Karen Black 1939-2013

"There aren't any more movie stars, which is terrific with me, it's very healthy. A lot of love now occurs in the business, people helping each other to do good work, getting high on each other's success. Isn't that great?"

She rose to prominence as part of a new wave of "actor's actors" changing Hollywood in the late 1960s and 1970s, but would later redefine herself as what is often referred to as a "scream queen". Yet that simple term unfairly reduces the contributions she made, both to mainstream film and the horror genre, over the course of her 45-year career. Karen Black was a one of a kind, and has inspired a devoted following which was saddened to learn that she had lost her three-year battle with ampullary cancer last Thursday at the age of 74.

Born Karen Blanche Ziegler in Park Ridge, Illinois, she took her stage name from first husband Charles Black, whom she married at the tender age of 16. The marriage would last only seven years, but she would keep the name for the rest of her career. And she was advanced for her age in more ways than this, as at the time of her marriage she was already a student at Northwestern University. However, she was bitten by the acting bug early, and dropped out of college to head to New York and Lee Strasberg's world famous acting studio at age 17.

She started appearing in a number of off-Broadway roles in her late teens and early twenties, and even had her first bit part on screen in 1959 in the exploitation flick The Prime Time, at the age of 20. By 1965, she had debuted on Broadway to acclaim in the short-lived critical darling The Playroom. The following year, she got her first major screen role in the early Francis Ford Coppola film, You're a Big Boy Now.

By the latter part of the 1960s, Black had begun to establish herself amongst a new generation of young and hungry actors, born of the Stanislavsky method and eager to turn Hollywood on its ear--actors like Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman and others. It would in fact be her 1969 appearance alongside Hopper, Nicholson and Peter Fonda in the groundbreaking biker opus Easy Rider that would truly introduce her to the world as a major star.

Black turned her heads with her self-named role, and followed it up the next year with another turn co-starring with Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces. This time, she earned an Oscar nomination, and the first of two Golden Globe awards she would receive in her career. Karen Black had become one of the most buzzworthy actresses of the new decade--a decade in which she would participate in changing the face of American film.

At the apex of her career in the 1970s, Karen Black got to star in Coppola's adaptation of The Great Gatsby alongside Robert Redford; The Day of the Locust with Donald Sutherland and Burgess Meredith; and Airport 1975, in which she became the infamous "stewardess flying the plane" that would inspire the title and theme of Ron Hogan's excellent book on '70s cinema.

She would also begin to dabble in the horror genre, beginning with the horror-tinged thriller The Pyx in 1973, but starting in earnest in late 1974, when she took a major role in the TV movie Trilogy of Terror--mainly because her second husband, Robert Burton, had landed a part. The two would be divorced by the time the movie aired, but Black's sojourn into the realm of the dark and bizarre had begun. She followed it up in 1976 with starring roles in Dan Curtis' Burnt Offerings with Bette Davis, and in Family Plot, the final film of Alfred Hitchcock.

Karen Black's career would never again reach the heights it did during the 1970s. And although she once again turned heads in 1982 with an appearance in Robert Altman's Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, by this point she had embarked on a different stage of her career--one that would wind up defining her for the next quarter century. Karen Black had become a so-called "scream queen"--yet her acting chops and legit training helped her stand out from the pack of '80s horror starlets. In truth, she was a cut above.

Her resume during the 1980s would include such movies as Tobe Hooper's Invaders from Mars remake and It's Alive III: Island of the Alive. By the 1990s, she had settled firmly into B-horror shlock territory--her films of that era include the likes of Children of the Corn: The Gathering and other obscure direct-to-video fare. It was a far cry from starring roles in Francis Ford Coppola and Robert Altman pictures, but she continued to work steadily and had found a niche for herself which endeared her to legions of fans like never before.

Black's most memorable role of the new century, and perhaps the part for which she is most known to younger horror fans, would come in 2003 thanks to horror aficionado Rob Zombie. A fan of the genre--particularly the '70s and '80s era of splatter and exploitation, Zombie had been a big fan of Black's work and decided to thrust her back into the horror mainstream along with other cult favorites in his debut picture, House of 1,000 Corpses. As the unforgettable Mother Firefly, Black was the best thing about the film, and it instantly reminded fans of just what a talent and a gift to the genre she truly was.

Nevertheless, House of 1,000 Corpses didn't quite lead to the full career resurgence fans of Black had been hoping for, and she continued to ply her trade in B cinema for the remainder of the decade, most notably in the 2011 underground horror comedy Some Guy Who Kills People.

