The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 16

by Stephen Jones

  American leading lady Virginia Grey died of heart failure on July 31st, aged 87. She began her film career as a child in silent films directed by her father, Ray Grey, before becoming a notable MGM player. Her many credits include Whistling in the Dark, Tarzan’s New York Adventure, House of Horrors (with Rondo Hatton), Unconquered (with Boris Karloff), Who Killed Doc Robbin?, Unknown Island, Jungle Jim, Target Earth!, Black Zoo (with Michael Gough) and the TV movie The Lives of Jenny Dolan. She was at one time romantically linked to Clark Gable.

  Seventy-year-old Italian actress and jazz singer Laura Betti (Laura Trombetti) died in Rome the same day of a heart attack following surgery. She was director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s favourite actress and constant inspiration, and she championed his memory after his murder in 1975. Her films include La Dolce Vita, The Witches (1965), Teorema, Mario Bava’s A Hatchet for the Honeymoon and Twitch of the Death Nerve, and the TV movie The Word.

  “Punk-funk” singer, songwriter and record producer Rick James (James Ambrose Johnson, Jr.), “the bad boy of Motown”, died in his sleep on August 6th, aged 56. Best known for his 1981 hit “Super Freak” (which was sampled by MC Hammer on his 1990 song “U Can’t Touch This”), the diabetic James had a pacemaker and a history of cocaine addiction.

  Canadian-born Hollywood star Fay Wray (Vina Fay Wray) died in her Manhattan apartment on August 8th, aged 96. The lights of the Empire State Building were dimmed for fifteen minutes in her honour. Forever remembered as Ann Darrow, the object of the giant ape’s adoration in the classic King Kong (1933), she also appeared in such films as Erich von Stroheim’s silent classic The Wedding March (1928), Dirigible, Doctor X, The Mystery of the Wax Museum, The Vampire Bat, The Most Dangerous Game (UK: The Hounds of Zaroff), Black Moon, Bulldog Jack, The Clairvoyant (US: The Evil Mind), Rock Pretty Baby and Dragstrip Riot. Her first husband, John Monk Saunders, the first writer to receive an Academy Award, killed himself after they were divorced. Wray reportedly declined an offer to appear in a small role in the 1976 remake of King Kong because she disliked the script. Her 1989 autobiography was entitled On the Other Hand.

  Vaudeville comedian Paul “Mousie” Garner died the same day, aged 95. He was believed to be the last survivor amongst those who played one of The Three Stooges. He replaced Shemp Howard for a while in 1930 and, along with Jack Wolf and Dick Hakins, took the place of the original team on Broadway the following year. The latter trio later changed their name to “The Gentlemaniacs”. Garner toured with nine different Stooges and during the 1970s appeared with “Curly” Joe DeRita and Frank Mitchell in the comedy team’s final incarnation. He had roles in Gift of the Gab (with Karloff and Lugosi), Saturday the 14th, Avenging Angel, Stoogemania, Radioland Murders and such TV series as The Munsters, The Monkees, Get Smart and I Dream of Jeannie. Garner was also involved with satirical musical group Spike Jones and his City Slickers.

  Eighty-four-year-old retired US Air Force general Charles W. Sweeney, pilot of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb “Fat Man” on Nagasaki on August 9th, 1945, died on July 16th. Sweeney was 25 years old when he flew the B-29 bomber mission in World War II. Japan surrendered six days afterwards.

  British character actor Peter Woodthorpe died on August 12th, aged 72. Best known for his stage work in the original productions of Waiting for Godot and The Caretaker, his film credits include Hammer’s Hysteria and The Evil of Frankenstein (as the evil hypnotist Zoltan), The Skull, the animated The Lord of the Rings (1978, as the voice of Gollum) and TV’s A Christmas Carol (1984), Jane Eyre (1996), Tale of Sweeney Todd, The Odyssey and Merlin. Woodthorpe played Quasimodo in the 1965 TV version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He also voiced “Pigsy” in the dubbed Japanese TV series Monkey and Gollum again for the thirteen-hour BBC Radio adaptation of The Lord of the Rings in 1981.

