Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 23

Jennifer Miro(Jennifer Anderson), vocalist and electric piano player with the 1970s San Francisco punk/new wave/goth band The Nuns, died in New York City on 14 December. She appeared in the movies Nightmare in Blood (uncredited), The Video Dead and Dr Caligari (1989).

Seventy-three-year-old Scottish actor Nicol Williamson, who portrayed Sherlock Holmes in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution and Merlin in Excalibur , died of oesophageal cancer on 16 December. His other film credits include Hamlet (1969), Venom, Macbeth (1983), Disney’s Return to Oz, The Exorcist III and Spawn . Williamson also appeared in an episode of the little-seen 1990 anthology TV show Chillers , hosted by Anthony Perkins. From 1971–77 he was married to actress Jill Townsend.

American character actor Robert Easton(Robert Burke, aka “Bob Easton”), regarded as “the Henry Higgins of Hollywood” for his later career as a respected dialect coach, died the same day, aged eighty-one. He appeared in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (uncredited), The Neanderthal Man, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Loved One, One of Our Spies is Missing, Johnny Got His Gun, The Touch of Satan, The Giant Spider Invasion, Mr Sycamore , Disney’s Pete’s Dragon, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Pet Sematary II, Needful Things, Spiritual Warriors and Horrorween , plus episodes of TV’s Adventures of Superman, The Munsters, Lost in Space, My Mother the Car, The Man from U.N.C.L.E ., Get Smart, The Ghost Busters (1975), Kolchak: The Night Stalker (“Mr R.I.N.G.”) and The Bionic Woman . Easton was also the voice of co-pilot “Phones” and other characters in Gerry Anderson’s “supermarionation” series Stingray (1964–65).

A chimpanzee, whose owner claimed was the eighty-year-old Cheetathat appeared in the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films of the 1930s, died of kidney failure at a Florida primate sanctuary on 24 December. However, experts agreed that it was extremely unlikely that it was the original chimp.

Virtuoso violinist Israel Baker, who contributed the screeching violin chords to Bernard Herrmann’s score for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), died on Christmas Day, aged ninety-two. A highly paid session musician and acclaimed concert musician, Baker’s movie credits also include Jonathan Livingstone Seagull and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom .

Mexican-born character actor Pedro Armendáriz, Jr.(Pedro Armendáriz Bohr) died of cancer in New York on 26 December, aged seventy-one. He began his career in the 1960s in such films as Las vampiras (with John Carradine), and he continued to work in both his native country and the US. Armendárez’s movie credits include Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (1973), Chosen Survivors, Earthquake, Licence to Kill, The Legend of the Mask, The Mask of Zorro (1998) and The Legend of Zorro , and he also appeared an episode of TV’s Knight Rider .

FILM & TV TECHNICIANS/PRODUCERS

American make-up artist and musician Verne Langdondied on 1 January, aged sixty-nine. Perhaps best remembered as creator of the Universal Monster “Calendar Masks” for Don Post Studios, he worked on such movies as The Haunted Palace, The Comedy of Terrors, Planet of the Apes, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Escape from the Planet of the Apes and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes , along with TV’s The Star Wars Holiday Special . Langdon also created and co-produced the 1967 Decca record album An Evening with Boris Karloff and His Friends , and co-created the 1980 “Castle Dracula” show at Universal Studios.

Spanish screenwriter, producer and director Juan Piquer Simón(aka “J. P. Simon”) died of lung cancer on 7 January, aged seventy-five. His many genre films include Where Time Began (based on the novel by Jules Verne), Satan’s Blood, Supersonic Man, Monster Island (with Peter Cushing and Paul Naschy), Pieces, Extraterrestrial Visitors, Slugs (based on the novel by Shaun Hutson), Cthulhu Mansion (which had absolutely nothing to do with H. P. Lovecraft), The Rift and La isla del diablo . Simón additionally scripted Beyond Terror (as “Alfredo Casado”), Nexus 2.431 (which was based on his unproduced screenplay) and El escarabajo de oro (a 1999 adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Gold Bug”). In 2008 he was the subject of Nacho Cerdà’s documentary Pieces of Juan (Piquer Simón) .

Del Reisman, who was associate producer on the original TV series of The Twilight Zone and scripted episodes of Ghost Story and The Six Million Dollar Man , died on 8 January, aged eighty-six.

Peter Yates, the British film director probably best remembered for the iconic car chase movie Bullitt (1968) starring Steve McQueen, died after a long illness on 9 January, aged eighty-one. He began his career as a dubbing assistant, working his way up to assistant director on such films as the sleazy Cover Girl Killer before getting his break directing the classic Cliff Richard musical Summer Holiday . His varied other credits include The Deep and Krull , along with episodes of TV’s The Saint and Danger Man .

British production designer Peter(Edward Sidney Canton) Phillips, best known for his BAFTA Award-winning work on TV’s Brideshead Revisited (1981), died on 10 January, aged eighty-five. He worked as a production design assistant on the 1947 film Uncle Silas (aka The Inheritance , based on the novel by J. Sheridan Le Fanu) before joining Granada Television, where his credits include three episodes of 1980s series Shades of Darkness — “Bewitched”, based on the story by Edith Wharton; “The Demon Lover”, based on the story by Elizabeth Bowen, and “Agatha Christie’s The Last Séance”.

David[Oswald] Nelson, the real-life son of Ozzie Nelson and Harriet Hilliard, and the older brother of singer/actor Ricky Nelson, died of complications from colon cancer on 11 January, aged seventy-four. He was the last surviving star of the 1952–66 TV show The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet , and in 1982 he directed the horror movie Death Screams (aka House of Death ).

Dan Filie, who wrote and produced the 2009 horror comedy Frankenhood , died on 13 January, aged fifty-six. As Senior Vice President for Drama Development for Universal Television in the 1990s, he was instrumental in creating the TV series Hercules and Xena: Warrior Princess .

American music producer and publisher Don(Donald) Kirshnerdied of heart failure on 17 January, aged seventy-six. During the 1960s, Kirshner helped launch the careers of such songwriters as Carole King, Neil Sedaka and Neil Diamond when he became music supervisor on NBC-TV’s The Monkees , before he was fired when the manufactured group demanded more control. Kirshner went on to work as a music consultant/supervisor on such TV series as Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie , the animated Archie series (“Sugar Sugar” stayed at #1 in the US for four weeks in 1969), The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan and the 1976 TV movie The Savage Bees (which he also executive produced). He also produced the rarely-seen 1970 SF musical Toomorrow , directed by Val Guest and starring a young Olivia Newton-John.