However, by that point, Black had already been forced to curtail her career thanks to a diagnosis of ampullary cancer in 2010. Through surgery and treatment, she was able to beat it within months, but it returned aggressively last year, and on August 8, 2013, with fourth husband Stephen Eckelberry by her side, it claimed her life.

Although her career trajectory did not follow the same path as many of her compatriots from those exciting game-changing days of the late '60s and early '70s, in her own way Karen Black left a mark that will never be forgotten. She found a niche and a formula that worked, keeping her working and beloved by fans of horror and B-movies for decades.

All in all--a legacy most actors would kill for.

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Ray Bradbury 1920-2012

"Ray Bradbury wrote three great novels and three hundred great stories. One of the latter was called 'A Sound of Thunder.' The sound I hear today is the thunder of a giant's footsteps fading away. But the novels and stories remain, in all their resonance and strange beauty." - Stephen King

"The landscape of the world we live in would have been diminished if we had not had him in our world." - Neil Gaiman

If you're a genre fan, chances are you've been reading a lot of obituaries of Ray Bradbury over the past few days since last Tuesday, June 5, when the titan of science fiction literature was taken from us at the age of 91. There can be no doubt that he was one of, if not the single greatest creator of speculative fiction produced by the 20th century, and along with the likes of Clarke, Asimov and Heinlein, one of the unassailable legends of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. And he was the last of them, which made his passing that much more painful.

I'm not going to cover all the ground that's been covered by so many others in the past week. For the purposes of this blog, I'm going to talk a little bit about Bradbury's ventures into the realm of horror in particular. Although best known for his sci-fi, the author did indeed also have a great love for its more visceral, emotion-based cousin genre. In fact, it was from the works of Edgar Allan Poe that a very young Bradbury was first opened up to the power of genre fiction while nurturing his love of reading in the public library of Waukegan, Illinois. Yet another defining moment was his parents taking him to see Lon Chaney in The Hunchback of Notre Dame as a small child.

Like Victor Hugo, Bradbury would also come to have his works adapted for the screen in later years--both big and small. Some of the more prominent adaptations would be derived from his works of horror--most notably the 1962 novel Something Wicked This Way Comes, which was turned into one of the most chilling horror films of the 1980s. But his relationship with the movies began even earlier, in 1953, and was connected with his horror dalliances more than anything else.

A scene directly inspired by Bradbury's short story.

It was in that year that not one, but two Bradbury-related projects would be brought to the movies. Both could be termed sci-fi horror, tying back into the writer's area of true expertise. The first would his film treatment, "Atomic Monster", which producer William Alland developed into the 3-D classic, It Came from Outer Space. A mere three weeks later, Bradbury's dear friend Ray Harryhausen would make a name for himself with the release of the seminal giant monster flick, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, based loosely on Bradbury's 1951 short story, "The Fog Horn".

The Bradbury/Harryhausen friendship would become the stuff of genre legend (the two first met at the age of 18 at the home of none other than Forrest J. Ackerman), as would the sci-fi scribe's early association with comic strip icon Charles Addams. Before there was an Addams Family, Bradbury and Addams collaborated in the 1940s on a series of comically macabre stories revolving around a family called The Elliotts--collected in the 2001 volume, From the Dust Returned.

One of the EC issues featuring Bradbury's work.

In the early 1950s, more than 20 Bradbury stories would be adapted in the pages of EC Comics such as Tales from the Crypt and The Haunt of Fear. One short story in particular, "I Sing the Body Electric," would become the basis for the 100th episode of The Twilight Zone, aired in May 1962. He also directly wrote the screenplays for a total of five episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Ray Bradbury was a shining light in the firmament of sci-fi, fantasy and horror. He was one of the last living connections to a truly amazing era in speculative fiction, and as The New York Times observed, may have been the one author most responsible for bringing science fiction into the mainstream. A giant of imaginative literature, he will be missed by fans of horror who have come to love and be inspired by his many fascinating forays into our genre.

 

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David Hess 1936-2011

He was something of a renaissance man, whose career began in music, and though it never totally left that arena, also took him to some very different places. In the end, David Hess, who passed away suddenly of a heart attack last month at the age of 75, will be remembered by millions of movie fans worldwide as an icon of exploitation cinema. An odd fate for a guy who used to write songs for Elvis...

Hess was born to a Jewish family in New York City during the depths of the Depression. From a very early age, he had already found his first calling. Songwriting came naturally to him, and he also enjoyed performing, as well. At age 19, using the Anglicized name "David Hill", he actually took a stab at recording a brand-new song called "All Shook Up", which wound up a #1 hit the following year for Elvis Presley.

