|  April
16th:
Actor
William Finley has died, aged 69.
Finley is best known for playing the lead in Brian
De Palma’s wonderfully sardonic rock ‘n’
roll comedy Phantom of the Paradise.
As the hapless Winslow Leech, Finley went from
well-meaning dweeb to the coolest looking masked
killer in cinema history, and also sang on the
soundtrack.
His relationship to De Palma stretched back to
the early Sixties, when he appeared in the director’s
short film Woton’s Wake,
and they would pair again in several early De
Palma films – Murder a la Mod,
The Wedding Party, Sisters
and later The Fury, Dressed
to Kill (providing the voice of Bobbi)
and The Black Dahlia.
Elsewhere, Finley made a few films for Tobe Hooper
(Death Trap, The Funhouse,
Night Terrors) and had roles
in other cult favourites such as Wise
Blood, Simon, Silent
Rage and TV shows Masters of
Horror and Tales from the Crypt.
***
March 21st:
Film
director Robert Fuest has died, aged 85.
Fuest is best known for directing the two Dr Phibes
films at the start of the Seventies – The
Abominable Dr Phibes and Dr Phibes
Rises Again achieved popular cult
status thanks to the incredible art-deco visuals,
the black humour and the string of imaginative,
bizarre killing carried out with relish by Vincent
Price’s title character. Fuest also showed
his visual flair in the psychedelic movie version
of Michael Moorcock’s The Final
Programme around the same time. All three
films benefited from the director’s experience
on TV series The Avengers in
the Sixties (he would also work on The
New Avengers in 1976).
But Fuest could also work in more realist areas.
His 1970 psycho thriller And Soon the
Darkness (recently remade)
is an atmospheric, unsettling film that foreshadows
later American backwoods slasher films, while
his version of Wuthering Heights remains
an underrated version of the classic story, arguably
second only to the 1939 version.
In the mid-Seventies, he made the schlocky but
entertaining The Devil’s Rain,
best known for the climax where the cast melt
in a gloopily excessive manner, and he would later
shoot the ineffectual TV movie The Revenge
of the Stepford Wives and the softcore
film Aphrodite.
***
 February
29th:
Actor and Monkee Davy Joes has died, aged 65.
The Monkees were a US TV sitcom-created band to
rival The Beatles, and actually had several hit
singles, with Jones providing lead vocals on most
of them including Daydream Believer.
The band would eventually implode with the psychedelic,
self-deprecating film Head (co-written
by Jack Nicholson), though they would reunite
(with varying degrees of completeness) for tours
over the years.
A former child actor in the UK, his post-Monkees
career saw him guesting on assorted US TV shows
and movies such as Sabrina the Teenage
Witch, SpongeBob Squarepants
and The Brady Bunch movie.
***
 February
22nd:
Legendary publisher Barney Rosset has died, aged
89.
The founder of Grove Press was a strong supporter
of new and edgy writers in the 1950s and 60s,
publishing work by the likes of William S. Burroughs,
Jack Kerouac, Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, Eugene
Ionesco, Jean Genet, Malcolm X and others, as
well as The Story of O and the
works of De Sade. The company also printed less
literary - but no less significant - vintage erotica
like The Lustful Turk, My
Secret Life, The Pearl and
A Man with a Maid.
Perhaps more importantly, he was the man who fought
several important censorship battles over books
like Lady Chatterley’s Lover
and the works of Henry Miller (including Tropic
of Cancer), which he published unexpurgated
for the first time in America.
The Grove Press magazine The Evergreen
Review would also become an important
publication for both new writers and the sexual
revolution of the Sixties with its mix of fiction,
criticism and photography.
Rosset then branched out into film distribution,
fighting further obscenity battles over the classic
I Am Curious (Yellow) and distributing
movies by Stan Brakhage, Maya Deren, Nagisa Oshima,
Alain Robbe-Grillet and others, as well as producing
a handful of movies such as Jean-Luc Godard’s
Valdimir and Rosa.
Grove Press was sold in 1985, although Rosset
made several attempts to revive the spirit of
the company in subsequent years. In 2008, his
life and career was the subject of the documentary
film Obscene.