  Exotic leading lady of the 1940s Acquanetta (Burnu Acquanetta/Mildred Davenport) died in an Arizona care centre of complications from Alzheimer’s disease on August 16th, aged 83. Best known as “Paula Dupree”, the Ape Woman in Universal’s Captive Wild Woman and Jungle Woman, “the Venezuelan Volcano” (who was apparently born on a Arapaho Indian reservation in Wyoming) also appeared in Arabian Nights (1942), the “Inner Sanctum” mystery Dead Man’s Eyes, Tarzan and the Leopard Woman and The Lost Continent (1951). The former New York fashion model subsequently married a car dealer and moved to Arizona.

  British character actor Hugh Manning died on August 18th, aged 83. He had small roles in Hammer’s Quatermass and the Pit, The House That Dripped Blood and The Elephant Man.

  Silent film child star Charles Eaton died on August 22nd, aged 94. He performed on stage with the Ziegfeld Follies and made his movie debut in 1921. He was in the 1929 talkie The Ghost Talks and The Phantom Strikes.

  Eighty-one-year-old announcer Al Dvorin, credited with saying “Elvis has left the building,” was killed in an automobile accident near Ivanpah, California, the same day.

  American “B” movie actress Lyn Thomas, who starred in Space Master X-7 (1958), died of lung cancer on August 26th, aged 74.

  Grammy nominated singer Laura Branigan, best known for her 1982 hit “Gloria”, died of a brain aneurysm the same day, aged 47. A former back-up singer for Leonard Cohen, her songs were used in Flashdance and Ghostbusters, and she recorded a duet with David Hasselhoff in 1994 for the soundtrack of Baywatch. Branigan also appeared in episodes of the TV series Automan and Monsters, and she reportedly had an affair with William Friedkin (who directed her video for “Self Control”) while he was still married to actress Lesley-Anne Down.

  American actress Suzanne Kaaren [Blackmer] best known for her role opposite Bela Lugosi in The Devil Bat (1940), died of complications from pneumonia on August 27th, aged 92. She also appeared in Tod Browning’s final film Miracles for Sale, Phantom Ranger, The Ghost Comes Home, I Married an Angel and a number of Three Stooges shorts. She married actor Sidney Blackmer in 1943, and in later years won a lengthy legal battle against Donald Trump, who wanted to raise the cost of her rent-controlled New York apartment.

  KTLA Los Angeles newscaster Larry McCormick died the same day after a long illness, aged 71. He appeared (often as a newsman) in The Punisher (1989), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, and the TV movie The Murder of Sherlock Holmes.

  American actress Susan Peretz died of breast cancer also on August 27th, aged 59. Her credits include Oh God You Devil! and Poltergeist II The Other Side.

  Carl Wayne (Colin Tooley), lead singer of The Move, died of cancer of the oesophagus on August 31st, aged 61. The group’s hit “Flowers in the Rain” launched BBC Radio 1 in 1967, and he also sang the theme song for Percy’s Progress. Wayne’s £1.4 million estate was apparently the result of advertising jingles, TV roles and starring in the West End musical Blood Brothers.

  French actor Serge Marquand died of leukaemia on September 4th, aged 74. His numerous credits include Roger Vadim’s Blood and Roses, Tintin and the Mystery of the Golden Fleece, Spirits of the Dead, Barbarella, Quartet, Les Raisins de la Morte and Frankenstein 90.

  German-born Tiny Doll (Elly Ann Schneider/Tiny Earles), the last surviving member of the Doll family, died of heart failure on September 6th, aged 90. Along with her siblings, Frieda, Kurt and Hilda (who changed their names to Grace, Harry and Daisy Earles in the 1920s), the 3-foot, 6-inch midget actress appeared in Tod Browning’s Freaks and played a Munchkin in The Wizard of Oz. After decades of touring with various circuses, the family retired in 1960.

  Thirty-two-year-old British actress Fritha Goodey was found dead of multiple stab wounds at her home in London on September 8th. Several notes were reportedly found, and the police did not suspect foul play. Best known for her role as Hugh Grant’s ex-girlfriend in About a Boy, she also appeared in the TV movie Case of Evil (a.k.a. Sherlock) and an episode of the revived TV series Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased).