Unbowed, Hess took his songwriting talents to Shalimar Music, where he would be a successful composer through the rest of the 1950s and into the 1960s. Ironically, he would compose a number of songs for Presley himself during this period, as well as the likes of Sal Mineo, Andy Williams, Pat Boone and others. Most notable was the novelty hit "Speedy Gonzalez," which Boone took to #6 in the U.S. and #2 in the U.K., selling six million copies worldwide. By the end of the 1960s, Hess had recorded two hit folk albums and found himself the head A&R man at Mercury Records.

Few could have predicted that during his tenure at Mercury, this successful songwriter, producer and recording artist would suddenly branch off into a very different area of show business. In 1972, he was asked to star in the debut film of a young director by the name of Wes Craven. That film was The Last House on the Left, which would become one of the most notorious pieces of exploitation cinema ever made.

It started out as a musical collaboration, as Hess was called upon to pen the soundtrack for the film. This he did, and songs like "The Road Leads to Nowhere" can be heard throughout the film, with Hess himself on vocals. But it would be as the brutal, sadistic, yet disturbingly charismatic Krug Stillo that Hess would make his greatest contribution to the movie, and become forever known to connoisseurs of the darker side of horror.

The leader of a band of vicious outlaws, Krug is one of the most terrifying psychopaths of '70s cinema, and that's really saying a lot. Hess is a natural in his first screen appearance, seeming to exude the perfect pitch of unadulterated sleaze and lowbrow humor that makes the character unforgettable. One wonders why it took so long for Hess to step in front of a camera. Last House is a flawed film, yet Hess' performance remains one of the best things about it.

Hess would continue to write music of all kinds for years to come, but his career was now set on a different path. The role of Krug opened the door to other lead parts in films like Pasquale Festa Campanile's Hitchhike and Ruggero Deodato's The House on the Edge of the Park. These were unrelentingly dark, grim pictures, in which Hess played unrelentingly dark, grim roles very reminiscent of Krug. Not to besmirch the man in death, but he seemed to have a knack for playing the consummate dirtbag, and it served him well in picture after picture.

He continued to act through the '80s, appearing in Craven's Swamp Thing as well as a slew of Italian exploitation flicks, and even tried his hand at directing. Both his acting and musical careers slowed down a bit in the 1990s, but in more recent years Hess had once again become very active. He recorded a few more albums and started popping up again in horror films like Zombie Nation and Smash Cut. Reminiscent of what he did on Last House on the Left, he even worked on some music tracks for a horror film, namely Eli Roth's 2003 breakout, Cabin Fever.

The iconic roles of his earlier years had gained Hess a whole legion of new, younger fans, many of whom he began connecting with at the conventions at which he started to become a fixture. His career was experiencing a bit of a revival, and ironically he had recently signed on to appear in the sequel to The House on the Edge of the Park, when he died on October 8.

A musician, an actor, a director, a producer--David Hess was all these things, but horror fans will remember him for playing some of the screen's most infamous lowlifes, particularly the implacable Krug Stillo. It's always the villains who get all the glory in horror, and Hess was one of the best.

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James Arness 1923-2011

He was best known to most Americans as Marshall Matt Dillon, the lead character of Gunsmoke, a TV show he starred in for an unparalleled 20 years. But to those reading this blog, and to horror fans in general, it is likely that he is most remembered for two motion pictures in particular: the giant ant epic Them! (1954) and of course, Howard Hawks' classic The Thing from Another World (1951), in which he memorably portrayed the titular Thing. Arness was an American original, going from the wartorn battlefields of Europe, to Hollywood, to television immortality. He passed away earlier this month, just a week after his 88th birthday, but to genre fans he remains just as awe-inspiring as ever.

A big part of the awe probably came from his sheer size. The man stood 6-foot-7, which no doubt helped him land more than a few choice parts in Westerns and action films in general. Unfortunately, it also prohibited him from fulfilling his dream of serving as a naval fighter pilot in World War II, since the height limit was 6-foot-2. Nevertheless, he did serve his country gallantly, as a rifleman with the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division. In fact, he was severely wounded in battle in Anzio, Italy in January 1944, capping off a tour of duty that resulted in the Bronze Star Medal, Purple Heart, Victory Medal and Combat Infantryman Badge.

He was born James Aurness (he would later drop the "u" for Hollywood) to German and Norwegian parents on May 26, 1923 in Minneapolis. Far from the glitz and glamor of Tinseltown, his youth was spent unloading railway boxcars and logging. It was only after being honorably discharged from service in World War II at age 22, permanently injured and suffering chronic leg pain, that he first made his way to Hollywood. By putting out his thumb and hitchhiking.

