Lon Chaney, original name Leonidas Frank Chaney,  (born April 1, 1883, Colorado Springs, Colorado, U.S.—died August 26, 1930, Los Angeles, California) was an American film actor whose versatility and moving performances in even the most macabre roles are classics of the silent screen. He is perhaps best known for his performances in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925).

Chaney’s skills as a silent-film actor were honed during his childhood, when he learned to communicate with his deaf parents through facial expression, pantomime, and sign language. As a youth, he worked several odd jobs before turning to acting at age 19 in a play he cowrote with his brother. After a few years of touring with the show to only moderate success, Chaney met actress-singer Cleva Creighton in 1905; the two married and toured together with their son, Creighton. Chaney eventually found more steady work on his own as an actor, stage manager, and choreographer, but his stage career was derailed when Cleva’s suicide attempt in 1913 and their subsequent divorce created a public scandal. It was in the same year that Chaney made his debut in motion pictures, the medium in which he became a legend.

Beginning in films as an extra and bit player, Chaney had an important supporting role in Hell Morgan’s Girl (1917); two years later his role in The Miracle Man (1919) made him a star. During the next 10 years Chaney earned a reputation as one of the finest character actors in films. He became equally renowned for his skill with makeup (even writing on the topic for the 14th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica), a talent he developed because he thought his own features were too ordinary for a star performer. The characters he portrayed were diverse and often macabre, but they were unfailingly moving and poignant due to Chaney’s ability to convey a basic decency beneath a grotesque exterior.

Chaney often endured physical pain in order to achieve the appearance he desired for a role. For example, he bound his legs into a tight harness—resulting in broken blood vessels—for his portrayal of Blizzard, a legless criminal mastermind, in The Penalty (1920). In one of his most famous films, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), Chaney wore a 50-pound hump on his back, a fleshy covering over one eye, and prosthetics that grossly exaggerated his cheekbones, nose, and lips. Perhaps Chaney’s most famous makeup creation was for The Phantom of the Opera (1925), in which he portrayed the deformed opera-house denizen. Other well-known Chaney roles that helped earn him the nickname “Man of a Thousand Faces” included the dual role of police inspector and vampire in London After Midnight (1927; now lost); a Chinese Mandarin in Mr. Wu (1927); an armless knife thrower in The Unknown (1927); and a clown in Laugh Clown Laugh (1928). Yet he was much more than an actor who hid behind layers of makeup, as was amply demonstrated in his acclaimed “straight” performances in films such as Tell It to the Marines (1927), While the City Sleeps (1928), and Thunder (1929). Many of Chaney’s films during this period were directed by Tod Browning, a specialist in the macabre and bizarre.

Chaney, along with other silent-screen legends such as Charlie Chaplin, believed that sound films would destroy the art of pantomime, and he resisted talking roles until agreeing to reprise his role in The Unholy Three, made as a silent with Browning in 1925, as a talkie in 1930. Playing multiple roles and using five distinct character voices in the film, Chaney demonstrated that he was well suited to talkies. Unfortunately, he died suddenly of a throat hemorrhage less than two months after the film’s release.

Chaney’s legend was such that he retained a large cult following into the 21st century. His son, Creighton, also attained stardom, in the 1930s and ’40s after changing his name to Lon Chaney, Jr., and portraying notable horror roles for Universal Studios, in particular the title character in The Wolf Man (1941).  - From Encyclopædia Britannica

William Castle, original name William Schloss, (born April 24, 1914, New York City, New York, U.S.—died May 31, 1977, Los Angeles, California), American director who was known for the innovative marketing techniques he used to promote his B-horror movies.

He began his entertainment career as an actor in Off-Broadway productions, and he later directed a well-received stage version of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. During this time he translated his family’s German surname, Schloss, into its English equivalent, Castle, which he took as his professional name. In 1937 he appeared in the first of several films, though he was often uncredited. Three years later he became a dialogue coach at Columbia Pictures. In 1943 Castle directed his first feature films, and the following year he made several movies, including three notable low-budget film noirs: The Whistler and The Mark of the Whistler, which were adapted from a radio program and featured Richard Dix as the suicidal protagonist, and When Strangers Marry, a taut thriller that cast Robert Mitchum as the murderous spouse of Kim Hunter. In 1945 Castle made his last Whistler film, Voice of the Whistler, and that year he took over the Crime Doctor series, which was also based on a popular radio show. Castle directed several installments, including The Crime Doctor’s Warning (1945) and Crime Doctor’s Gamble (1947).

In 1949 Castle moved to Universal, and his first films for the studio were the solid crime dramas Johnny Stool Pigeon, with Shelley Winters and Dan Duryea, and Undertow (both 1949), with Scott Brady. After directing It’s a Small World (1950)—a melodrama centring on a dwarf who undertakes a life of crime—Castle demonstrated his versatility by working in a number of genres. In 1953 he helmed the westerns Fort Ti and Conquest of Cochise; the spectacle Serpent of the Nile, featuring Rhonda Fleming as Cleopatra; and the biblical tale Slaves of Babylon. The following year he released the period-adventure movies Charge of the Lancers and The Iron Glove.

Castle might have continued grinding out such piecework, but in 1958 he decided to produce and direct a series of horror films, overcoming the limitations of casts and budgets by creating a gimmick with which each one could be exploited. The first film to employ this marketing strategy was the intense shocker Macabre (1958), which was advertised with the prominent guarantee “So terrifying we insure you for $1,000 against death by fright!”, House on Haunted Hill (1959), which starred Vincent Price at his most malevolent and was probably the best of Castle’s tongue-in-cheek shockers, featured “Emergo,” a luminescent skeleton that floated over the heads of moviegoers (assuming the exhibitor was cooperating, which rarely happened).

The Tingler (1959), a clever tale about the nature of fear, had “Percepto,” in which electric buzzers were wired under selected patrons’ seats; star Price instructed the audience from the screen that they had to scream if the parasitic Tingler was to be destroyed. For 13 Ghosts (1960), Castle offered “Illusion-O,” a pair of glasses with tinted plastic lenses that made the ghosts visible on-screen when worn. Homicidal (1961) was a knockoff of Psycho (1960), with the added fillip of a “Fright Break,” which offered audiences a refund if they left during the film’s final minutes. In 1961 Castle returned to period movies with Mr. Sardonicus (1961), in which a disfigured, evil count (played by Guy Rolfe) has his fate decided at film’s end by the audience’s vote during a “Punishment Poll.” Such innovative promotional campaigns gave Castle the nickname “King of the Gimmick.” - Excerpt from Encyclopædia Britannica

Roger Corman, in full Roger William Corman,  (born April 5, 1926, Detroit, Michigan, U.S.), American motion picture director, producer, and distributor known for his highly successful low-budget exploitation films and for launching the careers of several prominent directors and actors, notably Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, and Jonathan Demme.

In 1940 Corman’s family moved from Detroit to Beverly Hills, California, near Hollywood—a move that inspired young Roger’s love of motion pictures. After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Corman earned an engineering degree from Stanford University. He broke into the film industry in 1948, where he began working as a messenger at Twentieth Century-Fox. He was soon promoted to script reader. After a one-year hiatus during which he studied English literature at the University of Oxford, he coproduced his first film, Highway Dragnet, in 1954.

Corman’s second film, Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954), was made in six days on a budget of $12,000; it was the first of his movies to follow what was to become his standard method of operation: inexpensive productions shot in the minimum amount of time, often in less than one week. That same year he also produced Highway Dragnet for American Releasing Corporation, which later became American International Pictures (AIP), for which Corman produced and directed many of his most noted films. In 1955 he directed his first feature film, Five Guns West, a romantic western. The titles of many of Corman’s films of the 1950s—The Beast with a Million Eyes (1955), It Conquered the World (1956), Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957), Teenage Cave Man (1958), Night of the Blood Beast (1958), The Brain Eaters (1958), The Cry Baby Killer (1958; the film that marked Nicholson’s screen debut), and A Bucket of Blood (1959)—indicate why he earned the nickname “King of the Drive-in.”

During the 1960s Corman directed eight lavish gothic horror films based on the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, including House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), The Raven (1963), The Haunted Palace (1963), and The Masque of the Red Death (1964). All but one of the Poe films starred Vincent Price, and these films featured such other established actors as Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff, Ray Milland, and Peter Lorre.

In 1970 Corman left AIP and formed New World Pictures, an independent company that produced and distributed the work of such young artists as John Sayles, Martin Scorsese, Joe Dante, Jonathan Demme, and James Cameron. Its first film, The Student Nurses (1970), was shot in three weeks for $150,000 and grossed more than $1 million. Other New World releases included horror, blaxploitation, and women-in-prison films. Corman sold New World Pictures in 1983 and founded Concorde-New Horizons, a company devoted strictly to movie production.

Corman cowrote (with Jim Jerome) an autobiography, the aptly titled How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime (1971). In 2009 he was given an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement. Two years later he was the subject of the documentary Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel.  – Excerpts from Encyclopædia Britannica

Hammer Films, in full Hammer Film Productions Limited, also called Hammer Studios, British production company known for its low-budget, gothic horror feature films.

In 1934 theatre owner Enrique Carreras and jewelry store owner William Hinds—who also performed in variety shows under the stage name of Will Hammer—joined forces to form the film distribution company Exclusive Films, Ltd. After their efforts were cut short by World War II, the company reemerged in 1947 as Hammer Film Productions Limited, with sons James Carreras and Anthony Hinds taking over production. Grandson Michael Carreras joined in 1955 and became managing director in 1971.

It was not until the mid-1950s that Hammer hit upon its winning formula of horror, science fiction, and fantasy. The Quatermass Xperiment (1955), directed by Val Guest and starring Brian Donlevy, was a film version of a successful British television series. Hammer’s production of The Snorkel (1958), the story of a teenager who suspects that her stepfather is a murderer, marked the beginning of the company’s adult horror films. Over time, Hammer Films production came to be characterized by low-budget thrills, an abundance of blood and gore, and scantily clad young women.

