Scottish-born Canadian “tax shelter” film producer Peter R. Simpson died in Toronto of lung cancer on 5 June, aged 64. The founder of Simcom Ltd (later Norstar Filmed Entertainment) in 1971, his many credits include Prom Night, Curtains, Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II, Cold Comfort, Norman’s Awesome Experience, The Marsh and Succubus. In 1990 he produced and co-directed Prom Night III: The Last Kiss (as “Peter Simpson”).
Canadian-born Bill Glen (William E. Glenn), who directed the 1974 TV movie House of Evil, died in Los Angeles on 11 June, aged 74.
British cinematographer Alex Thomson (Alexander Thomson) died on 14 June, aged 78. A regular camera operator for Nicolas Roeg before becoming a director of photography in 1968, his many credits include Scent of Mystery, Dr Crippen, The Masque of the Red Death (1964), Fahrenheit 451, Casino Royale (1967, uncredited), The Night Digger, Death Line (aka Raw Meat), Dr Phibes Rises Again, The Man Who Would Be King, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Superman (1978), The Cat and the Canary (1979), Excalibur, The Keep, Electric Dreams, Legend, Labyrinth, High Spirits, Leviathan, Alien3, Demolition Man and Hamlet (1996).
Animal trainer Moe Di Sesso, who trained the raven, Jim Jr, in Roger Corman’s horror-comedy The Raven (1963), died on July 2nd, aged 83. His other credits include Willard, Ben, The Hills Have Eyes (1977), Devil Dog The Hound of Hell, My Stepmother is an Alien and Scissors, along with episodes of The Bionic Woman and 3rd Rock from the Sun.
Australian-born screenwriter, producer and director Richard Franklin died of prostate cancer on 11 July, aged 58. Inspired by Hitchcock’s Psycho, his credits include The True Story of Eskimo Nell (aka Dick Down Under), Patrick, RoadGames, Psycho II, Cloak & Dagger, Link, F/X 2, Running Delilah, Visitors and episodes of TV’s Beauty and the Beast, The Lost World and Flatland. He made a cameo appearance in John Landis’ Into the Night.
Adult film producer and director Jim Mitchell (James Lowell Mitchell) died of a heart attack on 12 July, aged 63. With his younger brother, Artie, he formed the pioneering Mitchell Brothers production company in the San Francisco Bay area in the early 1970s. It became one of the most successful “adult entertainment” studios ever with such hits as Behind the Green Door and Resurrection of Eve (both starring Marilyn Chambers), Sodom & Gomorrah: The Last 7 Days and Beyond De Sade. Mitchell served six years in prison after killing his brother in February 1991, and a TV film about their life, Rated X, was made by Emilio Estevez in 2000.
Hungarian-born cinematographer László Kovács (aka “Lester Kovacks”) died of cancer on 21 July, aged 74. He relocated to America in 1956 following the Hungarian revolution, and his eclectic credits include The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-up Zombies!!? (in which he also appears), The Time Travelers, Kiss Me Quick, Mantis in Lace, Psych-Out, Targets (with Boris Karloff), Easy Rider, Blood of Dracula’s Castle (with John Carradine), Hell’s Bloody Devils, Five Easy Pieces, Alex in Wonderland, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Blow Out, The Legend of the Lone Ranger, Ghostbusters, Sliver, Copycat, Multiplicity, Jack Frost and Return to Me. In 2002 he received the American Society of Cinematographer’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Record producer and business manager Don Arden (Harry Levy), the father of Sharon Osbourne, died on the same day, aged 81. Often known as the “Al Capone” of pop, he helped build the careers of the Small Faces, Black Sabbath and the Electric Light Orchestra. He was estranged from his daughter for more than twenty years until they were reunited on the reality TV series The Osbournes in 2002.
Carmen Dirigo (Daisy Obradowits), who was the hair and wig stylist at Universal during the 1940s, died on 25 July, aged 99. She began her film career in the mid-1930s, and her many credits for the studio include House of Dracula, The Spider Woman Strikes Back, The Cat Creeps, The Brute Man and [Abbott and Costello] Meet Frankenstein. She also worked on A Double Life, Secret Beyond the Door . . ., Mr Peabody and the Mermaid, Two Lost Worlds, The Vampire (1957), Diary of a Madman and the 1971 TV movie A Taste of Evil.