  British stage and TV actor Glyn [Griffith] Owen died of cancer on September 10th, aged 76. A former London policeman, he made his television debut in The Trollenberg
Terror for the BBC in 1956 and appeared in episodes of Doctor Who, Doomwatch, Survivors, The Invisible Man, Out of This World and Blake’s 7.

  Fifty-three-year-old Norman “Dinky” Diamond, former drummer with the 1970s pop group Sparks, hanged himself in the loft of his Berkshire home on September 10th because his neighbour played her music too loud. Diamond performed on three Sparks albums, including such hits as “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us” and “Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth”.

  Following in the steps of Joey and Dee Dee, who died in 2001 and 2002 respectively, 55-year-old Johnny Ramone (John Cummings), lead guitarist with the influential New York punk band The Ramones, died in his sleep after a five year battle with prostate cancer on September 15th. The band recorded sixteen albums and their hits include “I Wanna Be Sedated” and “Sheena is a Punk Rocker”.

  Izora Rhodes Armstead, one half of the signing duo The Weather Girls, who had a novelty disco hit in Britain with “It’s Raining Men” in 1984, died of heart failure on September 16th, aged around 62.

  American actor Tim Choate, best known for his recurring role as the alien “Zathras” on TV’s Babylon 5 (1994–97), was killed in a motorcycle accident in Los Angeles on September 24th, aged 49. His other credits include Ghost Story (as the younger incarnation of Fred Astaire’s character), Blow Out, DefCon 4, Not of This Earth (1991), Creep Tales and the TV movie Blind Witness (1989).

  American musical-comedy actor Ignatius “Iggie” Wolfington died on September 30th, aged 84. His film credits include Herbie Rides Again, The Strongest Man in the World, Telefon, Hex, The Legend of Lizzie Borden and Steven Spielberg’s 1941.

  Fifty-eight-year-old former topless actress turned celebrity astrologer Joyce Jillson died of kidney failure on October 1st. After appearing in such films as Superchick, Slumber Party ’57 and The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington, as the official astrologer for Twentieth Century Fox she chose the opening day for Star Wars. The silicone-breasted blonde, whose forecasts ran in more than 200 newspapers around the world, had a Los Angeles TV show, an 800-telephone number for zodiac readings, and advised US president Ronald Reagan to only give press conferences during full moons.

  Canadian-born Bruce Palmer, the original bassist with 1960s band Buffalo Springfield, died of a heart attack the same day, aged 58.

  Janet Leigh (Jeanette Helen Morrison), best known for playing Norman Bates’ shower victim “Marion Crane” in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), died on October 3rd, aged 77. She had been suffering from vasculitis, an inflammation of the blood vessels. Discovered by actress Norma Shearer in 1947, her other credits include Angels in the Outfield (1951), Prince Valiant (1954), Touch of Evil, The Vikings, The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Hello Down There, The Spy in the Green Hat, The Monk, Night of the Lepus and the TV movie The Deadly Dream. Leigh was married to her third husband, actor Tony Curtis, from 1951–62, and starred opposite their daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis, in both The Fog and Halloween H20: 20 Years Later. She published her autobiography There Really Was a Hollywood in 1984, and her book Psycho: Behind the Scenes in the Classic Thriller appeared in 1995.

  American comedian Rodney Dangerfield (Jacob Cohen) died on October 4th, aged 82. He had undergone heart valve replacement surgery on August 25th but, after suffering from a small stroke and then infection and complications, was unable to recover. He briefly awoke from a coma the week he died. Best known for such hit comedies as Caddyshack and Back to School, his other films include The Projectionist, the animated Rover Dangerfield, Natural Born Killers, Casper and Little Nicky. Dangerfield was credited with launching the careers of many well-known comics, including Jim Carrey, Tim Allen, Roseanne Barr and Jerry Seinfeld. His 2004 autobiography was titled It’s Not Easy Bein’ Me: A Lifetime of No Respect, but Plenty of Sex and Drugs.