In the late 1950s Hammer signed two actors whose names became synonymous with the company: Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Lee played the Creature in The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and became an international star when he portrayed the title character in Dracula the following year. He went on to play Count Dracula six more times for Hammer and appeared in numerous other productions, including the studio’s last horror film, To the Devil…A Daughter (1976). Cushing, who joined the company at the same time as Lee, played Baron Victor Frankenstein in The Curse of Frankenstein, a role he would repeat in five subsequent Hammer offerings. Often teamed with Lee, Cushing also played Professor Van Helsing to Lee’s Dracula in three films.

Another genre gave Hammer its most successful alternative to horror features: movies set in prehistoric times. An early example is She (1965) starring Lee, Cushing, and Ursula Andress. This was followed by One Million Years B.C. (1966), which gave Raquel Welch her first starring role and featured special effects by master animator Ray Harryhausen.

With public interest drawn to the higher production values of Hollywood horror films, Hammer slowly lost its foothold in the genre. The growing popularity of actor and martial arts expert Bruce Lee in the 1970s prompted Hammer to attempt a martial arts–horror fusion entitled The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974). The company also produced a few less-than-successful television series, and by the end of the decade Hammer was reduced to renting its films to revival houses. In 1979 Hammer released an unfortunate remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, the final commercial film for what was once the most financially sound studio in Britain. - From Encyclopædia Britannica

Lanchester [married name Laughton], Elsa Sullivan (1902–1986), actress and entertainer, was born on 28 October 1902 at 48 Farley Road, Lewisham, London, the second child of James Sullivan (d. 1945), factory worker and later commercial clerk, and Edith Lanchester (1871–1966), daughter of Henry J. Lanchester of Brighton. Her parents were militant socialists, pacifists, and vegetarians who caused a scandal when, true to their free love beliefs, they decided to live together in 1895 without marrying. Edith's family was so outraged that they kidnapped her in collusion with a psychiatrist who committed her to a lunatic asylum. Her cause was taken up by fellow members of the Social Democratic Federation (she had been secretary to Eleanor Marx) and her release was secured when she was found not to be insane.

Lanchester's first theatrical appearance was in Thirty Minutes in a Street at the Kingsway Theatre in 1922, followed by the Larva in the Capek brothers' The Insect Play for Nigel Playfair, who cast her in several further productions. Evelyn Waugh, a friend, wrote an amateur film in which she appeared in 1924. Another friend, H. G. Wells, wrote three short films for her which were made about 1927. Appearing on stage in Arnold Bennet's Mr Prohack in 1927, she met the young actor Charles Laughton (1899–1962). They lived together in Soho before marrying on 10 February 1929. Shortly after the wedding, Lanchester discovered that Laughton was a homosexual following an incident with a rent boy who wanted more money. Theirs was a complex marriage that lasted up to Laughton's death. Lanchester remained loyal and supportive to Laughton as his career took off and he became one of the leading actors of his time. She was inevitably overshadowed by him and in any case possessed a different kind of talent. Not being a conventional beauty, she found herself playing supporting roles in films, often opposite Laughton.

 In 1935 she went to Hollywood to play The Bride of Frankenstein opposite Boris Karloff. Although she was on screen only for a short time (she also played Mary Shelley in the opening scene) this remains her most iconic role and the one with which she will always be associated. – From Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Bela Lugosi, original name Blasko Béla Ferenc Dezső,  (born October 20, 1882, Lugos, Hungary [now Lugoj, Romania]—died August 16, 1956, Los Angeles, California, U.S.) was a Hungarian-born motion-picture actor who was most famous for his sinister portrayal of the elegantly mannered vampire Count Dracula. 

Lugosi became a national celebrity when he reprised his stage success for the Universal Pictures film adaptation Dracula (1931). With his slow, thickly accented voice, he etched lines such as “I never drink…wine” into the national consciousness, and Lugosi’s name was thereafter associated with that of the bloodsucking count. The success of Universal’s Frankenstein in the same year established the studio as the top producer of horror films and Lugosi and Boris Karloff (who starred in the role of Frankenstein’s Monster, a role Lugosi had turned down) as kings of the genre. Lugosi’s subsequent shockers included Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story; White Zombie (1932); Island of Lost Souls (1932); and Mark of the Vampire (1935). He costarred with Karloff in several films, including The Black Cat (1934), The Raven (1935), and The Invisible Ray (1936), and he appeared occasionally in non-horror films, such as the Paramount Pictures all-star comedy International House (1933) and Ernst Lubitsch’s Ninotchka (1939).

Although Lugosi is most associated with the role of Dracula, many regard his portrayal of the half-crazed, broken-necked Ygor in Son of Frankenstein (1939) to be his finest screen performance. He again played Ygor in The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), but by that time Lugosi’s star had faded. Thereafter he appeared in numerous low-budget, forgettable films. There were a few exceptions, such as his appearance as Frankenstein’s Monster—the role he had turned down in 1931—in Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1943). He teamed with Karloff again in the eerie The Body Snatcher (1945), and he returned to the role of Dracula in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948).

Lugosi’s decline into poverty and obscurity was accompanied by a growing dependence on narcotics. In 1955 he voluntarily committed himself to the state hospital in Norwalk, California, as a drug addict; he was released later that year. About the same time, Lugosi began an association with Ed Wood, Jr., the man regarded by many as the most comprehensively inept director in film history. Their collaboration produced such staggeringly shoddy efforts as Glen or Glenda? (1953), Bride of the Monster (1956), and Plan 9 from Outer Space (filmed 1956, released 1959), all now unintentionally hilarious cult favourites. Lugosi was buried, as he wished, wearing the long black cape that he had worn in Dracula. - Excerpt from Encyclopædia Britannica

F.W. Murnau, pseudonym of Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe, (born December 28, 1889, Bielefeld, Germany—died March 11, 1931, Hollywood, California, U.S.), German motion-picture director who revolutionized the art of cinematic expression by using the camera subjectively to interpret the emotional state of a character.

Murnau studied philosophy, art history, and literature at the Universities of Heidelberg and Berlin. In 1908 he joined the company of renowned stage director Max Reinhardt, acting in several plays and serving as Reinhardt’s assistant for the groundbreaking production of the wordless, ritualistic The Miracle (1911). After serving in the German army and air force during World War I, Murnau worked in Switzerland, where he directed short propaganda films for the German embassy. He directed his first feature film, Der Knabe in Blau (The Boy in Blue) in 1919. For the next few years Murnau made films that were Expressionistic or supernatural in nature, such as Der Januskopf (1920; Janus-Faced), a highly praised variation of the Jekyll-and-Hyde story that starred Bela Lugosi and Conrad Veidt. Unfortunately, this and most of Murnau’s early films are lost or exist only in fragmentary form.

Complete prints survive of Murnau’s first major work, Nosferatu (1922), which is regarded by many as the most effective screen adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Eschewing psychological overtones, Murnau treated the subject as pure fantasy and, with the aid of noted cinematographer Fritz Arno Wagner, produced appropriately macabre visual effects, such as negative images of white trees against a black sky. Also memorable was the ghastly, cadaverous appearance of actor Max Schreck (whose name is German for “maximum terror”) in the role of the vampire. Though a cinematic landmark, Nosferatu was to be one of Murnau’s final films in the supernatural genre.- Excerpt from Encyclopædia Britannica

James Whale, (born July 22, 1889, Dudley, Worcestershire, England—died May 29, 1957, Los Angeles, California, U.S.), British-born American filmmaker whose stylish horror films marked him as one of the most distinctive filmmakers of the early 1930s.

Born into a poor family in an English coal-mining town, Whale was eager to join the army when World War I broke out. Captured by the Germans, he began acting and directing while in a prisoner-of-war camp. After he was released, Whale continued acting onstage, eventually becoming a set designer and, later, a director. His direction of R.C. Sherriff’s acclaimed play about the war, Journey’s End (1928), first in London and then in New York, was his calling card to Hollywood, where he was invited in 1930 to direct the film version.

Howard Hughes then asked Whale to assist on a big-budget drama about pilots in World War I, Hell’s Angels (1930). Whale was next hired by Universal to direct Waterloo Bridge (1931), an adaptation of a Robert E. Sherwood melodrama about a London streetwalker (played by Mae Clarke) who nobly gives up her soldier lover (Douglass Montgomery) so that he will not be disgraced.

Frankenstein (1931) was scheduled to be directed by Robert Florey, but when Bela Lugosi decided that he did not want to be typecast after starring in Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931), Whale was assigned to the picture; it was he who cast little-known British actor Boris Karloff to play the monster. An enormous popular success, Frankenstein launched Whale as the preeminent director of the horror film.

Whale’s next picture was The Impatient Maiden (1932), a formulaic romance in which a surgeon (Lew Ayres) wins the love of a secretary (Clarke). He was then assigned to The Old Dark House (1932), an enjoyable chiller about travelers escaping a storm in the spooky title mansion; it starred Karloff, Gloria Stuart, Charles Laughton, Raymond Massey, and Ernest Thesiger. The Kiss Before the Mirror (1933) was an unusual courtroom drama about a lawyer (Frank Morgan) defending a client (Paul Lukas) who murdered his wife (Stuart) for infidelity but who then suspects his own wife (Nancy Carroll) of being unfaithful in turn.

The Invisible Man (1933), an adaptation of H.G. Wells’s science-fiction novel, returned Whale to the realm of the macabre. Since the main character, the mad scientist Griffin, would be either invisible or under bandages for most of the film, Whale chose then-unknown English stage actor Claude Rains for his charismatic voice. The innovative special effects and Rains’s compelling vocal performance have made The Invisible Man a classic horror film. - From Encyclopædia Britannica

Kathy Bates, in full Kathleen Doyle Bates,  (born June 28, 1948, Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.) is an American actress of stage, screen, and television, especially known for her portrayals of strong women who act against the social milieu. She won an Academy Award for best actress for her chilling performance of an obsessed fan in Misery (1990).