After the minor name alteration, he made his screen debut in 1947 alongside Loretta Young in The Farmer's Daughter. Probably due to his size, Westerns were a no-brainer for him right off the bat, his larger-than-life presence being a perfect fit--usually for the part of the heavy. However, it would be in the early 1950s that he would land the two roles that made him into something of a minor horror icon.

In 1951, he was cast as the bizarre and terrifying plant-like creature in Howard Hawks groundbreaking sci-fi/horror gem The Thing from Another World. He doesn't speak a word in the film, and he's covered in elaborate makeup and costuming, but much like Boris Karloff and Glenn Strange before him, he manages to exude terror in spite of--or perhaps because of--these limitations. Although most consider John Carpenter's 1982 remake to have eclipsed the original to an extent, with Rob Bottin's mind-blowing special effects overshadowing the more primitive Arness incarnation of the monster, the film and his performance in it are still cherished to this day by fans of the silver age of horror.

A couple years later, he once again starred in a sci-fi/horror classic, although this time he got to actually speak. Cast as FBI agent Robert Graham, sent to New Mexico to investigate some strange goings on in the desert, his role is one of the more memorable in Gordon Douglas' Them!, a tale of gigantic ants mutated by atomic radiation. Much more frightening than its premise might indicate, Them! is a landmark of 1950s b-movie cinema, perhaps even more highly regarded than The Thing from Another World. Having appeared in both films would be quite the feather in the cap of any B-movie actor, but Arness was only getting started.

A year after Them!, he would land the part that would make him a household name--not on the big screen, but on the burgeoning boob tube. At the recommendation of none other than John Wayne, he was given the lead role in the TV series Gunsmoke. All told, he would play the role of Matt Dillon--a heroic cowboy at last--for 20 years straight, a TV record that still stands. And if you add in TV movie revivals in the 1980s and 1990s, he played Dillon in five different decades.

Arness would ride the Gunsmoke train for the remainder of his career, before finally retiring in his 70s. His legacy firmly established, he would always be known as one of the most beloved of the TV cowboys--perhaps the most beloved of them all. And yet anyone who grew up a horror and sci-fi fan in the atomic era will likely remember him best as that hulking silhouette in the corridors of an antarctic research base. James Arness is no longer with us, but The Thing, as we discovered, never truly dies.

Keep watching the skies...

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A Hitchcockian Symphony of Death...

Something really unique and tre cool to share with all of you this fine morning, courtesy of my equally pop-culture obsessed colleague Kevin Maher of Kevin Geeks Out fame. So sit back and marvel at this video concoction, combining death scenes from 36 different Alfred Hitchcock films--all synchronized to climax at the same moment. Beautiful, chilling and utterly jaw-dropping...

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Jean Rollin 1938-2010

In the pantheon of horror directors, there are those whose names only become known to a relatively small yet fervent cult of followers. There are also those whose work transcends the narrow category in which it would seem to have been relegated--it becomes much more than that, especially to those in the aforementioned group. Jean Rollin was one of these. Controversial, possibly misunderstood, yet always intriguing; he and his work have long fascinated fans of exploitation horror. Yet now, it is only his work that remains, as Jean Rollin himself passed away Wednesday at the age 0f 72, after a long illness.

I first came across his work the way I think many fans did, via the bizarre yet beautiful 1978 zombie flick The Grapes of Death--known in his native France as Les Raisins de la Mort. Unusual, beguiling, and rightfully described by many as dreamlike, it remains in my opinion one of the all-time underrated horror films. There is much of Argento in it, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that there is some Rollin in much of Argento's work. I will not endeavor here to put him in the same category as the Italian master of the giallo, but he certainly deserves a lot more credit than he really got.

Of course, much of the Rollin stigma derived from the subgenre of what some might call "Euro-sleaze" that he spent much of his career working in. Softcore (and in some cases, even hardcore) pornography, mixed with horror, is certainly not everyone's cup of tea--especially amongst the mainstream movie-going public (at least in what they'd comfortably admit). Rollin was not always picky with what he worked on, only that he kept working. But we can forget titles like Sodomania or Anal Madness (although that's undeniably a hard title to forget), thanks to memorable films like Fascination (1979), Demoniacs (1973), Lips of Blood (1974), and of course, Living Dead Girl (1982).

"Euro-sleaze" though much of it may be, one cannot deny that it transcends such a limiting stigma. There is true eroticism to his work, mixed with creeping terror, and he achieves a somnambulistic sublimity on occasion that even the most jaded critic would have to acknowledge. While he may not have been among the giants of horror cinema, it is also not hard to understand why his work has accumulated such a loyal following. You will simply not find films like Grapes of Death being made today, and that is a real shame.

