioneer special effects cameraman Bud Thackery died on July 15th. He was 87, and directed the process photography on King Kong (1933) as well as working on Noah’s Ark (1928), The Jazz Singer, The Most Dangerous Game, Scarface, The Phantom Empire and many other movies.

  Alan Clarke, who directed Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire, died on July 24th, aged 54.