In 1990 Bates established herself as a powerful screen presence in the film adaptation of Stephen King’s Misery. She played Annie Wilkes, a psychotic fan who rescues a best-selling novelist (played by James Caan) after a car accident but turns on him when she finds that he has killed her favorite character in his latest novel. In addition to an Academy Award, she also won a Golden Globe for her performance. Throughout the 1990s Bates showed her versatility in a number of films, playing a forlorn Southern housewife in Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), a maid accused of murdering her employer in Dolores Claiborne (1995; adapted from a novel by King), and an outspoken socialite in Titanic (1997). She received critical acclaim and an Oscar nomination for her role as Libby Holden, an idealistic political operative, in Primary Colors (1998).

Bates later acted in such films as About Schmidt (2002), for which she received another Academy Award nomination; Failure to Launch (2006); and The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008), a remake of the 1951 classic. In 2008 Bates took a supporting role in Revolutionary Road, portraying a real estate agent in 1950s suburbia. She subsequently appeared in the sports drama The Blind Side (2009); the romantic comedies Valentine’s Day (2010) and A Little Bit of Heaven (2011); Woody Allen’s fantasy Midnight in Paris, in which she portrayed the writer Gertrude Stein; and the raunchy comedies Tammy (2014) and Bad Santa 2 (2016).

In the Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic On the Basis of Sex (2018), Bates portrayed Dorothy Kenyon, a lawyer and women’s rights activist. She then was cast as Texas Gov. Miriam (“Ma”) Ferguson in the Netflix film The Highwaymen (2019), about two former Texas Rangers searching for the outlaws Bonnie and Clyde. In Richard Jewell (2019), a biopic directed by Clint Eastwood, Bates gave an Oscar-nominated performance as the devoted mother of a security guard who was wrongly suspected of orchestrating the Atlanta Olympic Games bombing of 1996. In addition, Bates’s voice was featured in a number of films, including the animated adaptation of E.B. White’s classic story Charlotte’s Web (2006), Bee Movie (2007), and The Golden Compass (2007). – From Encyclopædia Britannica

Kathryn Bigelow, in full Kathryn Ann Bigelow,  (born November 27, 1951, San Carlos, California, U.S.) is an American film director and screenwriter, noted for action films that often featured protagonists struggling with inner conflict. She was the first woman to win an Academy Award for best director, for The Hurt Locker (2008).

After graduating from Columbia in 1979, Bigelow began working on her first feature-length movie, The Loveless, which she cowrote and codirected (with Monty Montgomery). The 1982 drama, starring a then unknown Willem Dafoe, focused on a motorcycle gang’s visit to a small Southern town and the ensuing violence. Bigelow was subsequently sent a number of scripts, most of which were high-school comedies. Uninterested in the offers, she instead began teaching at the California Institute of the Arts in 1983.

In 1987 Bigelow returned to the big screen with Near Dark, a vampire film that became a cult classic. Two years later she married director James Cameron (divorced 1991). She described Blue Steel (1989), which she cowrote and directed, as a “woman’s action film.” The crime drama starred Jamie Lee Curtis as a policewoman who is stalked by a serial killer. Bigelow’s next film, Point Break (1991), centres on a FBI agent (played by Keanu Reeves) whose loyalty is tested when he infiltrates a charismatic gang of bank-robbing surfers. In addition to being a box-office success, it solidified Bigelow’s place in the traditionally male-dominated world of action films. With the science-fiction movie Strange Days (1995), she created a stylish drama involving futuristic technology that enables the transmission of thoughts and memories from one person to another. After The Weight of Water (2000), Bigelow helmed K-19: The Widowmaker (2002). Based on a true event, it focuses on a Soviet nuclear submarine that suffers a radiation leak. The action film, which starred Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson, received mixed reviews and failed to find an audience. – From Encyclopædia Britannica

John Carpenter, in full John Howard Carpenter,  (born January 16, 1948, Carthage, New York, U.S.) is an American filmmaker who is regarded as a master of the low-budget horror film. He often wrote, produced, and scored the movies he directed, many of which became cult classics.

When Carpenter was five years old, he moved with his family from northern New York to Bowling Green, Kentucky, where his father began teaching music history and theory at Western Kentucky University. Carpenter was a fan of western and horror films and wanted to make his own movies from an early age. After high-school graduation he spent two years (1966–68) at Western Kentucky before transferring to the University of Southern California’s cinema program (now the School of Cinematic Arts). As a student, he cowrote, composed the music for, and edited a short western film, The Resurrection of Billy Broncho (1970), which won an Academy Award for best live-action short subject. He also began his first feature film as a student, but he left school to complete Dark Star (1974), a science-fiction comedy that he wrote with Dan O’Bannon while they were classmates.

Carpenter then wrote, directed, scored, and edited the thriller Assault on Precinct 13 (1976). The movie, often described as a combination of Howard Hawks’s Rio Bravo and George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, was initially poorly received but quickly became regarded as a high achievement. Carpenter then made the classic horror film Halloween (1978). Starring Jamie Lee Curtis as a terrorized babysitter, the movie relied more on creating tension and fear than on ostentatious gore. It won critical praise and immediate popularity, and it inspired numerous imitations, including sequels that Carpenter neither wrote nor directed.

Carpenter’s next movie, The Fog (1980), a ghost story, was not as well reviewed but still found a large audience. The sci-fi thriller Escape from New York (1981) starred Kurt Russell as a convict tasked with rescuing the U.S. president from a New York City converted into a maximum security prison. It was a box-office hit that became another cult favourite. The Thing (1982), the first of several movies for which he served as director only, was more appreciated later than at the time of its release. Christine (1983), adapted from a Stephen King novel about a possessed car, and the sci-fi movie Starman (1984) were both well received.

Following the failure of the big-budget action film Big Trouble in Little China (1986), Carpenter returned to writing and directing low-budget horror movies, including Prince of Darkness (1987) and They Live (1988). He also helmed the comic Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992), In the Mouth of Madness (1994), Village of the Damned (1995), Escape from L.A. (1996), Vampires (1998), and The Ward (2010). Although these were not as popular as his earlier movies, some of them developed devoted followers. One of his segments for the anthology TV show Masters of Horror, entitled John Carpenter’s Cigarette Burns (2005), was praised as a return to form.

Carpenter’s film scores were regarded as major contributors to the artistic success of his movies, and he began releasing albums of such music, much of it new, in the 21st century. These included Lost Themes (2015), Lost Themes II (2016), Anthology: Movie Themes 1974–1998 (2017), and Lost Themes III: Alive After Death (2021). – From Encyclopædia Britannica

Wes Craven, in full Wesley Earl Craven,  (born August 2, 1939, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.—died August 30, 2015, Los Angeles, California), American director and screenwriter who was known for his horror films, several of which were classics of the genre.

Craven earned an undergraduate degree from Wheaton College (Wheaton, Illinois) in 1963 and went on to earn an M.A. in writing and philosophy from Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, Maryland) in 1964. He taught at Westminster College (New Wilmington, Pennsylvania) and then at Clarkson College (Potsdam, New York). He also spent a year teaching high school before taking his first film-industry job as a messenger in New York City. Craven eventually worked his way up the ranks, performing sound editing among other jobs before he began directing films.

Craven’s solo directorial debut was the horror film The Last House on the Left (1972), which was considered so gory that it was banned in Britain until 2002. Despite its unrelenting violence, the movie received some critical praise. The Hills Have Eyes (1977), another low-budget slasher film, did well at the box office and developed a cult following. After directing Deadly Blessing (1981), Craven made his first big-budget picture, Swamp Thing (1982), which was based on the DC Comics character. However, it fared poorly at the box office.

In 1984 Craven had his breakout hit with A Nightmare on Elm Street, which he wrote and directed. The film introduced the villain Freddy Krueger, who kills his victims by invading their dreams and is given to incongruously humorous wisecracks. It spun off multiple sequels, television series, and a 2010 remake. New Nightmare (1994), the only spin-off created by Craven, bent the premise, casting Craven and the stars of the first film as themselves in a story in which Krueger attempts to cross from film into the real world.

After A Nightmare on Elm Street, Craven worked steadily in films and television, but he did not repeat that earlier success until Scream (1996). A blockbuster hit, it was known for its dark wit and references to other horror movies as well as for a notable cast that included Drew Barrymore, Courteney Cox, Neve Campbell, and David Arquette. The film was followed by three sequels (1997, 2000, and 2011) that had varying degrees of success at the box office. - From Encyclopædia Britannica

David Cronenberg, in full David Paul Cronenberg, (born March 15, 1943, Toronto, Ontario, Canada), Canadian film director, screenwriter, and actor, best known for movies that employed elements of horror and science fiction to vividly explore the disturbing intersections between technology, the human body, and subconscious desire.

Cronenberg graduated from the University of Toronto in 1967 with a bachelor’s degree in English. As a student, he became fascinated with filmmaking and between 1966 and 1970 created several short and feature-length experimental films. After working in Canadian television in the early 1970s, Cronenberg wrote and directed his first commercial film, Shivers (1975; also released as They Came from Within), a low-budget horror picture about an artificially engineered parasite that transforms the well-to-do residents of an apartment complex into lustful maniacs. While the lurid nature of the film was interpreted by some viewers as a mere exercise in shock, its focus on the fragile integrity of the human mind and body proved to be an enduring thematic preoccupation for Cronenberg.

