Richard Gordon, who produced a number of B-movie horror films in the 1950s and 60s, died on Tuesday, November 1 at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. No cause of death was reported, though he had been hospitalized in recent months for unspecified heart problems. He was 85.
Gordon moved to the United States with his brother from their native England following World War Two. In the mid-1950s he began producing a string of low budget horror films such as Fiend Without A Face, Corridors Of Blood with Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee, The Haunted Strangler with Karloff and Island Of Terror with Peter Cushing. Later films included The Cat And The Canary, Computer Killers and Horror Planet.
As with many B-movie producers of that era, Gordon was no stranger to using ballyhoo techniques to advertise his films. For Fiend Without A Face’s run at the Times Square Rialto Theater, he placed a replica of the film’s title monster in a glass case in front of the theater. At regular intervals the creature would move thanks to some motors hidden inside and a tape recording of its sounds would play, startling passers-by. The display only lasted two days before police asked the theater to take it down citing it as a disruption to traffic and pedestrian flows.
Gordon also operated Gordon Films Inc., an importer of foreign movies for distribution in the U.S. until his death.
Via LA Times.
