(11 August 1947 - 24 March 2020)
The Hollywood writer-director Stuart Gordon, who has died from multiple organ failure at the age of 72, was always a controversial figure in the film world and in the theatre too, where he began his career. After graduating he worked as an apprentice commercial artist before attending the University of Wisconsin, enrolling in a theatre class. Aged 21, he directed a psychedelic, satirical production of Peter Pan. Arrested on obscenity charges, he left university to form The Organic theatre group in Chicago. The company toured and played both on and off- Broadway, premiering David Mamet’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago. Gordon made his first film in 1985, Re-Animator, based on a horror story by H.P. Lovecraft. The film was more horror-comic than horror-drama, about a mad scientist (Jeffrey Combs) inventing an elixir that brought the dead back to life. Its over-the-top gore created censorship problems in both the US and the UK, and cuts had to be made. Still, it won a Critics’ prize at Cannes. Lovecraft was plundered again for From Beyond, again with actor Combs, followed by Dolls, about haunted toys, and Robot Jox, a sci-fi subject about post World War III superpowers. Surprisingly, he then wrote the story for Disney’s Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and directed a spooked-up remake of The Pit and the Pendulum with Lance Henriksen. Among his other films were Fortress, a sci-fi crime thriller with Christopher Lambert, Space Truckers, about killer robots in space, Dagon, from Lovecraft again, The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, a Ray Bradbury story about a two-piece with magical properties, King of the Ants, on vengeful insects, and David Mamet’s Edmond with William H. Macy. Gordon’s last feature was Stuck in 2007 for which he also wrote the story. He went back to the theatre and in 2011 directed a musical version of Re-Animator which played Los Angeles, New York and Edinburgh. Gordon also worked in television on E/R with Elliott Gould, the TV series of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Masters of Horror, and contributed other stories and screenplays to films and TV. His success may have been through his habit of throwing sex and nudity into his movies. He reckoned that “horror and sex go hand in hand... the two are life and death.” Stuart Gordon was married to the actress Carolyn Purdy-Gordon who often appeared in – and disappeared from – his films. They have three daughters, Jillian, Margaret and Suzanna.
MICHAEL DARVELL