Cronenberg developed a cult following with the horror films Rabid (1977), starring adult-movie actress Marilyn Chambers as the victim of a surgery that leaves her with vampiric tendencies, and The Brood (1979), in which a woman’s rage causes the psychosomatic birth of deformed murderous children. During that period he also directed Fast Company (1979), a B movie about drag racing. The sci-fi thriller Scanners (1981), depicting a class of genetic telepaths, provided him with his first commercial success. For his next film, Videodrome (1983), Cronenberg imagined a television channel that transmits content so sexually and violently graphic that it causes hallucinations and even physical mutations in those subjected to it.

Beginning with The Dead Zone (1983), a straightforward adaptation of a horror novel by Stephen King, Cronenberg moved closer to the mainstream. The gory horror remake The Fly (1986), in which a scientist gradually metamorphoses into an enormous grotesque insect, was widely considered superior to the 1958 original and became a box office hit. In the chilling psychological drama Dead Ringers (1988), Jeremy Irons portrayed twin gynecologists whose identities seem to merge as they descend into depravity. The film attracted substantial critical attention and won 10 Genie Awards from the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television.

Cronenberg’s three subsequent films were adaptations of transgressive literary or theatrical works. By the 21st century, Cronenberg had largely abandoned his early work’s focus on “body horror,” as it was termed by critics, though he remained interested in psychological and behavioral extremes. – From Encyclopædia Britannica

Jamie Lee Curtis, (born November 22, 1958, Los Angeles, California, U.S.) is an American actress and author who first rose to fame with a series of popular horror movies, most notably Halloween (1978) and its sequels, and who later found success with comedic and action roles. In 2023 she won the Academy Award for best supporting actress for her performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022).

In 1977 Curtis began to appear in TV shows, notably Operation Petticoat, which was based on a 1959 film starring her father and Cary Grant. The show was canceled in 1978, and that year Jamie Lee Curtis made her big-screen debut, starring in John Carpenter’s Halloween. She played Laurie Strode, a shy studious babysitter terrorized by the seemingly unkillable Michael Myers. According to reports, Curtis was offered the role, in part, because her mother had appeared in the iconic shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s horror classic Psycho (1960). Nevertheless, Curtis’s performance helped make Halloween a huge hit, and some consider it to be the best horror film ever made. She subsequently appeared in a series of other scary movies, earning her the nickname “Scream Queen.” In 1980 she starred in The Fog, which was directed by Carpenter and also featured her mother, and Prom Night. The following year Curtis appeared in Halloween II. Her other credits from 1981 included the TV movie Death of a Centerfold, a true-crime drama about the murder of Dorothy Stratten.

In 2018 Curtis returned to her roots, starring in Halloween. Directed by David Gordon Green, it was a sequel to the 1978 film and ignored plot lines from other installments in the series. That movie broke various box-office records, and it sparked something of a resurgence for the actress. She later joined an all-star cast for Knives Out (2019), a hugely popular comedic mystery that featured Daniel Craig as a detective. Her success continued with Halloween Kills (2021). In 2022 she starred with Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All at Once. The sci-fi comedy, which earned widespread praise, centres on an immigrant laundromat owner who must save the multiverse. The film won seven Academy Awards, and for her portrayal of an unpleasant IRS auditor, Curtis captured her first Oscar, for best supporting actress. Later in 2022 she starred in Halloween Ends. It was the last installment in Green’s trilogy, and Curtis said it was her final movie in the franchise. - Excerpt from Encyclopædia Britannica

After five years of success in regional theater Robert Englund returned to the west coast where he had grown up. His very first audition landed him a starring role in the 1973 film Buster and Billie directed by Daniel Petrie.

Far from living the classic hand to mouth existence of a struggling actor, Englund worked steadily through the 70’s playing best friends, bad guy #1 and southern red-necks and starring opposite Henry Fonda, Susan Sarandon, Jeff Bridges, Sally Field and Arnold Schwarzenegger among others.

In the 70’s, regarded as the second Golden Age of American movies, Englund was privileged to work for such classic film directors as Robert Aldrich, Robert Mulligan, J. Lee Thompson, Bob Rafelson and John Milius.

Finally audiences could put a name to his familiar face when Englund was cast as Willie the friendly alien in the hit mini-series and subsequent weekly TV show “V”. Within weeks, Englund went from questions like: “Didn’t I go to high school with you?” to “Aren’t you that lizard guy on TV?”. Decades later Willie still generates fan mail from science fiction devotees both in America and around the world.

The series was a huge success. As a result Englund figured he would be eternally typecast as a sweet and lovable alien. To counter-balance this public image, he looked for a role that would allow him to demonstrate another side of his talents. During one hiatus from filming the series, he auditioned for a hot young director making an interesting low budget horror movie for the independent studio New Line Cinema. Englund’s interview with Wes Craven landed him the role playing the burn scarred dream demon Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street and launched him into horror history.

An international hit, the movie made New Line Cinema a major Hollywood player and prompted seven sequels and a syndicated TV series. The character of Freddy Krueger has appeared on talk shows, comic books, rap videos, and even cartoon appearances as a guest on “The Simpsons,” “South Park,” and “Family Guy.” There are numerous Freddy Krueger action figures, dolls, and attendant merchandising including video games. Gottlieb came out with a very popular pin-ball machine based on the movies.

Englund’s portrayal of Freddy Krueger blasted him into the pop culture vernacular as heir apparent to the horror icons of the past, destined to stand alongside Lon Chaney’s Phantom of the Opera and Boris Karloff’s monster in Frankenstein. – From robertenglund.com

William Friedkin , (born August 29, 1935, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.—died August 7, 2023, Los Angeles, California) was an American film director who was best known for The French Connection (1971) and The Exorcist (1973).

While a teenager, Friedkin began working in Chicago television, and he later directed several nationally broadcast documentaries. In 1967 he moved into film directing with the Sonny-and-Cher musical Good Times, then took on the more-elevated The Birthday Party (1968), a respectable if static adaptation of Harold Pinter’s enigmatic play. Equally ambitious was The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968), a lively comedy about an innocent Amish girl who becomes a burlesque dancer in 1920s New York City. Friedkin earned generally positive reviews for The Boys in the Band (1970), a controversial drama that presented a frank look at homosexuality. Adapted from Mart Crowley’s 1968 play about gay men at a birthday party, the film featured all the members of the Off-Broadway cast.

The French Connection (1971) provided Friedkin with his first big-budget property. Based on Robin Moore’s best seller about two real-life narcotics cops on the trail of international heroin dealers, the film was a critical and commercial success. It was especially noted for a number of tense action sequences, including a climactic car chase under an elevated train. Friedkin earned an Academy Award for directing, and the film won four other Oscars, including those for best picture and best actor (Gene Hackman).

For his next project, Friedkin chose another best seller, William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist. The frightening tale of the supernatural focuses on a young girl (played by Linda Blair) who is believed to be possessed by the Devil. Although the centre of much controversy when released in 1973, it became one of the highest-grossing films of all time (when adjusted for ticket-price inflation) and earned 10 Academy Award nominations, including one for best director.

After the incredible success of The French Connection and The Exorcist, Friedkin’s career faltered. The thriller Sorcerer (1977)—which took years to complete because of the arduous and expensive on-location filming in the jungles of Central America—failed both critically and commercially. He rebounded slightly with the modest The Brink’s Job (1978), a caper starring Peter Falk, Peter Boyle, and Gena Rowlands. However, Friedkin’s next film, Cruising (1980), a sordid thriller starring Al Pacino as a sexually confused cop who goes undercover in New York City’s gay subculture, was widely reviled. When Friedkin emerged three years later, it was with the disappointing comedy Deal of the Century (1983), which featured Chevy Chase as an international arms dealer. Although To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) failed to salvage Friedkin’s reputation, the gritty drama about federal agents on the trail of a counterfeiting ring was generally praised. Of particular note were performances by William Petersen and Willem Dafoe.

Friedkin’s subsequent credits included the television movies C.A.T. Squad (1986) and C.A.T. Squad: Python Wolf (1988). In 1987 he directed Rampage, a crime drama about a serial killer; it was not released in the United States until 1992. After the supernatural The Guardian (1990), Friedkin found modest success with the basketball drama Blue Chips (1994), which starred Nick Nolte and NBA star Shaquille O’Neal. However, his next film, Jade (1995), was almost universally panned. The over-the-top erotic thriller starred David Caruso as an assistant district attorney whose investigation into a high-profile murder begins to point toward his ex-girlfriend (Linda Fiorentino). Friedkin returned to television for 12 Angry Men (1997), a remake of the 1957 classic that earned solid reviews.

Friedkin’s later films included Rules of Engagement (2000), a military thriller with a cast headlined by Samuel L. Jackson, Tommy Lee Jones, Guy Pearce, and Ben Kingsley; The Hunted (2003), an effective crime drama with Jones playing a police detective on the trail of a serial killer (Benicio Del Toro); and Bug (2006), an adaptation of Tracy Letts’s play about the mental breakdown of a military veteran (Michael Shannon) and of his girlfriend (Ashley Judd). In 2011 Friedkin adapted another Letts play, Killer Joe, which centred on a drug dealer who hires a contract killer (Matthew McConaughey) to dispose of his mother for a life insurance payout. He later returned to the subject of exorcism with the documentary The Devil and Father Amorth (2017), about the chief exorcist in Rome and one of his last cases. In 2013 Friedkin published the memoir The Friedkin Connection. Friedkin Uncut (2018) is a documentary about his career. - From Encyclopædia Britannica

Alfred Hitchcock, in full Sir Alfred Hitchcock,  (born August 13, 1899, London, England—died April 29, 1980, Bel Air, California, U.S.) was an English-born American motion-picture director whose suspenseful films and television programs won immense popularity and critical acclaim over a long and tremendously productive career. His films are marked by a macabre sense of humor and a somewhat bleak view of the human condition.

Hitchcock’s first talking picture was the thriller Blackmail (1929). One of the year’s biggest hits in England, it became the first British film to make use of synchronized sound only after the completed silent version was postdubbed and partly reshot.