***
 February
6th:
Night of the Living Dead star
Bill Hinzman has died, aged 75.
Hinzman
was assured cult movie immortality when he played
the first zombie seen on Night...,
shuffling throuhg the cemetery and then moving
at quite a pace to attack Barbara in her car -
one of horror cinema's most iconic moments.
He
would have small parts in George Romero's next
three films (There's Always Vanilla,
Jack's Wife [aka Season
of the Witch] and The Crazies)
and also worked on a couple of Romero's mid-Seventies
documentaries as cinematographer, before finally
channelling his cult status into a series of low
budget horror films as actor and / or director.
His first directorial role was The Majorettes
(aka One By One) in 1987 and
he followed this with the excrutiatingly awful
Flesh Eater (aka Zombie
Nosh / Night of the Living Zombies),
a terrible attempt to cash-in on Romero's work.
Worse came when he collaborated with John Russo
to add dreadful new scenes to Night...
for a new addition and appeared in the infamous
Children of the Living Dead.
His
other acting roles in the 1980s and 90s included
appearances in Legion of the Night,
Santa Claws (which he also shot),
Evil Ambitions, The Drunken
Dead Guy, Shadow: Dead Riot
(as Romero the zombie!), It Came from
Trafalgar, Underground Entertainment:
the Movie and River of Darkness
- more often than not playing a zombie. As cinematographer,
he also worked on Scream Queens' Naked
Christmas, The Langoliers
and The Ruth Rendell Mysteries
- quite a mixed bag.
A
regular at fan conventions, Hinzman was by all
accounts a popular, approachable and affable guest,
happy to dress up as a zombie to entertain his
fans.
***
February 3rd:
Erotic movie master Zalman King has died, aged
70.
Born Zalman Lefkowitz, King started his career
as an actor, with notable appearances in cult
classics like Some Call It Loving,
Trip with the Teacher, Blue
Sunshine and Galaxy of Terror,
but it was as the writer, producer and director
of softcore erotic dramas that he really made
his name. His screenplay for Nine and
a Half Weeks in 1986 set him on a path
that would see him make critically dismissed but
hugely successful films like Two Moon
Junction, Wild Orchid,
the surprisingly good Business for Pleasure
and the popular Red Shoe Diaries
TV series, all of which featured his trademark
soft focus, stylised erotic imagery.
***
 Adult
movie icon Kandi Barbour has reportedly died,
aged 55.
Real name Linda Jean Smith, Barbour was one of
the most striking performers in the later days
of porn’s Golden Age, and appeared in several
highly regarded classics, including Cecil Howard’s
remarkable Neon Nights, Screwples,
Sex Boat, Pink Ladies,
Pandora’s Mirror, The
Budding of Brie, Bon Appetit
and Champagne for Breakfast
between 1978 and 1981, her last appearance being
in 1987. Her appearance on the poster for Neon
Nights remains one of the most iconic
images of the era.
It is also claimed that she did mainstream modelling
work. At the time of her death in late January,
she was reportedly homeless.
***
Actor
Ben Gazzara has died, aged 81.
Gazzara started his acting career in the early
1950s, and worked extensively in television, though
he is best known for his work with John Cassavetes
on Husbands, The
Killing of a Chinese Bookie and Opening
Night. A hard-working character actor,
his filmography is extensive, and includes When
Michael Calls, The Neptune Factor,
Capone, Voyage of the
Damned, Saint Jack,
Bloodline, Tales of Ordinary
Madness, They All Laughed,
Roadhouse, The Big Lebowski,
Buffalo 66, Summer of
Sam and Dogville. He
also directed a couple of excellent Columbo
episodes in the 1970s.
***
 Film
director Don Sharp has died, aged 89.
Sharp started out as an actor (he had a role in
radio science fiction series Journey Into
Space), before moving into directing
in the 1950s.
However, it was in the Sixties that he first built
a reputation, with a series of genre films for
Hammer and other producers. His first Hammer film
was the classic The Kiss of the Vampire
in 1964 – a film that has one of the studio’s
most impressive openings – and he would
also shoot The Devil-Ship Pirates
and Rasputin- The Mad Monk for
the company.