Rollin was passionate about film, looking for any way into the business, even going back to his teenage years in France during the 1950s. By age 15, he was writing screenplays, and by 16 he had already taken his first job doing menial work for a local studio. This led him eventually to directing--first documentaries and industrial films, and finally telling the stories he wanted to tell.

He began his sojourn into horror in 1968 with The Rape of the Vampire, already setting the tone for the rest of his career, blending sexuality and the macabre with aplomb. And yes, as the years wore on, he began to take on more questionable projects, veering beyond the erotic and into the pornographic, which he admitted arose sheerly out of the need to keep working. And so work he did, and he can hardly be faulted for that. The man continued making movies right through the 1990s, and was in the midst of a comeback as of late that include The Night of the Clocks (2007) and the forthcoming Mask of Medusa.

We've lost one of the most interesting figures in the history of European horror this week. I will always identify him with The Grapes of Death first and foremost, as I think many American fans might--and I encourage anyone who hasn't seen it to honor the memory of Jean Rollin by checking it out. It really is one of the most unique films in the entire zombie subgenre, and will give you a greater understanding of the man whose work must now live on in his place.

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The Many Faces of Ingrid Pitt

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The Shadow of Samhain: Reverence for Death in the Old World and Beyond

Death. It is perhaps mankind's greatest source of fear. And it's been linked directly to Halloween since the very beginning. This time in The Shadow of Samhain, I bring you a guest post from the most excellent Christine Hadden of Fascination with Fear... Christine has put together this fascinating and very thought-provoking meditation on the many connections between the Halloween/Samhain season and our eternal obsession with death and the afterlife. I hope you enjoy it as much I did...

Halloween, previous to all the current retail obsession with candy, costumes and horror movies, was long known as Samhain, and still is. The traditions and established practices of modern day pagans and non-pagans alike have been culled from centuries of folklore and beliefs involving what happens to us after we die and how we choose to celebrate and remember those whom we have lost. Old world religions that pre-date Christianity are most certainly the basis for the second most popular holiday of the modern age. Death, in essence remembering those who have died, is the sole reason the holiday was revered so much in the first place. It is believed, even today, that Samhain is the one night in which the veil between the living and dead is the thinnest.

The Festival of the Dead is most widely recognized as a Mexican holiday which begins at midnight on November 1. It is a spiritual holiday which honors the dead with a great day of celebration. On November 2, El Dia de los Muertos begins (quite literally The Day of the Dead). Religious Christians label the day All Souls Day, but it has different meanings all over the world. People across the globe, with their various religions and beliefs, hold these two days sacred as a time to remember those we have lost.

While in Mexico many people believe that the dead truly do walk again come the first day of November, elsewhere others do their best to coax the dead from their silent graves, if only to see them perhaps at least once a year. Candles are placed in the windows to light the way for the dead to return, food and gifts are laid out to welcome them back to the realm of the living, ritual “dumb suppers” are held--meals ate completely in silence to honor the dead and hope that their deceased loved ones return for one night. Usually an extra place setting is laid out, as well as food, for the lost souls of the dead.

Old Gaelic traditions claim that all the souls in Purgatory are released on the evening of All Hallows Eve. They are supposedly free to walk amongst the living for two days but then are sent back to wherever it is they came from. And some traditions hold that if you hear footsteps behind you on Halloween night, you aren’t to turn around lest you will die if you look into their eyes. There is a magnitude of folklore and old tall tales surrounding the mystery of Samhain--enough that entire books have been written. Obviously there is much more curiosity about death and its connection to Halloween than many folks--particularly Christian bible-thumper types--will admit to.

In pagan religions, in particular some Wiccan traditions, it is believed that the Horned God (not Satan, but the male counterpart to Mother Nature, if you will) passes into the Land of the Dead on Samhain night, only to be reborn at Winter Solstice. (Hmm….sounds familiar, no?) Modern witches and pagans have great reverence for the last day of October, it being their most important holiday in the wheel of the year. Death itself is seen as only the beginning--as they believe in reincarnation. The cycle of life continues.

Though it may seem like Americans may balk at these worldwide beliefs and practices, think again. Americans have long had an undying hunger for more knowledge about death and other things we cannot understand. Take Houdini’s widow, for instance. Back in the mid-twenties, after his death, she held a séance every Halloween for ten years, hoping he would contact her from his otherworldly resting place. Alas, he did not. But it didn’t make anyone any less enamored with the belief that at some point, that veil would be thin enough for someone to break through.