Considered by many to be his masterpiece and by some to be the greatest of all films, Vertigo (1958) was a challenging, sometimes obscure, and painful exploration of identity, fantasy, and compulsion. Stewart starred as Scottie, a former San Francisco policeman who has taken early retirement because of his fear of heights. A rich friend asks him to shadow his wife Madeleine (Kim Novak), who has been prone to taking mysterious leaves of absence. But Scottie’s detecting soon metamorphoses into a kind of voyeurism, as his observation of Madeleine turns into love, then obsession, and finally agony. Vertigo is a brave dramatization of the themes closest to Hitchcock. It failed to attract contemporary audiences and was almost entirely overlooked in the Academy Award nominations; even Bernard Herrmann’s chilling score was passed by.

Hitchcock retreated from the naked trauma of Vertigo to make the entertaining North by Northwest (1959), a romantic thriller reminiscent of The 39 Steps and Saboteur. Grant is the consummate Hitchcock protagonist, New York ad man Roger Thornhill, who is mistaken for George Kaplan, a government agent who has become the target of a very persistent group of international spies. But Thornhill/Kaplan proves to be quite resourceful himself, even with the serious disadvantage of never remotely knowing what is going on.

After the commercial success of North by Northwest, Hitchcock made his most shocking movie, Psycho (1960). Critics were uncertain what to make of it; moviegoers, on the other hand, were immediately adored it. In the beginning it seems that the beautiful Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is the protagonist, but Hitchcock resolves her peril halfway through the picture by killing her off in the famous shower scene, leaving the audience alone with the lunacy of Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). The long-term effects of Psycho on both the grammar of the cinema and the implicit trust between an audience and a director—which Hitchcock had now forevermore compromised with this shocking plotline—were enormous. So were the picture’s box-office receipts: the controversy helped it become the year’s second highest grosser. Hitchcock received his final Academy Award nomination for best director for Psycho.

By the time Hitchcock made The Birds (1963) for Universal (which would release his last six films), the media had been trained to respond to his every signal. There were cover stories in national magazines and countless features extolling Hitchcock’s latest blond discovery, model Tippi Hedren. The story itself—millions of birds settle in and finally attack the residents of a small town in coastal California—was based on a novelette by Daphne du Maurier; screenwriter Evan Hunter expanded it considerably to incorporate all sorts of Freudian byplay among social butterfly Melanie Daniels (Hedren); lawyer Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), her romantic interest; schoolteacher Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette), his former romantic interest; and icy Lydia Brenner (Jessica Tandy), Mitch’s possessive mother. The Birds unfolds with a dream logic in which the birds are a punishment for Daniels.

Hitchcock has been called by some the greatest of all directors, the most adroit, and the most admired, and the case has been made that he was all of these. His many classics are widely acknowledged—including The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, Rebecca, Shadow of a Doubt, Notorious, Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds—and in these films Hitchcock’s genius as both filmmaker and storyteller is abundantly evident.

Hitchcock’s films usually center on either murder or espionage, with deception, mistaken identities, and chase sequences complicating and enlivening the plots. Wry touches of humor and occasional intrusions of the macabre complete this mixture of cinematic elements. Three main themes predominate in Hitchcock’s films. The most common is that of the innocent man who is mistakenly suspected or accused of a crime and who must then track down the real perpetrator in order to clear himself (e.g., The Lodger and North by Northwest). The second theme is that of the guilty woman who enmeshes a male protagonist and ends up either destroying him or being saved by him (e.g., Vertigo and Marnie). The third theme is that of the (frequently psychopathic) murderer whose identity is established during the working out of the plot (e.g., Shadow of a Doubt and Psycho). – From Encyclopædia Britannica

Takashi Miike (born August 24, 1960) is a Japanese film director, film producer and screenwriter. He has directed over one hundred theatrical, video, and television productions since his debut in 1991. His films run through a variety of different genres and range from violent and bizarre to dramatic and family-friendly movies. He is a controversial figure in the contemporary Japanese cinema industry, with several of his films being criticized for their extreme graphic violence. Some of his best known films are Audition, Ichi the Killer, Visitor Q, the Dead or Alive trilogy and various remakes: Graveyard of Honor, Hara-kiri and 13 Assassins. He has directed over 100 movies and also plays as an actor in 20+ more.

Miike achieved notoriety for depicting shocking scenes of extreme violence and sexual perversions. Many of his films contain graphic and lurid bloodshed, often portrayed in an over-the-top, cartoonish manner. Much of his work depicts the activities of criminals (especially yakuza) or concern themselves with gaijin, non-Japanese or foreigners living in Japan. He is known for his dark sense of humor and for pushing the boundaries of censorship as far as they will go. - From Wikipedia 

Pitt, Ingrid (1937–2010), actress and writer, was born on 21 November 1937 in Poland, the daughter of a German father and a Polish Jewish mother. Many biographical accounts give her birth name as Ingoushka Petrov, although the origin of this is unclear. She herself gave her father's name as Bertold Kuettner or Küttner, electrical engineer, and in her autobiography she claimed that she was always called Ingrid. Her early years were itinerant as her parents sought to avoid the Nazis (she claimed that her father refused to work for the Nazi régime), but in 1942 they were captured and she and her mother were separated from her father and sent to Stutthof concentration camp in Poland. They survived and after the war were reunited with her father in Berlin. Having completed her schooling Ingrid enrolled briefly in medical school but was expelled and then, on her mother's insistence, undertook secretarial training. However, she had ambitions for an acting career and in the early 1960s was accepted into the distinguished theatre company, the Berliner Ensemble, which was based in Communist-controlled East Berlin. Her outspoken views attracted the attention of the East German police, and she only escaped arrest by swimming across the River Spree. She was rescued on the West Berlin side by Roland Pitt, an American soldier whom she subsequently married. She then settled in the United States where she gave birth to her only daughter, Steffanie, and briefly resumed acting in some theatrical productions.

After her marriage broke up Ingrid Pitt moved with her daughter to Spain, where her career in cinema began. Small uncredited roles in international films such as Doctor Zhivago (1965) and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966) were followed by speaking roles in the modestly budgeted Spanish-language productions Un beso en el puerto (1966), the horror film El Sonido de la muerte (1966), and The Omegans (1968). A brief stay in Los Angeles led to guest appearances in the television series Dundee and the Culhane and Ironside, but her major break came with a supporting role in the MGM blockbuster war film Where Eagles Dare (1968), in which she appeared alongside Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood.

Pitt's subsequent career took place mainly in Great Britain, beginning with what became her best known role as Carmilla in Hammer Films' The Vampire Lovers (1970), in which her performance captured both the authority and vulnerability of the vampire. She followed this with another commanding performance in the Hammer production Countess Dracula (1971), which was based very loosely on the real-life exploits of the mass murderer Elizabeth Bathory, and also played a comedic vampire in The House that Dripped Blood (1971) and a librarian in the British cult horror film The Wicker Man (1973). Her only other 1970s film was Nobody Ordered Love (1972), now considered a lost production. An unhappy second marriage, on 29 January 1972 to George Arthur Pinches (1921–1993), an executive at the Rank Organisation, does not seem to have helped her cinematic career in this period, and throughout the rest of the 1970s and into the 1980s she worked mainly in British television, guest starring in popular entertainment series such as The Adventurer, Dr Who, Jason King, Thriller, and The Zoo Gang, and also taking small roles in the prestigious BBC productions Artemis '81, Unity, and Smiley's People. Her increasingly occasional film appearances included supporting parts in Who Dares Wins (1982), Wild Geese 2 (1985), the British horror film Underworld (1985), and the international production Hanna's War (1988). She returned again to the stage in touring productions of, among others, Dial M for Murder and Woman of Straw.

From the early 1980s onwards Pitt also became a published writer, often in collaboration with Antony (Tony) Rudlin (b. 1932), formerly known as Antony Barrie Rudlin, racing driver and writer, who became her third husband on 15 May 1999. Her novels included Cuckoo Run (1980), Eva's Spell (1985), and Katarina (1986), and she also wrote an autobiography, Life's a Scream (1999). It was in this period that her cult status as a horror star developed, even though she had appeared in only a small number of horror films. She engaged enthusiastically with her numerous fans, making regular appearances at horror conventions and other horror-themed events throughout the rest of her life. A further set of publications played on her cult reputation, among them The Ingrid Pitt Bedside Companion for Vampire Lovers (1998), The Ingrid Pitt Bedside Companion for Ghosthunters (1999), and The Ingrid Pitt Book of Murder, Torture and Depravity (2000). Despite becoming famous for her horror roles she confessed to rarely watching horror films herself, adding, 'I think it's very amazing that I do horror films when I had this awful childhood. But maybe that's why I'm good at it' (New Zealand Herald, 7 Oct 2006). Her last few screen appearances were in little-seen low-budget films such as Asylum (2000) and Sea of Dust (2008). She lived latterly in Richmond, London, and died of heart failure on 23 November 2010 at St George's Hospital, Tooting, London. She was survived by her third husband, Tony, and daughter from her first marriage, Steffanie. - From Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Sam Raimi, in full Samuel Marshall Raimi,  (born October 23, 1959, Royal Oak, Michigan, U.S.), American film and television director, producer, and screenwriter whose inventive camera techniques and wry humour breathed life into the horror genre.

