85-year-old British TV producer and director [Terence] Michael Hayes died on September 16. A former Shakespearean actor, he directed the 1961 BBC series A for Andromeda, Tales from the Thousand and One Nights, and episodes of Sherlock Holmes (1965) and Doctor Who.
84-year-old French-born director George Sluizer died in Amsterdam, Holland, after a long illness on September 20. He is best known for his 1988 Dutch thriller The Vanishing (aka Spoorloos) and the inferior 1993 American remake, which he also directed. His other films include Crimetime and The Stone Raft. Sluizer also directed River Phoenix’s long-delayed final film, Dark Blood.
American stage and screen producer Stanley Chase died on October 7, aged 87. His movie credits include Colossus: The Forbin Project, Welcome to Blood City and An American Christmas Carol. In 1965 he executive produced the NBC-TV pilot Dream Wife, in which Shirley Jones’ character could read minds and see into the future.
American-born movie producer Alain Siritzky died in Paris, France, on October 11. He was 72. As producer of the popular “Emmanuelle” erotic film sequels, his films include Emmanuelle Queen of the Galaxy, Emmanuelle vs. Dracula, Emmanuelle in Wonderland and the Emmanuelle Through Time series. Amongst his other credits are The Sex Files series (a softcore spoof of The X Files), Sex Wars, Aliens Gone Wild, She Alien, Alien Ecstasy, The Final Alien Files, and the TV series Click, based on Milo Manara’s adult comics.
American animator Larry Latham died on November 2. He worked on numerous TV shows, including The World’s Greatest SuperFriends, Godzilla, Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo, The Smurfs and Challenge of the Go-Bots, and directed the direct-to-video movies An American Taiclass="underline" The Treasure of Manhattan Island and An American Taiclass="underline" The Mystery of the Night Monster. Latham also created the web comic Lovecraft is Missing (2008-14).
Canadian visual effects supervisor and documentary film-maker Michael Lennick died of a brain tumour on November 7, aged 61. He worked on the effects for such films as The Last Chase, David Cronenberg’s Videodrome, The Dead Zone and The Fly, Millennium and Earthquake in New York, along with episodes of Friday the 13th: The Series, My Secret Identity, War of the Worlds and The Adventures of Sinbad.
Hugely influential and successful American writer and producer Glen A. (Albert) Larson died of aesophageal cancer on November 14, aged 77. Amongst the many shows he created were Battlestar Galactica, The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Galactica 1980, Manimal, Automan, Knight Rider, The Highwayman and NightMan. Larson also scripted The Six Million Dollar Man: Wine Women and War, Mission Galactica: The Cylon Attack, Conquest of Earth and Millennium Man, and he produced Team Knight Rider and episodes of McCloud (‘McCloud Meets Dracula’), B.J. and the Bear (‘A Coffin with a View’) and The Fall Guy (‘October the 31st’), all featuring John Carradine. Author Harlan Ellison infamously called him “Glen Larceny”, accusing him of stealing movie concepts for his TV shows, while James Garner reportedly got into a physical altercation with Larson after he copied scripts and the theme tune from The Rockford Files.
German-born Oscar-winning director Mike Nichols (Michael Igor Peschkowsky) died of a heart attack in New York on November 19, aged 83. His movie credits include Catch-22, The Day of the Dolphin, Wolf and What Planet Are You From?. Nichols was married to Diane Sawyer.
American film producer and former President of Paramount Pictures (1971-75) Frank Yablans died on November 27, aged 79. His credits include The Fury and Congo.
Oscar-winning special effects designer Danny Lee (Daniel West Lee) died on November 28, aged 95. Starting in 1960, he worked on numerous Walt Disney movies, eventually becoming head of the studio’s special effects department from 1969-81. Lee’s other films included Murderers’ Row and The Ambushers, and he was noted for his revolutionary use of synthetic blood squibs in the climax of Bonnie and Clyde (1967).
British cinematographer Gerry (Gerald) Hill died on December 2, aged 88. He began his career as a camera assistant and then operator on such films as Daughter of Darkness (1948), Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure, Suddenly Last Summer, The Road to Hong Kong, Night Must Fall (1964), Bunny Lake is Missing, Modesty Blaise (1966) and Casino Royale (1967). Hill went on to shoot Hamlet (1969), Malpertuis, Blind Terror (aka See No Evil), the short The Man and the Snake (based on the story by Ambrose Bierce), The Amazing Mr. Blunden, The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother, The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977), The Ninth Configuration, Wolfen, Highlander, Black Rainbow and The Exorcist III. He retired in 1998.
Italian screenwriter and director Giulio Questi died on December 3, aged 90. His films include Arcana, Death Laid an Egg and Vampirismus, and he also co-wrote the 1965 movie The Possessed. Questi’s TV episode L’umo della Sabbia (1981) was based on E.T.A. Hoffman’s story ‘The Sandman’.
Japanese cinematographer Takao Saitô died of chronic lymphocytic leukemia on December 6, aged 85. His credits include The Lost World of Sinbad and The Killing Bottle.
Hollywood art director Robert Kinoshita died of congestive heart failure on December 9, aged 100. Credited with designing the iconic “Robby the Robot” for Forbidden Planet (1956), “Tobor” for the TV pilot Here Comes Tobor and the “Robot” from TV’s Lost in Space (1965-68), Kinoshita began his career as a set designer on such movies as The Black Sleep and Pharaoh’s Curse, and the TV series Science Fiction Theatre. As an art director he worked on Roger Corman’s The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent, William Castle’s Macabre, The Six Million Dollar Man: Wine Women and War, Planet Earth and The Dead Don’t Die! (based on the story by Robert Bloch), along with the TV series Men Into Space, Lost in Space and Project U.F.O. Kinoshita was credited as an associate producer on The Phantom Planet (he was also production designer) and Al Adamson’s biker film Hell’s Bloody Devils. He and his wife were sent to a Japanese internment camp in Arizona during World War II, but were freed early thanks to a sponsor.