Veteran MGM make-up artist William [Julian] Tuttle died on 27 July, aged 95. During his thirty-five years at the studio, where he became head of the make-up department (1950-69), he worked on such movies as The Mark of the Vampire (the bullet hole in Bela Lugosi’s head) and The Wizard of Oz (both uncredited), Angels in the Outfield, Brigadoon, Moonfleet, Forbidden Planet, The World the Flesh and the Devil, Tarzan the Ape Man (1959), the 1960 The Time Machine (creating the memorable Morlocks), Atlantis the Los Continent, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, The 7 Faces ofDr Lao (for which he received an honorary Oscar in 1965), The Glass Bottom Boat, The Venetian Affair, The Power, The Maltese Bippy, What’s the Matter with Helen?, Moon of the Wolf, Necromancy, The Night Strangler, So Evil My Sister, The Phantom of Hollywood, Young Frankenstein, Logan’s Run, The Fury, Love at First Bite and ten titles starring Elvis Presley. Tuttle also contributed to several Twilight Zone episodes, including “Eye of the Beholder” and “Horror at 20,000 Feet”, and One Step Beyond, and he appeared in The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. episode “The Mother Muffin Affair” featuring Boris Karloff. He was married five times, and his first wife was actress Donna Reed, whom he met at MGM in 1943.
Acclaimed Swedish screenwriter, producer, and film and stage director [Ernst] Ingmar Bergman died on 30 July, aged 89. His best remembered film is The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde inseglet) in which Max von Sydow’s medieval knight plays chess with Death (Bengt Ekerot). Many of his other movies, including The Face (aka The Magician), The Virgin Spring (an Oscar winner), The Devil’s Eye, Through a Glass Darkly (another Oscar winner), Persona, Hour of the Wolf, The Magic Flute and Face to Face, contain fantasy elements. He had at least nine children and was married five times.
Legendary Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni died on the same day, aged 94. He was best known for his “swinging sixties” thriller Blow-Up and the road movie Zabriskie Point. Antonioni, who won an honorary Academy Award in 1995 for his life’s work, once said: “Actors are like cows. You have to lead them through a fence.”
British editor, writer, producer and director Peter Graham Scott died on 5 August, aged 83. He directed The Headless Ghost and Hammer’s Captain Clegg (aka Night Creatures, with Peter Cushing), and produced The Curse of King Tut’s Tomb and The Canterville Ghost (1986) for TV. Scott’s other television credits include an apparently forgotten series, One Step Beyond (1948-49), Tales of Mystery, Danger Man (aka Secret Agent), The Avengers, The Prisoner, Children of the Stones and Into the Labyrinth.
British TV broadcaster-turned-music entrepreneur Tony (Anthony Howard) Wilson died of a heart attack on 10 August after a year-long battle with kidney cancer. He was 57. Known as “Mr Manchester” for his support of that northern city’s music industry, he founded Factory Records, the label behind such bands as New Order, Joy Division and The Happy Mondays, and set up the legendary Hacienda Club in the late 1980s. He was portrayed by comedian Steve Coogan in the 2002 movie 24 Hour Party People.
British film producer Aida Young (Aida Cohen) died on 12 August, aged 86. She began her career as an uncredited second unit director on such Hammer Films as Pour-Sided Triangle and The Quatermass Experiment and as a production manager for the television series The New Adventures of Charlie Chan (1957-58) and Invisible Man (1958-59). As a producer, her credits include Hammer’s She (1965), One Million Years B.C., Slave Girls, The Vengeance of She, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, Taste the Blood of Dracula, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, Scars of Dracula and Hands of the Ripper, along with The Thief of Baghdad (1978). She also worked (uncredited) on Hellhound: Hellraiser II.
American film editor and producer Anthony Cartas died of liver cancer on 15 August, aged 86. As an editor for Roger Corman his credits include A Bucket of Blood (1959), Beast from Haunted Cave, The Fall of the House of Usher (1960), Last Woman on Earth, Master of the World, Pit and the Pendulum, Tales of Terror and X: The Man With X-Ray Eyes. He also edited The Comedy of Terrors and Tarzan and the Great River. Carras received a co-producer credit on a number of fi
lms, including Bikini Beach, Pajama Party, Beach Blanket Bingo, How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, Sergeant Dead Head, Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine and The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, and he co-wrote, produced and directed the 1971 Mexican horror movie The Fearmaker (aka Rancho del miedo).
Film director Richard T. Heffron died on 27 August, aged 76. His credits include Locusts, Futureworld and the miniseries V: The Final Battle.
Costume designer Jerry Bono, who worked on the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, died on 31 August, aged 65.