Raimi began experimenting with filmmaking at a very early age. By his teen years, he was already an active member of a circle of amateur actors and directors in the Detroit area. Among this group were his brother Ted and aspiring actor Bruce Campbell, both of whom became staples in Raimi productions. In 1977 Raimi enrolled at Michigan State University, where he produced the 8-mm films The Happy Valley Kid (1977) and It’s Murder (1977). These modest efforts provided valuable experience for Raimi and his associates, and their next project, the short film Within the Woods (1978), served as the test reel for what is arguably Raimi’s most famous work, The Evil Dead (1981). Although its low-budget origins were apparent and its level of gore bordered on the cartoonish, The Evil Dead became one of the most influential horror films of all time, and Raimi’s use of “shaky cam”—a handheld camera technique that was intended to replicate the point-of-view of a given character or object—was widely emulated. Although his next film, Crimewave (1985), was hobbled when studio executives fundamentally altered the story with editorial cuts, it was written by Joel and Ethan Coen and began an association between Raimi and the brothers that proved to be mutually beneficial.

The cult success of The Evil Dead led producer Dino De Laurentiis to fund a sequel, and Evil Dead II (1987), with Campbell returning in the lead role, added a camp, slapstick twist to the original film’s formula. Raimi experimented with the superhero genre in Darkman (1990) before completing the Evil Dead trilogy with Army of Darkness (1992). He cowrote the Coen brothers’ comedy The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) and created the television series M.A.N.T.I.S. (1994–97) before returning to the director’s chair for the western The Quick and the Dead (1995). Raimi’s next projects, the crime drama A Simple Plan (1998) and the baseball romance For the Love of the Game (1999), were stylistic departures, but the former was a critical hit, and it earned a pair of Academy Award nominations.

Raimi experienced his greatest box-office success with a trio of films that marked a new wave of Hollywood interest in comic-book adaptations. Spider-Man (2002), the story of a wall-crawling crimefighter who derived his superheroic powers from a radioactive spider bite, was a critical and commercial smash. It spawned a pair of sequels, Spider-Man 2 (2004) and Spider-Man 3 (2007), and the trilogy grossed roughly $2.5 billion worldwide. Raimi revisited the horror genre for Drag Me to Hell (2009) and directed the big-budget family adventure film Oz the Great and Powerful (2013). Although a critical disappointment, Raimi’s take on L. Frank Baum’s mythos was a hit with audiences. That same year, Raimi produced Evil Dead, a remake that replaced the original film’s absurd gore with the brutally rendered violence more typical of 21st-century horror offerings.  - From Encyclopædia Britannica

George A. Romero, in full George Andrew Romero, (born February 4, 1940, New York, New York, U.S.—died July 16, 2017, Toronto, Ontario, Canada), American film director, writer, and producer best known for his contributions to the horror movie genre.

After graduating in 1961 from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh, Romero filmed short segments for Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, a popular children’s television series produced in Pittsburgh. In 1968 Romero and several friends pooled their money to finance Romero’s first feature, the low-budget zombie film Night of the Living Dead. The movie was not a commercial success at the time of its release, but it was eventually recognized as a horror masterpiece, and it served as the foundation for a unique mythos. The Romero zombie was unrelated to the Vodou zombie that had influenced most zombie lore until that point. Instead, it was a shambling corpse that fed upon the living, and it became a mainstay in film and fiction.

Romero cowrote (with John Russo) the screenplay for Night of the Living Dead, and he went on to write and direct several related films, including Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead (1985), Land of the Dead (2005), and Survival of the Dead (2009). The Dead series was rife with social commentary, with allusions to the Cold War, consumerism, and class conflict. In addition to zombies, Romero’s films have explored other horror movie staples, including witchcraft in Hungry Wives (1972; rereleased as Season of the Witch), vampires in Martin (1977), and animals wreaking havoc in Monkey Shines (1988), a film about a homicidal helper monkey.

In 1981 Romero began a long-term collaboration with noted American horror novelist Stephen King, with King making a brief onscreen appearance in Romero’s film Knightriders. The following year Romero directed King’s screenplay for Creepshow (1982). They worked together again on Creepshow 2 (1987), Romero writing the screenplay based on King’s stories. Romero was executive producer of the television series Tales from the Darkside (1984–88), and King rejoined him on the movie of the same name, released in 1990. The two continued their professional relationship when Romero directed the film adaptation of King’s novel The Dark Half (1993). – From Encyclopædia Britannica

Reville, Alma Lucy [married name Hitchcock] (1899–1982), film editor and script writer, was born at 69 Caroline Street, Nottingham, on 14 August 1899, the second daughter of Matthew Edward Reville (1864–1928), lace warehouseman, and his wife, Lucy, née Owen (1866–1947). Her family moved from Nottingham to south London and eventually to Twickenham in west London, where her father was employed in the costume department at Twickenham Studios in St. Margaret’s (established in 1913).

When Reville was a child, she contracted Sydenham’s chorea, also known as St Vitus’s dance, and subsequently missed two years of her education. However, her father enabled her to start work at the studio, and, aged only sixteen, she began her film career making tea. Her enthusiasm for the early film industry was apparent and quickly she became a cutter (editor), script editor, and eventually director’s assistant. One of her early projects was D. W. Griffith’s First World War propaganda film Hearts of the World (1918) starring Lillian and Dorothy Gish, which had been partially shot in England and France.

Reville’s work at the studio was not all technical: she appeared in small acting roles, including that of the prime minister’s daughter in Maurice Elvey’s The Life Story of David Lloyd George (1918). In an era when film editing was considered a mechanical role, she asserted in an article in 1923 that editing was an art ‘with a capital A’ (The Motion Picture Studio, 13 Jan 1923). Her ascent in the film industry was featured in The Picturegoer Magazine (‘Alma in Wonderland: Proving a Woman’s Place is Not Always in the Home’, December 1925), which explored Reville’s career in the UK studio system and held her up as a female role-model, noting her ‘true film sense’.

Reville met Alfred Hitchcock in 1921 at the Famous Players-Lasky’s British studio in Islington. At this stage in her career, Reville was well-established and respected within the British film industry. They would collaborate on their first film together in 1923, Woman to Woman, directed by Graham Cutts and produced by Michael Balcon. Hitchcock was art director and Reville was continuity editor. In 1925, the couple travelled to Germany together to make The Blackguard.

The following year, Balcon asked Hitchcock to direct his first feature film, The Pleasure Garden, with Reville as his assistant director. It was shot on location in Italy and at Emelka Studios in Munich. Reville managed the production and supervised the film’s editing. On the voyage back to Britain, Hitchcock proposed, and the couple were married on 2 December 1926 at the Brompton Oratory in South Kensington. On 7 July 1928, Reville gave birth to their only child, Patricia Hitchcock, who would later appear in Strangers on a Train (1950) and Psycho (1960). Within two weeks of giving birth, Reville was back at work, having been commissioned to write the script for After the Verdict. Other scripts followed: The Constant Nymph (1928); The First Born (1928); The Outside (1931); Sally in Our Alley (1931), starring Gracie Fields; and The Passing of the Third Floor Back (1935).

Reville increasingly began to focus her attention on her husband’s film career in credited and uncredited form, and she became his closet creative collaborator. Hitchcock admitted that if Reville did not like something in a film, then he would change or remove it entirely. She was credited as a continuity editor for her husband for The 39 Steps (1935); The Secret Agent (1936); Sabotage (1936); Young and Innocent (1937); The Lady Vanishes (1938); and Jamaica Inn (1939). Reville and Hitchcock were united in their passion for cinema. She later admitted that she was unable to read a book without thinking about camera angles, cuts, and film dialogue.

In 1939, Alfred Hitchcock signed a seven-year contract with the Hollywood producer David O. Selznick, and the family relocated from London to Los Angeles. Once the family were settled in America, Reville had a lower public and professional profile. She co-wrote the screenplays for Suspicion (1941), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), and The Paradine Case (1947), but her last screen credit was on the 1950 film Stage Fright. That same year she became a US citizen.

Despite taking a back-seat role in her husband’s work from this point on, Reville continued to exert influence on all aspects of Hitchcock’s Hollywood career. She retained her editor’s eye for detail; when watching a cut of Psycho (1960) Reville spotted the supposedly dead Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) blink while lying with her face pressed to the floor of the bathroom in the Bates Motel. Reville also spotted Tippi Hedren in a television commercial and suggested her for the role of Melanie Daniels in The Birds (1963).

Alfred Hitchcock was known for his long-standing creative collaborations: Edith Head for costume; Robert Boyle for production design; and Bernard Herrmann for music. Of all his collaborators, Alma Reville remained Hitchcock’s most trusted adviser even if her contribution to her husband’s work was not always formally credited. Hitchcock himself, though, acknowledged her contributions when presented with the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement award in 1979. Alma Reville suffered a series of strokes in the 1970s and, after being widowed in 1980, died in Los Angeles on 6 July 1982. - From Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Thomas Vincent Savini (born November 3, 1946) is an American prosthetic makeup artist, actor, stunt performer and film director. He is known for his makeup and special effects work on many films directed by George A. Romero, including Martin, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Creepshow, and Monkey Shines; he also created the special effects and makeup for many cult classics like Friday the 13th (parts I and IV), Maniac, The Burning, The Prowler, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.

Savini directed Night of the Living Dead, the 1990 remake of Romero's 1968 Night of the Living Dead;his other directing work includes three episodes of the TV show Tales from the Darkside and one segment in The Theatre Bizarre. As an actor and stuntman, he has appeared in films such as Martin, Dawn of the Dead, Knightriders, From Dusk till Dawn, Planet Terror, Machete, Django Unchained, and Machete Kills.

Savini was born on November 3, 1946, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and is of Italian descent. He was raised Catholic and graduated from Central Catholic High School. As a boy, his inspiration was actor Lon Chaney Sr., and Savini attributes his earliest desires to create makeup effects to Chaney and the film Man of a Thousand Faces.

Experimenting with whatever medium he could find, the young Savini practiced creating makeup effects on himself, later convincing his friends to let him practice his craft on them. He also discovered another passion, acting. Combining his makeup applications and homemade costumes, he especially enjoyed scaring his friends. Savini attended Point Park University for three years, before enlisting in the United States Army. After his tour in Vietnam, he attended Carnegie-Mellon University, as the first undergraduate to be awarded a full fellowship in the acting and directing program. He appeared in stage productions throughout college and continued on stage long after his tour of duty in Vietnam.