Outside Hammer, his impressive slate of cult films
include Witchcraft, Curse
of the Fly, The Face of Fu Manchu,
The Brides of Fu Manchu, Rocket
to the Moon, A
Taste of Excitement, Dark
Places, Psychomania,
Callan, Henessy
and the 1978 version of The Thirty Nine
Steps.
In the TV world, he worked on series like The
Avengers, The Champions
and, in 1980, Hammer House of Horror.
 ***
December
15 2011:
Comic
book writer and artist Joe Simon has died, aged
98.
Simon,
along with partnetr Jack Kirby, is best know for
creating Captain America in 1940 for Timely Comics
(later to become Marvel). He also worked on crime
(Police Trap) and horror comics
(Black Magic), as well as other
superheroes including Captain Marvel for DC, Marvel,
Archie, Harvey and others. In 1960, he launched
the satirical magazine Sick (a
Mad knockoff) that ran throughout the decade.
***
 December
12 2011:
Film
producer Bert Schneider has died, aged 78.
Schneider
was at the forefront of the new independent cinema
movement of the late 1960s, producing three of
the most iconic films of the era - Easy
Rider, Five Easy Pieces
and The Last Picture Show. His
other productions include the Vietnam documentary
Hearts and Minds, Tracks,
Terence Malik's Days of Heaven,
The King of Marvin Gardens and
Drive, He Said.
Ironically,
all this came about through The Monkees, who Schneider
created and who's TV show he produced in 1966,
before overseeing their career-destroying, cult
classic feature film Head.The
money made from the band is what gave Schneider
and his partners Bob Rafelson and Stephen Blauner
the financial clout to set up BBS Productions,
the company behind these classic films.
 ***
December
7 2011:
Actor Harry Morgan has died, aged 96.
Morgan was probably best known for starring in
M*A*S*H as Colonel Potter, and
before that on Dragnet. But he
had a lengthy career stretching from the early
1940s to the end of the century. Among his films
were Dragonwyck (1945), Dark
City (1950), Appointment with
Danger (1951), High Noon
(1952), Unidentified Flying Objects: The
True Story of Flying Saucers (1956),
The Teahouse of the August Moon
(1956), Inherit the Wind (1960),
The Cat from Outer Space (1978)
and The Flight of Dragons (1982).
Later TV appearances included 3rd Rock
from the Sun and The Simpsons.
***
 November
20th:
Adult movie star Andrea True has died, aged 68.
True rose to some prominence in the early days
of the US hardcore scene, and was a regular performer
– if not top line star – throughout
the 1970s. Her more interesting titles included
Devil’s Due, Madame
Zenobia, Lialeh, Illusions
of a Lady, Deep Throat Pt. II,
The Seduction of Lynn Carter,
Every Inch a Lady and M*A*S*H’d.
However, True was best known for her 1976 disco
smash hit More, More, More
– a song that owed much of its lyrical content
to her adult movie career and which made her a
global star amongst an audience who had no idea
of her other career.
By the end of the 1970s, both her music and acting
careers were over, and in later years, she reportedly
worked as both an astrologer and a substance abuse
counsellor.
***
Cynthia
Myers, Playboy Playmate in December
1968 and star of Russ Meyer’s astounding
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, has died, aged
61.
Myers was one of the most popular Playboy
Playmates, especially with troops serving in Vietnam,
and she became a regular on Hugh Hefner’s
TV show Playboy After Dark. She
achieved immortality when she was cast as one
of The Carrie Nations, the all-girl rock group
at the centre of Beyond the Valley of
the Dolls. Few of us who saw her in that
will ever forget that moment.
A few more small parts followed, though it was
BVD that she remained remembered
for – and why not? Few people have appeared
in such a pivotal, legendary movie.
More details about her ridiculously premature
death are not, at the time of writing, available.
***
 Actress
Sue Lloyd died on October 20th.
Although best known in the UK for her long run
on turgid soap opera Crossroads,
Lloyd was also a familiar face from numerous films
and TV shows. Her work included Britsploitation
movies like Corruption, Twinky,
Percy, Ups and Downs
of a Handyman, Spanish Fly,
No.1 of the Secret Service and
both The Stud and The
Bitch, as well as The Ipcress
File.