Hollywood dancer and choreographer Alex Romero (Alexander Bernard Quiroga) died on 8 September, aged 94. He worked on a number of classic musicals (often uncredited), including On the Town, An American in Paris and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, as well as Tom Thumb, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, 7 Faces of Dr Lao, Some Call It Loving, Love at First Bite and Xanadu.
Spanish production designer and special visual effects supervisor Emilio Ruiz del Río died of respiratory failure in Madrid on 14 September, aged 84. His many credits (often for director Juan Piquer Simón) include The Blancheville Monster, Devil’s Possessed (with Paul Naschy), Where Time Began, Supersonic Man, The Humanoid, Mystery on Monster Island (with Peter Cushing and Naschy), Treasure Island in Outer Space (aka Space Island), Conan the Barbarian, Conan the Destroyer, Dune, Cat’s Eye, Red Sonja, Slugs (based on the novel by Shaun Hutson), The Rift, Cthulhu Mansion, Accíon mutante, La Isla del diablo, The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth.
Film producer Stanley S. Canter, whose credits include Greystoke The Legend of Tarzan Lord of the Apes and Tarzan and the Lost City, died of cardiovascular complications on 12 October. He was 75.
British TV director Peter Moffatt died on 21 October, aged 84. He began his career on the 1961 series Tales of Mystery, which featured John Laurie as Algernon Blackwood, and also worked on such shows as Sexton Blake, Thriller (1974), Doom Castle and Doctor Who (including “The Five Doctors” and “The Two Doctors”).
Emmy Award-winning TV producer Robert F. O’Neill died of complications from colon cancer on 23 October, aged 86. From the 1960s until the 1970s he produced such shows for Universal Television as The NBC Mystery Movie, Columbo, The Sixth Sense, The Invisible Man (1975), Gemini Man (he also scripted one episode), Darkroom and Murder She Wrote, along with the 1970s TV movies Maneater and Live Again Die Again.
American TV director and producer Bernard L. (Louis) Kowalski died on 26 October, aged 78. Along with episodes of The Wild Wild West, Mission: Impossible (which he co-owned), Blue Thunder, Airwolf Knight Rider and Baywatch Nights, and the TV movies Terror in the Sky and Black Noon, he also directed the feature films Hot Car Girl, Night of the Blood Beast, Attack of the Giant Leeches (aka Demons of the Swamp) and SSSSSSS (aka SSSSnake). Kowalsi began his career as a five-year-old extra in Warner Bros.’ “Dead End Kids” movies and was the uncle of Hollywood producer Brian Grazer.
Academy Award-winning film and TV director and producer Delbert [Martin] Mann [Jr] died of pneumonia on 11 November, aged 87. Mann worked in live television (Lights Out, etc.) before getting his big-screen break with Marty (1955), which won four Oscars. He never repeated that success, and later credits include such TV films as Jane Eyre (1970) and the ghostly She Waits.
Italian screenwriter and film director Ferdinando Baldi died in Rome on 12 November, aged 80. His many credits include Mario Bava’s Night is the Phantom (aka What, as associate producer “Free Baldwin”), David and Goliath and Treasure of the Four Crowns (in 3-D!).
Make-up artist Monty (Montague) Westmore (aka Monte Westmore), a third generation of the family dynasty, died of prostate cancer on 13 November, aged 84. Oscar-nominated for his work on Hook, Westmore also contributed to Orson Welles’ A Touch of Evil (uncredited), Sex Kittens Go to College (aka The Beauty and the Robot), What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Strait-Jacket, Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze, Lipstick, Blood Beach, Endangered Species, Stand By Me, Alien Nation, Jurassic Park, The Shawshank Redemption, Outbreak, Se7en, Star Trek: First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
Eighty-eight-year-old Oscar-winning film editor Peter Zinner died on the same day, after a long battle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The Austrian-born Zinner began his career as a music editor on such films as King Kong vs. Godzilla, Varan the Unbelievable, They Saved Hitler’s Brain and The Madmen ofMandoras. As a film editor he cut In Cold Blood, the first two Godfather films, Tintoreral, The Deer Hunter, An Officer and a Gentleman and the Christian SF film The Omega Code.
British TV and film producer Verity [Ann] Lambert OBE died of cancer on 22 November, just a few days before her 72nd birthday. The first producer of BBC-TV’s Doctor Who (1963-66), she also worked on Adam Adamant Lives!, Quatermass (1979), Jonathan Creek and the movies Dreamchild, Morons from Outer Space and Link.