Savini got his breakthrough working with Pittsburgh filmmaker George A. Romero, providing a convincing wrist-slashing effect in the opening scenes of Martin (1978). The following year, working with a larger budget on Dawn of the Dead, Savini created his signature palette of severed limbs and bite-marks. In the 1980 slasher film Friday the 13th, Savini expanded his repertoire of blood and gore. - From Wikipedia

Tom Sullivan is an American special effects artist and actor, known primarily for his work on Sam Raimi's Evil Dead trilogy—comprising The Evil Dead (1981), Evil Dead II (1987), and Army of Darkness (1992)—as well as The Fly II (1989). Sullivan was responsible for helping design the Book of the Dead (or the Necronomicon) in The Evil Dead, and drew the illustrations and symbols seen on the pages of the book.

In the mid-1970s, Sullivan met director Sam Raimi because his girlfriend was attending Michigan State University at the same time as Raimi, along with actor Bruce Campbell, screenwriter Scott Spiegel, and producer Robert Tapert. Sullivan bonded with Raimi over their mutual interest in stop-motion animation, special effects, claymation, and puppetry in relation to filmmaking. He joined the crew of Raimi's 1978 short film Within the Woods as a special effects artist. He would later work on The Evil Dead, Raimi's feature-length remake of Within the Woods, as a special makeup effects artist, where he worked with such materials as foam latex and fake blood. For the latter, he used coffee as an added ingredient to the traditional fake blood formula of corn syrup and food coloring. Sullivan helped rig camera mounts and other contraptions for stunts and some of the film's signature shots. He also helped design the Book of the Dead (or the Necronomicon) as it appears onscreen, and drew the pen-and-ink illustrations, glyphs, and sigils seen on the pages of the book.

After the success of The Evil Dead, which was released in 1981, Sullivan worked as an effects artist and animator on its 1987 sequel Evil Dead II. He then worked as a sculptor on the 1989 film The Fly II, before working on special effects for Army of Darkness, the third installment in the original Evil Dead trilogy, released in 1992. Sullivan's work on the Evil Dead series was chronicled in the 2014 documentary film Invaluable, directed by Ryan Meade. From Wikipedia

Ari Aster (born July 15, 1986) is an American filmmaker. Having garnered some initial recognition for the short film The Strange Thing About the Johnsons (2011), he became best known for writing and directing Hereditary (2018), Midsommar (2019), and Beau Is Afraid (2023), all of which were released by A24. His films have been noted for their unsettling combination of horror, dark comedy, and depictions of graphic violence. In 2018, he co-founded the production company Square Peg with Danish producer Lars Knudsen.

After graduating from the AFI Conservatory, Aster wrote and directed several more short films between 2011 and 2018, often teaming with his AFI Conservatory friends Alejandro de Leon and Pawel Pogorzelski. The most notable project was the short psychological horror film The Strange Thing About the Johnsons (2011), which follows the members of a suburban family in which the father finds himself trapped in an incestuous relationship with his abusive son. The film was Aster's thesis film while studying at the AFI Conservatory, and was later screened at film festivals; it premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival in Utah on January 22 before leaking online in November, where it went viral. Film website Short of the Week wrote that the comments on the film's YouTube page had "everything from effusive acclaim to disgusted vitriol [...] in terms of the internet, that means it's a hit". Aster worked on the film with fellow AFI students. He first conceived the story while discussing taboos with his friends, including the film's star Brandon Greenhouse, before starting his first year at AFI.

Aster made his feature-length directorial debut when he wrote and directed the supernatural horror film Hereditary (2018), which follows a family haunted by a mysterious presence after the death of their secretive grandmother. The film premiered in the Midnight section at that year's Sundance Film Festival,[15] and was theatrically released in the United States on June 8. It was acclaimed by critics, with Toni Collette's performance receiving particular praise, and was a commercial success; it grossed over $80 million on a $10 million budget, becoming A24's highest-grossing film worldwide. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone named it the scariest film of 2018.

Aster next wrote and directed the folk horror film Midsommar (2019), which was also produced by A24.[19] It follows a group of American university students who travel to Sweden for a festival that occurs once every 90 years and find themselves in the clutches of a cult claiming to practise paganism. Midsommar was theatrically released in the United States on July 3. The film received positive reviews from critics, with many praising Aster's direction and Florence Pugh's performance. Aster's original 171-minute cut of the film, which A24 asked him to trim down for a wide theatrical release, had its world premiere at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York City as part of its Scary Movies XII lineup on August 20.For his work on the film, Aster received a nomination for Best Screenplay at the 29th Gotham Independent Film Awards.

In June 2019, Aster and Danish producer Lars Knudsen announced that they had launched a new production company called Square Peg. In June 2020, Aster said his next film would be a "nightmare comedy" that lasts for four hours. In February 2021, A24 announced that Aster would write and direct Beau Is Afraid (2023) as its third partnership with him. The film follows an anxiety-fueled and paranoid middle-aged man who must venture out on a surreal odyssey to visit his mother's home. – From Wikipedia

Park Chan-wook (born 23 August 1963) is a South Korean film director, screenwriter, producer, and former film critic. He is considered one of the most prominent filmmakers of South Korean cinema as well as 21st-century world cinema. His films, which often blend crime, mystery and thriller with other genres, and have gained notoriety for their cinematography, framing, black humor and often brutal subject matters.

After two unsuccessful films in the 1990s which he has since largely disowned, Park came to prominence with his acclaimed third directorial effort, Joint Security Area (2000), which became the highest-grossing film in South Korean history at the time and which Park himself prefers to be regarded as his directorial debut. Using his newfound creative freedom, he would go on to direct the films forming his unofficial The Vengeance Trilogy: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), a financial failure that polarized critics, followed by Oldboy (2003) and Lady Vengeance (2005), both of which received critical acclaim and were financially successful. Oldboy in particular is regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, and helped establish Park as a well-known director outside his native country. – From Wikipedia

Nia DaCosta, (born November 8, 1989, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.) is a filmmaker who, at age 34, became the youngest director and the first African American woman to helm a Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film, with the 2023 superhero sequel The Marvels. Her critically acclaimed feature film debut, the crime drama Little Woods (2018), won the Nora Ephron Award at the Tribeca Film Festival. In 2021 she collaborated with filmmaker Jordan Peele for a commercially and critically successful reboot of the slasher film Candyman.

For her second film, DaCosta teamed up with horror and comedy powerhouse Jordan Peele for a reboot of the 1992 supernatural horror film Candyman. DaCosta cowrote and directed the film, while Peele cowrote and coproduced, and it starred Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Teyonah Parris. Like the original, Candyman centers on an urban legend about a ghoulish slasher in the Cabrini-Green community in Chicago. DaCosta and Peele used the remake to explore the “unfortunate, repetitive cycle in American history where Black men are brutalized and then become some archetype—the martyr, the saint, the sinner,” as she told Harper’s Bazaar in 2023. Candyman was well received by both audiences and critics, and DaCosta became the first African American woman to direct a film that opened at number one at the box office, where it grossed more than $22 million in its opening week. – From Encyclopædia Britannica

Toni Collette, byname of Antonia Collette,  (born November 1, 1972, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) is an Australian actress known for her metamorphic performances in a wide range of roles.

In 2018, Collette gave what some critics considered to be one of her best performances in the horror film Hereditary, in which she played Annie Graham, the matriarch of a family haunted by the supernatural following the death of her mother. She was initially reluctant to take on the role, but became convinced by the script's grounded approach and its exploration of grief and loss. She considered it to be the most difficult of her career: in an interview with Vulture's Rachel Handler she reflected, "There was no easy moment in this movie... I was shooting 14-take scenes, talking about great loss and difficulty in relating to my family." The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and became A24's highest-grossing film, earning US$80.2 million Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly praised her for "real dramatic power and force", while Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune complimented her "fierce performance with a human pulse". From Wikipedia

Collette was then cast in Velvet Buzzsaw (2019), a horror parody wherein artworks seemingly exact revenge on those who profited from a deceased painter’s oeuvre. In 2019 she also appeared in Knives Out, a comedic whodunit involving the death of a mystery writer. Collette later appeared in Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020) and played an astronaut in the sci-fi thriller Stowaway (2021). In Nightmare Alley (2021), a film noir directed and cowritten by Guillermo del Toro, she portrayed a clairvoyant. Collette turned to black comedy with The Estate (2022), about sisters who scheme to inherit their dying aunt’s fortune. – From Encyclopædia Britannica

Robert Eggers is a Brooklyn-based writer and director. Originally from New Hampshire, Eggers got his professional start directing and designing experimental and classical theatre in New York City. Eggers eventually transitioned to film, directing several short films and working extensively as a designer for film, television, print, theater, and dance. The Witch, his feature film debut as writer and director, won the Directing Award in the U.S. Dramatic category at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, where it premiered to critical acclaim. It also garnered two Independent Spirit Award wins for Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay. His second feature film, The Lighthouse, starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson, premiered at Directors' Fortnight in Cannes and won the FIPRESCI prize. The film was nominated for a 2019 Academy Award for cinematography. Eggers has recently completed his Viking revenge saga starring Nicole Kidman and Alexander Skarsgård, and is developing several projects, including a reimagining of F.W. Murnau’s classic Nosferatu. – From Simon and Schuster

Mike Flanagan (born May 20, 1978) is an American filmmaker, best known for his horror work. Flanagan wrote, directed, produced, and edited the horror films Absentia (2011), Oculus (2013), Hush, Before I Wake, Ouija: Origin of Evil (all 2016), Gerald's Game (2017), and Doctor Sleep (2019). He created, wrote, produced, and served as showrunner on the Netflix horror series The Haunting of Hill House (2018), The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020), Midnight Mass (2021), The Midnight Club (2022), and The Fall of the House of Usher (2023), also directing and editing some episodes of each.