Why else would tons of people flock to cemeteries or abandoned houses…just for a possible glimpse into the realm beyond? Our obsession with the after-life certainly hasn’t slowed down any in recent years, and shows no sign of stopping. But a reflection back on the reasons why the holiday of Samhain is so important would be a great way to start a celebration of Halloween.

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Kevin McCarthy 1914-2010

He would rise to national fame as a breakout performer in a classic piece of American drama, and yet his true legacy would eventually find its origin in one of the most influential genre B-movies of all time. In 1951, the striking, lantern-jawed Kevin McCarthy turned heads in the role of Biff Loman, playing alongside the great Fredric March in the landmark screen adaptation of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. It seemed his course had been laid. But destiny had other plans for Mr. McCarthy, and a mere three years later he would star in the film that would quickly trump Salesman as the one for which he'd be forever known.

The image of a raving mad McCarthy sprinting down Main Street, USA, warning anyone who would listen about the insidious pod people who had infiltrated the planet--this is one of the enduring moments in the history of cinematic horror. And Cold War knee-jerk propaganda though it may be, it also does what all great propaganda does--it resonates. Deeply. Invasion of the Body Snatchers is the kind of film that gnaws at fears deep inside us, fears we dare not even admit to having. And a large part of what makes it work is Kevin McCarthy and his unforgettable performance.

Kevin McCarthy is no longer with us, having passed away on Saturday of pneumonia at the age of 96. He leaves behind many, many fans who will always remember him as the leading man-style actor who became a cult movie favorite; the kind of actor who was wise enough to know that there are no parts beneath a performer unless he treats them that way.

I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. McCarthy some ten years ago at New Jersey's Chiller Theatre convention, and I can honestly say that there are few celebrities I have ever encountered who were as friendly, as warm, and as appreciative of his fans as he was. He was a man who lived for his work, and who was never happy unless he had some projects lined up--which is attested to by the fact that he continued to appear on screen right up to the end.

Made an orphan at the age of four thanks to the great influenza pandemic of 1918, McCarthy was raised by his grandparents, aunts and uncles in Minneapolis, Minnesota. After considering a career in diplomacy, he decided to pursue acting instead, and came to New York in the late 1930s to attend the world-famous Actors' Studio.

By the time he was offered the role of Biff in Columbia Pictures' Stanley Kramer-produced Salesman film, McCarthy was already an established actor on Broadway and radio. He had the looks, he certainly had the talent, and it seemed like stardom was his for the taking. And in a way it would be, just perhaps not in the way his Actors' Studio instructors would have envisioned.

And yet, it took years following his unforgettable turn as Dr. Miles Bennell, Body Snatchers' beleaguered voice of reason, for McCarthy to embrace his most well-known film, and set about becoming a genre legend. He continued to do quite a bit of television and mainstream film, including The Misfits--the legendary teaming of Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe that became Gable's last movie.

By the 1970s, with "genre culture" going mainstream following the rise to maturity of an entire generation that had grown up on films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, McCarthy found a great deal of opportunity available to him thanks to the recognition he had gained from appearing in that movie. By then pushing 60, he was more than happy to enjoy the rewards, and started appearing in more and more horror and sci-fi projects, including notably, Joe Dante's original Piranha, in which he played the mad scientist who unleashes the flesh-eating fish. He even enjoyed a cameo in the 1978 remake of Body Snatchers.

This would be followed with more such work in the '80s and beyond, in movies that would permanently cement Kevin McCarthy as a star in the cult actor firmament, including The Howling, Invitation to Hell, Innerspace, and of course, who can forget his turn as the unbearably obnoxious heavy in Weird Al Yankovic's magnum opus, UHF?

McCarthy continued to work in front of the camera right up until this year, by which point he had also become one of the most beloved guests of the genre convention circuit, following decades of appearances. His body of work is as interesting as it is far-reaching, and it's no wonder that he has the loyal following he does. This week, those followers mourn the loss of one of the great ones. The Vault of Horror respectfully dims the torchlight for the one and only, Kevin McCarthy...

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Dennis Hopper 1936-2010

He was one of the most revered actors of our times, known to moviegoers for his iconic turns in such films as Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now, Blue Velvet, True Romance and Hoosiers. And yet horror fans can also take pride that this respected figure in Hollywood, one of the most "legit" performers of the past 40 years, was also a part of two of the most beloved horror franchises of the past 40 years: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and George Romero's Living Dead series. Last Saturday, Hopper passed away after a quiet eight-year battle with prostate cancer, just 12 days past his 74th birthday.