British costume designer Mark Allen died of a brain aneurysm in Australia on 26 November, aged 66. Her credits include Don’t Look Now, Dream Lover, Little Shop of Horrors (1986), The Witches (1990), The Secret Garden (1993), Snow White: A Tale of Terror, Hulk (2003) and Thunderbirds (2004). At the time of her death she was working on the movie version of Justice League of America.
British film producer Tony Tenser (Samuel Anthony Tenser), who founded Tigon Films in 1966, died on 5 December, aged 87. During the late 1960s and early 1970s Tigon was third only to Hammer and Amicus for producing horror films in the UK, including The Sorcerers, Curse of the Crimson Altar (aka The Crimson Cult), The Blood Beat Terror (aka The Vampire-Beast Craves Blood), Witch-finder General (aka The Conqueror Worm), Zeta One (aka The Love Factor), The Body Stealers (aka Thin Air), The Haunted House of Horror (aka Horror House), The Beast in the Cellar, Blood on Satan’s Claw, Doomwatch, Neither the Sea Nor the Sand and The Creeping Flesh. Tenser’s other film credits include The Black Torment, Roman Polanski’s Repulsion and Cul-de-Sac, The Projected Man and Frightmare. He reportedly coined the term “sex kitten” to describe Brigitte Bardot.
Hollywood agent and producer Freddie Fields died of lung cancer on 11 December, aged 84. Founder of the powerful Creative Management Associates (CMA), he produced Lipstick, Looking for Mr Goodbar and Wholly Moses!, and executive produced Poltergeist II: The Other Side and Millennium, the latter based on the SF story by John Varley.
Hollywood film producer Frank [Warner] Capra, Jr, the son of the famous film director, died of prostate cancer on 19 December, aged 73. After working his way up from an assistant director to a co-producer with Arthur P. Jacobs on three of the Planet of the Apes sequels, he worked on such films as Marooned, Play it Again Sam and Firestarter (1984).
Japanese film and TV director Tokuzo Tanaka, best known for his superior contributions to the “Zatoichi” chanbara series about the eponymous blind swordsman, died of a haemorrhage on 20 December, aged 87. Mentored by Akira Kurosawa and Kenji Mizoguchi, Tanaka’s other credits include the ghost movies The Snow Woman (Kaidan yukionna) and The Haunted Castle (Hiroku kaibyoden).
Larry Cassingham (J. Lawrence Cassingham), a civilian radiation expert who developed the first practical portable Geiger counter in the 1940s, died on 23 December, the day after his 89th birthday. During the 1950s, he worked as a technical advisor on such films as The Brain from Planet Arous, Zombies of the Stratosphere, The Magnetic Monster and The Atomic Kid.
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.
—The Editor
ORGANIZATIONS
The British Fantasy Society (www.britisbfantasysociety.org) was founded in 1971 and publishes the bi-monthly newsletter Prism and the magazine Da
rk 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: [email protected]. You can also join online through the Cyberstore.
The Friends of Arthur Machen (www.machensoc.demon.co.uk) is a literary society whose objectives include encouraging a wider recognition of Machen’s work and providing a focus for critical debate. Members get a hardbound journal, Faunus, twice a year, and also the informative newsletter Machenalia. For membership details, contact Jeremy Cantwell, FOAM Treasurer, Apt.5, 26 Hervey Road, Blackheath, London SE3 8BS, UK.
The Friends of the Merril Collection (www.friendsofmerril.org/) is a volunteer organization that provides support and assistance to the largest public collection of science fiction, fantasy and horror books in North America. Details about annual membership and donations are available from the website or by contacting The Friends of the Merril Collection, c/o Lillian H. Smith Branch, Toronto Public Library, 239 College Street, 3rd Floor, Toronto, Ontario M5T 1R5, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]
The Ghost Story Society (www.ash-tree.bc.ca/GSS.html) is organized by Barbara and Christopher Roden. They publish the excellent All Hallows three times a year. For more information contact PO Box 1360, Ashcroft, British Columbia, Canada VOK 1A0. E-mail: [email protected].
The Horror Writers Association (www.horror.org) is a worldwide organization of writers and publishing professionals dedicated to promoting the interests of writers of Horror and Dark Fantasy. It was formed in the early 1980s. Interested individuals may apply for Active, Affiliate or Associate membership. Active membership is limited to professional writers. HWA publishes a monthly online Newsletter, and sponsors the annual Bram Stoker Awards. Apply online or write to HWA Membership, PO Box 50577, Palo Alto, CA 94303, USA.
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