Her TV work included appearances in The
Baron (in a recurring role), The
Avengers, The Saint,
Department S, Randall
and Hopkirk (Deceased), The Sweeney
and The Two Ronnies.
She also appeared in a stage version of The
Avengers.
She was 72.
***
 05
October 2011:
Cult
movie icon Charles Napier has died, aged 75.
Napier is best known and loved around these parts
for his legendary work with Russ Meyer, most notably
in Harry, Cherry and Raquel and
as evil Harry Sledge in Supervixens
– his killing of Superangel in that movie
remains one of cinema’s most outrageous
moments, and there’s never been a more hissable
villain. He also appeared in Meyer’s Beyond
the Valley of the Dolls and The
Seven Minutes.
Outside his work for Meyer, Napier had a long
career in film and TV – amongst the titles
he appeared are Mission: Impossible,
Kojak, The Streets of
San Francisco, The Rockford Files,
Starsky and Hutch, Knight
Rider, The Incredible Hulk,
and movies like The Blues Brothers,
Rambo: First Blood Pt II, Something
Wild, Maniac Cop 2,
Silence of the Lambs, The
Grifters and the first two Austin
Powers films. His square-jawed, hard-ass
style made him ideal for playing villains and
tough, military men, and he was great at it.
Also dying today was Apple genius Steve Jobs.
I won’t add to the extensive press coverage
of his life and work except to say that without
his work, I wouldn’t have the Mac that I’m
producing this site with.
•••
Folk
musician Bert Jansch has died aged 67, after a
battle with cancer.
As well as recording 23 solo albums, Jansch was
a founder member of prog-folk rock band Pentangle,
and his work influenced both folk and rock musicians
throughout the 1960s and 70s.
Adult film cinematographer Jane Waters –
real name John Keeler – has died, aged 68.
Waters, who took his non-de-porn as tribute to
John Waters, worked as cameraman for some of the
biggest names in the industry, including John
Stagliano. Jim Holliday and Paul Thomas. He started
in the business in 1985, editing The Dark Brothers
classic New Wave Hookers. And
as a director made films such as Traci’s
Big Trick and Babes Illustrated.
He died of a heart attack.
•••
27 September 2011:
British sit-com writer David Croft has died, aged
89.
Croft
was co-writer of several of the best loved British
sit-coms of the 1970s, often drawing on his own
experiences - Dad's Army, co-written
with Jimmy Perry, ran from 1968 to 1977, and the
pair followed it with another military comedy,
It Ain't Half Hot Mum, a show
that has generally been removed from the collective
memory now but which was a huge hit at the time,
and Hi-De-Hi, the holiday camp-set
show that was another smash hit.
With
Jeremy Lloyd, Croft created the legendary Are
You Being Served?, one of the most popular
TV shows of all time in Britain, a surprising
world-wide success and the home to more dubious
pussy jokes and double entendres than all other
shows combined. The series ran for twelve years.
The pair also created pantomime world war 2 show
'Allo 'Allo.
Less
successful shows included Come Back Mrs
Noah, You Rang M'Lord
and Oh Dr Beeching!
He
also worked as a producer and director on shows
such as Steptoe & Son, Up
Pompeii and The Benny Hill Show.
•••
More obituaries:
Trevor Bannister
• John Barry • Roberts Blossom •
William Campbell • Gene Colan •
John Dunning • Peter Falk • Anne Francis
• Michael Gough • Farley Granger • Gualtiero
Jacopetti • Mick Karn • Dick King-Smith
• George Kuchar • Sidney Lumet • Harry
S. Morgan • Marie-France Pisier • Pete
Poselthwaite • Gerry Rafferty • Maria
Schneider • Angela Scoular •
Elisabeth Sladen • Poly Styrene • Yvette
Vickers
David
F. Friedman
Richard
Gordon
Lina
Romay
Ken
Rusell
Jimmy
Sangster
Tura
Satana
Sexy
Cora
Susannah
York
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