Hopper was a key part of a very crucial, transformative period in American film making. After a career as a child actor on the stage, he burst on the scene in the 1950s, part of the early wave of post-World War II method actors that washed over Hollywood. Still a teen, he found early success in westerns on TV and the big screen, and fell in with James Dean's circle, appearing with the legendary, ill-fated actor in Rebel Without a Cause and Giant.

But even early on, Hopper was what we might politely call "eccentric", making scenes on-set and quickly gaining a rep for being difficult, culminating in being banned from the MGM lot by the lord of all movie moguls, Louis B. Mayer, after a very heated argument over the young actor's desire to play Shakespearean roles. By the '60s, the young man who had once been one of the last of Hollywood's traditional contract players began taking chances with edgier, independent cinema.

This meant working with grindhouse icon Roger Corman, and it also meant dabbling in horror. In 1961, he made his horror debut with Night Tide, a quirky picture about a guy who falls in love with a girl who turns out to be a killer mermaid. He starred in the 1963 Twilight Zone episode "He's Alive", about Nazis operating in the United States. Three years later, he appeared alongside genre faves John Saxon and Basil Rathbone in the AIP alien vampire flick Queen of Blood.

During the '60s, Hopper went from potential teenage matinee idol to part of a burgeoning counterculture movement within Hollywood, which culminated in 1969 with Easy Rider, the film he directed, which literally altered the American film landscape overnight. Hopper, no doubt bitter over previous treatment, was one of those who eagerly danced on the grave of "old Hollywood," once famously declaring at a dinner party to Gone with the Wind co-director George Cukor, "We are going to bury you!"

But although Hopper was undoubtedly part of the movement that transitioned cinema into the "modern era", his own personal demons--including substance addiction--prevented him from following through on his early promise as well as he and others would've liked. He reinvigorated his career to a degree by the end of the '70s with an unforgettable supporting part in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, but his star had unquestionably fallen.

It might not have been what he most wanted to be doing, but as he attempted to piece his career back together on the comeback trail, Hopper wasn't above returning to his genre roots. He most notably did so in 1986 for Tobe Hooper's long-awaited Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, in which he played police lieutenant Lefty Enright, uncle of the original film's Sally and Franklin, out for vengeance against Leatherface and the gang. Despite Hopper citing the film as the worst he was ever in, it is his best-remembered horror role, and directly preceded the film that put the exclamation point on the Hopper comeback, David Lynch's Blue Velvet.

Into the 1990s and beyond, Dennis Hopper continued taking on the occasional genre role--often to his detriment in films like Super Mario Bros. and the infamous Waterworld. He starred in the 1994 HBO film Witch Hunt, in which he played a private detective named H. Phillip Lovecraft (!) operating in an alternate-reality 1950s in which everyone practices magic. Eight years later, he appeared with Lance Henriksen in the poorly received, low-budget thriller Unspeakable.

But Hopper would turn a lot of heads with his final horror appearance, in George Romero's 2005 big-budget return to the zombie genre, Land of the Dead. Despite his paradoxical real-life Republican affiliations, Hopper gleefully parodied George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld with the villainous part of Kaufman, unscrupulous owner of Fiddler's Green, a tiny enclave of humanity amidst a world overrun by the dead. Also featuring Simon Baker and John Leguizamo, the film was Romero's first studio-backed zombie film--the first to feature marquee actors--and Hopper's name on the bill undoubtedly helped raise the project's profile.

Dennis Lee Hopper was a true original and a Hollywood trailblazer who wasn't afraid to take chances (sometimes by necessity) and shake up the status quo. Along the way, this brilliant actor and filmmaker left his indelible mark on the history of cinema, from his mainstream dramatic performances, to the genre appearances horror fans will particularly cherish in their hearts.

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Frank Frazetta 1928-2010

In the realm of fantasy art, there is one name among 20th century practitioners that towers above the rest: Frazetta. And as of today, that name refers not to a living, breathing member of the art community, but to a legend of the past, a great master who will only live on in his work. Because Frank Frazetta passed away this morning in a hospital in Pennsylvania, leaving behind one of the most impressive collections of pop illustrations ever assembled, and a following of fans and artists who have been influenced by his amazing talent.

Frazetta is best known to genre fans for the breathtaking fantasy and adventure book covers he created, starting in the late 1960s, of characters like Conan, Tarzan and John Carter of Mars; as well as for the many Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella covers he painted for Warren Publications during that same period. He was a giant in the world of comic book art as well, with a resume that included EC Comics, DC (then known as National Periodicals) and more.

