and Mr Hyde starring Jack Palance, the 1973 musical remake of Lost Horizon, Disney’s Condorman and episodes of TV’s The Unforseen, Out of This World, Haunted and Armchair Theatre (“The Picture of Dorian Gray” and “The Rose Affair”).
American director Sidney Lumet died of lymphoma on 9 April, aged eighty-six. A former actor, he began his directing career in live television in the 1950s before going on to make a string of acclaimed films. His credits include Fail-Safe (1964), The Wiz and Deathtrap (1982). Lumet had a small role in the 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate, and he was presented with an honorary Academy Award in 2005.
Japanese anime director Osamu Dezaki died on 17 April, aged sixty-seven. His TV credits include The Mighty Orbots and Bionic Six.
American TV director Charles [Friedman] Haas died on 12 May, aged ninety-seven. He began his career as an extra at Universal in 1935, and his directing credits include Tarzan and the Trappers (with Gordon Scott as Tarzan), stitched together from three unsold TV shows, plus episodes of Dick Tracy (1951), The Shadow (1954), The New Adventures of Charlie Chan, Men Into Space, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Outer Limits and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Harry Redmond, Jr., the son of special effects pioneer Harry Redmond, Sr., died of complications from heart disease on 23 May, aged 101. Redmond worked (often uncredited) with his father — who was head of special effects at RKO Radio — on such films as The Most Dangerous Game (aka Hounds of Zaroff), King Kong (1933), The Son of Kong and She (1935). He also worked on Lost Horizon (1937), Wonder Man, Angel on My Shoulder, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Bishop’s Wife (1947), The Magnetic Monster, Donovan’s Brain, Riders to the Stars and Gog. Redmond’s TV credits include Ten Little Niggers (1947), Science Fiction Theatre, The Outer Limits and the 1964 spin-off pilot The Unknown.
British film editor (Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Spy in Black) turned producer Hugh [St. Clair] Stewart died on 31 May, aged 100. After working on films with Norman Wisdom and Morecambe and Wise, his later credits as a producer included Mr Horatio Knibbles and The Flying Sorcerer for the Children’s Film Foundation.
British film and TV director Pat Jackson (Patrick Douglas Selmes Jackson), reportedly the last surviving director of the 1967–68 TV series The Prisoner, died on 3 June, aged ninety-five. He also directed the 1961 crime film Seven Keys (which appears to be an uncredited version of the much-filmed Seven Keys to Baldpate) and the lively horror comedy What a Carve Up! (aka No Place Like Homicide!), starring Sidney James and Kenneth Connor.
American writer, producer and director Leonard B. (Bernard) Stone died of heart failure on 7 June, aged eighty-seven. He began his career scripting Abbott and Costello’s later films (including Africa Screams), before creating such TV shows as McMillan & Wife, and writing and producing episodes of Get Smart, The Snoop Sisters and Holmes and Yo-Yo. Stone’s other credits include the Get Smart movies, The Nude Bomb and Get Smart Again!. From 1951–53 he was married to actress Julie Adams.
Swedish cinematographer [Erling] Gunnar Fischer died of an infection on 11 June, aged 100. He is best known for his twelve collaborations with director Ingmar Bergman, including The Seventh Seal, The Magician and The Devil’s Eye.
American movie producer Laura [Ellen] Ziskin died on 12 June, aged sixty-one. She had been battling breast cancer for seven years. Responsible for the blockbuster Spider-Man (2002) and its two sequels, her other credits include Eyes of Laura Mars, Fail Safe (2000) and the 2012 franchise re-boot The Amazing Spider- Man, plus episodes of the 2003 Tarzan TV series.
Film and TV producer Christopher [Elwin] Neame, the son of director and cinematographer Ronald Neame, died in France of an aneurysm the same day. He was sixty-eight. Starting out as a clapper boy at Hammer on Dracula Prince of Darkness and Rasputin the Mad Monk, Neame worked as an uncredited assistant director on Frankenstein Created Woman, Quatermass and the Pit (aka Five Million Miles to Earth) and The Devil Rides Out and as a production manager on Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb, Fear in the Night, Demons of the Mind and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell. He was also an associate producer on Tigon’s The Beast in the Cellar and production manager/designer on the sexy sci-fi comedy Zeta One. The first of his three autobiographies, Rungs On a Ladder (2003), was about his time at Hammer. Neame’s godfather was Noel Coward.
Michael J. Hein, founder of the New York City Horror Film Festival in 2002, died of a heart attack on 9 July, aged forty-one. He contributed special effects make-up to Metamorphosis: The Alien Factor, Class of Nuke ’Em High Part II: Subhumanoid Meltdown and Out of Darkness, and scripted, produced and directed the 2001 horror film Biohazardous.
American TV producer and writer Sherwood [Charles] Schwartz, who created such series as It’s About Time, Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch, died on 12 July, aged ninety-four. A former joke writer for Bob Hope’s radio show, his other credits include the comedy 1983 TV movie The Invisible Woman. Schwartz also created the theme tunes to a number of his shows.
Japanese film and TV animator Toyoo Ashida, who directed the 1985 anime, Vampire Hunter D, died on 23 July, aged sixty-seven. His many other credits include the Space Battleship Yamato, Ulysses 31 and Fist of the North Star (1986).
Cyprus-born film director Mihalis Kakogiannis (aka Michael Yannis/Michael Cacoyannis), who directed the Oscar-winning Zorba the Greek (1964), died in Athens, Greece, on 25 July. He was eighty-nine. Kakogiannis made an uncredited appearance in the 1948 body-swap comedy Vice Versa and he also scripted, produced and directed the 1967 counter-culture SF comedy The Day the Fish Came Out.
Canadian-born film and TV director Silvio Narizzano died in London on 26 July, aged eighty-four. After producing a 1952 series of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for Canadian television, he moved to the UK, where he directed Hammer’s Fanatic (aka Die! Die! My Darling) and worked uncredited on an episode of Space Precinct. Narizzano’s low budget Las flores del vicio (aka Bloodbath, 1979) starred Dennis Hopper and was filmed in Spain.
Polly Platt (Mary Marr Platt), who was married to director Peter Bogdanovich from 1962 until 1972, died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease) on 27 July, aged seventy-two. Her various credits in the movie industry include being Nancy Sinatra’s stunt double in The Wild Angels, production co-ordinator on Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, co-story writer and production designer of Bogdanovich’s Targets (starring Boris Karloff), production designer on The Man With Two Brains and The Witches of Eastwick, and executive producer of the 2011 A&E documentary Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel.
Italian film director and journalist Gualtiero Jacopetti, who created the exploitation