Flanagan is married to actress Kate Siegel, who has been featured in most of his works since Oculus. They also wrote the screenplay of Hush together. Other frequent collaborators include Carla Gugino, Henry Thomas, Samantha Sloyan, Rahul Kohli, Bruce Greenwood, Zach Gilford, Michael Trucco, Annalise Basso, Lulu Wilson, Annabeth Gish, Katie Parker and Alex Essoe. – From Wikipedia

Filming anything and everything from Harry Potter spoofs to fake nature mockumentaries about aliens, Rose was destined to be a director from a young age. Upon leaving home she studied film and video at London College of Communication, UAL - where she directed her first 'proper' shorts - and also gained experience as a runner on professional sets. Eventually she made her way to the NFTS, where she made acclaimed short Room 55 and began working on the idea for Saint Maud.

In the years following she waitressed and worked as a cinema usher whilst working on the treatment and teamed up with fellow Breakthrough Brit Oliver Kassman. Initially Rose was intimidated by the idea of directing a feature, especially after finding the writing process quite isolating, but once she started, the collaborative nature of the experience made everything a complete joy. Having had such a great time with her team on Saint Maud, she has already enlisted producers Oliver Kassman and Andrea Cornwall to work with her on her next feature which she is co-writing with fellow NFTS graduate and ex-cinema usher Weronika Tofilska. – From BAFTA

Jennifer Kent was born in Brisbane, Australia. She graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) and has worked extensively in theatre, film and TV as an actor. In 2002, Jennifer undertook a directing apprenticeship on Dogville, directed by Lars von Trier. Jennifer’s award-winning short film Monsterscreened at over 50 international festivals including Telluride Film Festival and Aspen Shortsfest where it won the Audience Award and The Ellen Award for distinctive achievement. 

In 2010, Jennifer completed the script program at the Binger Filmlab in Amsterdam, where she developed her feature film The Babadook. The Babadook screened at Sundance Film Festival in January 2014 to critical and audience acclaim, and has won over 50 international and domestic awards, including the Australian Director’s Guild award for Best Director, the Australian Academy Award (AACTA) for Best Direction, Best Screenplay and Best Film, and the New York Critics Circle Awards for Best First Feature. 

Her second feature The Nightingale premiered at the Venice Film Festival where it won the prestigious Special Jury Prize as well as the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best Newcomer (Baykali Ganambarr.) The Nightingale will be released in cinemas in 2019. 

Her third feature as writer/director, Alice and Freda Forever is slated for production in the US in 2019. She is also writing and will direct Tiptree, a limited series for TV based on the extraordinary life and work of female science fiction writer Alice B Sheldon. – From Sundance

Karyn Kiyoko Kusama (born March 21, 1968) is an American filmmaker. She made her feature directorial debut with the sports drama film Girlfight (2000), for which she won Best Director and the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature.

Kusama went on to direct the science fiction action film Æon Flux (2005), based on the animated series of the same name created by Peter Chung, and the horror comedy film Jennifer's Body (2009). After working extensively in television, Kusama directed the horror film The Invitation (2015), a segment in the horror anthology film XX (2017), and the crime drama film Destroyer (2018). Kusama currently serves as an executive producer on the Showtime survival horror thriller series Yellowjackets (2021–present), for which she was nominated for two Primetime Emmy Awards.

In 2009, Kusama directed the horror film Jennifer's Body, which was written by Diablo Cody and starred Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried in the lead roles.[19] The film grossed approximately US$31,000,000 on a budget of around US$16,000,000. Despite its box office success, the film received mixed reviews from critics upon its release but has since become a cult classic. The film was critically reassessed over time as a "forgotten feminist classic". According to Cody, the film was marketed incorrectly by executives who focused their efforts on the young male audience. In regards to the reappraisals of the film, Kusama credited its "distinctly female perspective," stating she had intended to make a film where young women could see themselves represented. Kusama has since described working on both Æon Flux and Jennifer's Body as "learning experiences," wherein she learned how to navigate the Hollywood studio system.

In 2015, Kusama directed The Invitation, a horror film written by Hay and Manfredi, and starring Logan Marshall-Green. The film was funded by a film consortium called Gamechanger Films, who fund films directed by women. It premiered at the 2015 SXSW Festival, to great acclaim, and was released by Drafthouse Films. The film would win the International Critic's Award at the 2015 Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival and was also nominated for Best Picture. Other accolades won by the film included Best Film at the 2015 Sitges Film Festival and the Golden Octopus at the 2015 Strasbourg European Fantastic Film Festival. – From Wikipedia

Jordan Peele, in full Jordan Haworth Peele,  (born February 21, 1979, New York City, New York, U.S.) is an American comedian, writer, director, and producer who is known for creating both comedy and horror films and TV shows that address popular culture and social issues, especially race relations.Peele debuted as a director with the horror movie Get Out (2017), which he also wrote. In the movie a young Black man (Daniel Kaluuya) meets his white girlfriend’s parents for the first time and experiences racism that is more horrifying than he could imagine. Get Out won rave reviews, and Peele became the first African American to win an Academy Award for best original screenplay. He was also nominated for his direction, while the movie received a nod for best picture.

Peele co-created the comedy series The Last O.G. (2018–21), starring Tracy Morgan and Tiffany Haddish, before writing, producing, and directing the horror film Us (2019). It centers on a middle-class family headed by Adelaide and Gabe (Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke) who find themselves under attack by their own doppelgängers. The movie was both critically praised and highly popular. Peele then helped create and served as narrator for a new iteration of the anthology sci-fi series The Twilight Zone (2019–20). In 2021 he produced and co-wrote Candyman, which was described as the “spiritual sequel” to the 1992 cult horror classic of the same name. The following year he returned to the director’s chair with the genre-blending Nope, about a brother (Kaluuya) and sister (Keke Palmer) whose struggle to save the family ranch becomes more complicated when strange things begin to happen; Peele also wrote the film. - Excerpt from Encyclopædia Britannica

Indian-born US screenwriter, director, and producer (born August 6, 1970, Mahé, Puducherry, India). He is known for his supernatural thrillers and broke through to an international audience with his critically and commercially successful film The Sixth Sense (1999). He followed with Unbreakable (2000), Signs (2002), and The Village (2004).

The Sixth Sense, starring Bruce Willis and featuring a young boy who was able to communicate with the dead, earned seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. Later films, which failed to achieve the same commercial and critical success, include The Village (2004), Lady in the Water (2006), The Happening (2008), and The Last Airbender (2010).

Shyamalan was born in Madras (later Chennai), India, but grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He developed an early interest in filmmaking, shooting footage on his Super-8 camera at the age of eight, and had made nearly 50 short films by the end of his teens. He studied film at the Tisch School of the Arts, and upon graduation wrote, directed, produced, and starred in Praying with Anger (1992), based on a visit back to India. His first feature film, Wide Awake (1998), was partially shot in his Catholic high school and portrayed a student trying to come to terms with the death of his grandfather. The following year he wrote the screenplay for the successful children's film Stuart Little. He has had cameo roles in most of his subsequent films. - From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide

Guillermo del Toro, (born October 9, 1964, Guadalajara, Mexico), Mexican director, screenwriter, and producer who was known for imbuing horror and fantasy films with emotional and thematic complexity.

Del Toro developed an interest in both film and horror stories as a child. He began making short films while in high school and later studied filmmaking at the University of Guadalajara. He subsequently learned the art of movie makeup from legendary film makeup artist Dick Smith. Del Toro spent much of the 1980s working as a special-effects makeup artist, and he cofounded Necropia, a special-effects company.

Del Toro wrote and directed several episodes of a 1988–90 television horror series Hora marcada before creating and helming his debut feature film, Cronos (1993). The movie, about the effects of a device that confers immortality, won nine Ariel Awards from the Mexican Academy of Film—including best picture, best director, best screenplay, and best original story—and also received the critics’ week grand prize at the Cannes film festival. His next movie was an American Miramax production, Mimic (1997), starring Mira Sorvino. He followed it up with a ghost story set at the end of the Spanish Civil War, El espinazo del diablo (2001; The Devil’s Backbone). Del Toro won more widespread notice with his comic-book adaptations Blade II (2002), starring Wesley Snipes, and Hellboy (2004), which del Toro also had a hand in writing.

The visually dazzling and thematically intricate fantasy El laberinto del fauno (2006; Pan’s Labyrinth), which del Toro both wrote and directed, won Academy Awards for makeup, art direction, and cinematography. He then cowrote and directed Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) and the sci-fi action film Pacific Rim (2013), which proved to be more popular worldwide than in the United States. The gothic horror film Crimson Peak (2015) met with mixed reviews. However, the bewitching fantasy romance The Shape of Water (2017), for which del Toro wrote the story and cowrote the screenplay, was nominated for 13 Academy Awards and won 4, including for best picture. In addition, del Toro garnered the Oscar, the Golden Globe Award, and the BAFTA for best director.– From Encyclopædia Britannica

James Wan (born 26 February 1977) is an Australian filmmaker. He has primarily worked in the horror genre as the co-creator of the Saw and Insidious franchises and the creator of The Conjuring Universe. The lattermost is the highest-grossing horror franchise at over $2 billion. Wan is also the founder of film and television production company Atomic Monster.

Beginning his career with the Saw franchise, Wan made his feature directorial debut with his first film in 2004. The franchise became commercially successful and grossed more than $1 billion globally. Following a period of setbacks, Wan found new success with the Insidious series, in which he directed the first film in 2010 and its 2013 sequel. The same year as the second Insidious, Wan directed the first Conjuring film to critical and commercial success. He served as the director of the second installment in 2016 and produced subsequent films in the franchise. – From Wikipedia