His original destiny seemed to have put him on a path to becoming more of a fine artist, having been groomed by the Italian painter Michael Falanga while studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in his native Brooklyn, New York as a teenager. But that destiny was derailed when Falanga died unexpectedly in 1944, leaving the young Frazetta to take whatever work he could get.

The loss to the high-brow world of fine art would be a gain for the low-brow world of pop art, in the form of a formidable new visionary. After working in comics during the 1950s on such titles as Famous Funnies (for which he did Buck Rogers covers) and in comic strips working on Lil' Abner with the renowned Al Capp and Flash Gordon with Dan Barry, Frazetta was discovered by Hollywood and began making serious money doing movie posters. He would eventually do posters for such films as What's New Pussycat (1965), The Secret of My Success (1965), Hammer's The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) and Rankin Bass' Mad Monster Party (1969).

The poster work put him on the map, and helped expose his prodigious abilities to the world. From then on, Frazetta would find steady work doing a consistent stream of paintings in both oil and watercolor, many of which would be used for fantasy, adventure and horror paperbacks. His imaginative approach to the subject matter is credited with having a direct effect on the development of the visual aspect of the sword and sorcery subgenre, which enjoyed something of a renaissance during the 1970s.

Countless artists from the 1970s and onward would be directly inspired by the unmistakable Frazetta style, including the likes of Boris Vallejo and Jeff Jones. His continued book cover work, as well as the eye-catching material he was producing for Warren Publications' line of magazine-sized horror comics, helped create a very grim, rugged and decidedly masculine aesthetic that redefined fantasy art.

Beyond his commercial work, Frazetta was also able to produce many completely independent oil and watercolor paintings, amassing a great collection of works coveted by collectors everywhere. Many of them have even been used as album covers by bands such as Nazareth and Molly Hatchet.

Over the last decade, the aging Frazetta had suffered a series of strokes that prevented him from using his hand to paint, leading him to teach himself to paint with the other. He established a small museum to showcase his personal collection of work on the grounds of his 67-acre estate in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, and was the subject of a 2003 documentary entitled Frank Frazetta: Painting with Fire.

Were it not for Frazetta, there are many fantasy, science fiction and horror illustrators who might not even be plying their craft today, at least not using their talents to explore the subject matter they do. As much as any writer of tales, or maker of movies, Frank Frazetta helped build the modern look and feel of fantasy adventure as we now know it. His unique vision is something to be treasured by fans of speculative fiction and film the world over.

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Corey Haim 1971-2010

A last fire will rise behind those eyes,

Black house will rock, blind boys don't lie.
Immortal fear, that voice so clear,
Through broken walls, that scream I hear.

Cry, little sister - Thou shall not fall.
Come to your brother - Thou shall not die.
Unchain me, sister - Thou shall not fear.
Love is with your brother - Thou shall not kill.

Blue masquerade, strangers look on,
When will they learn this loneliness?
Temptation heat beats like a drum,
Deep in your veins, I will not lie.

Deeply tragic news this morning, particularly for children of the '80s. Corey Haim, one of the most popular Generation X teen heartthrobs, has died of an apparent drug overdose. Sadly, Haim's life seemed to be one of suffering, both from the damage of the substances he put into his body, and also the catastrophic effects of the well-worn path trod by so many child stars whose light fades as they pass into full adulthood.

Corey is best known to horror fans for his roles in Silver Bullet (1985) and especially The Lost Boys (1987), in which he co-starred with fellow '80s teen idol Corey Feldman. That latter film was perhaps the highlight of his entire career--an edgy vampire comedy adored by virtually anyone who enjoys '80s horror. For a certain generation, that movie is legendary--and because of it, Haim will always be fondly remembered.

The sad part of this is that, despite his well-publicized personal problems, Haim appeared to working hard to get his career back on track. Following some recent reality TV appearances that raised him back into the public spotlight, he had begun working more often again, and according to IMDb, currently has an astounding nine projects either in the can or in pre-production, waiting to be released.

On a personal note, there was a certain period in the late 1980s and early 1990s, during which Corey Haim's smiling baby-face was an ever-present image in my home. You see, my little sister was one of those girls with the Tiger Beat and Bop posters all over the wall. In fact, if memory serves, Corey Haim was her very first celebrity crush. And so, in some weird way, hearing the news of his passing this morning felt like a bit of my youth being ripped away.

Like so many child stars before him, Corey Haim has finally found the peace that eluded him for so long in life. What a horrible pity.



Some others mourning the loss of Corey Haim this morning:
Basement Screams
Bloody-Disgusting
Brutal as Hell
Cinematical
Day of the Woman
HorrorBid
Horror Society
I Like Horror Movies
Slammed & Damned

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