  Fifty-two-year-old Christopher Reeve, who starred as The Man of Steel in four films during the late 1970s and ’80s, died of heart failure on October 10th. Nine years earlier he had been left paralysed from the shoulders down by a horse riding accident, and he became a world-wide advocate for the rights of the disabled and a campaigner for controversial stem cell research. Reeve had been suffering from a pressure wound that had become severely infected, and he fell into a coma after having a heart attack the day before he died. Along with Superman (1978) and its three numerical sequels, Reeve also starred in Somewhere in Time (based on the novel by Richard Matheson), Deathtrap, John Carpenter’s 1995 remake of Village of the Damned, and the 1998 TV remake of Rear Window (which he also directed). More recently he guest-starred in two episodes of the revisionist Superboy TV series Smallville as enigmatic scientist “Dr Virgil Swann”. Reeve’s 1998 autobiography was entitled Still Me.

  Scottish-born character actress Sheila Keith, the closest thing Britain had to a female horror star, died on October 14th, aged 84. During the 1970s she appeared in such low budget exploitation films for Peter Walker as Frightmare, House of Whipcord, House of Mortal Sin (US: The Confessional) and The Comeback (US: The Day the Screaming Stopped). As a reflection of her cult status, she co-starred with Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and John Carradine in Walker’s House of the Long Shadows, and her last appearance was in an episode of Steve Coogan’s 2001 BBC-TV series Dr Terrible’s House of Horrible (“And Now the Fearing . . .”).

  African-American actor Julius W. Harris died of heart failure on October 17th, aged 81. Best remembered for his role as the evil pincerhanded “Tee Hee” in the 1973 James Bond film Live and Let Die, his more than 100 other credits include Shaft’s Big Score!, King Kong (1976), Looking for Mr Goodbar, Mystique, The Enchanted, Darkman, Maniac Cop 3, Shrunken Heads, Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man and episodes of TV’s The Incredible Hulk, Voyagers! and Amazing Stories.

  Betty Hill, who with her husband Barney was allegedly abducted by a UFO in 1961, died of cancer the same day, aged 85. She was played by actress Estelle Parsons in the TV movie The UFO Incident and also appeared as a character in the series Dark Skies.

  Eighty-one-year-old actress Katherine Victor (Katena Ktenavea, aka Katherin Victor), best known for her roles in Jerry Warren’s bargain basement horrors, died following a stroke on October 22nd. After making her debut in Mesa of Lost Women, she starred in Warren’s Teenage Zombies, Curse of the Stone Hand, Creature of the Walking Dead, Wild World of Bat Woman and Frankenstein Island. Other credits include Cape Canaveral Monsters, House of Black Death and the TV movie Fear No Evil. Her final screen appearance was in Superguy: Behind the Cape (2002). For forty years, beginning in 1960, she worked as an animation checker for such cartoon studios as Hanna-Barbera, DePatie-Freleng, Filmation, Don Bluth and Walt Disney TV Animation.

  Influential British radio disc jockey John Peel OBE (John Robert Parker Ravenscroft) died of a heart attack on October 25th in Cuzco, Peru. He was 65. The Liverpool-born Peel began his career in the early 1960s in America, before returning to the UK in 1967 to work for offshore pirate radio stations. That same year he joined BBC Radio One on a six-week contract and never left.

  Hollywood dancer and actress Peggy Ryan, who as a teenager often tap-danced on screen with Donald O’Connor, died from two strokes on October 30th, aged 80. Her film credits include That’s the Spirit and Shamrock Hill.

  Sixty-one-year-old disc jockey and singer Terry Knight, who managed and produced the band Grand Funk Railroad, was stabbed to death by his daughter’s boyfriend on November 1st during a domestic dispute in the Texas apartment all three shared.

  Eighty-four-year-old Ed Kemmer, who starred as “Commander Buzz Corry” of the 30th Century on the live ABC-TV series Space Patrol (1950–55), died in New York City on November 5th after suffering a stroke. Kemmer, who was initially paid just $8.00 a show, also appeared in the movies Giant from the Unknown and Earth vs. the Spider, and he played the pilot who tried to calm down William Shatner in the classic Twilight Zone episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”.

  American keyboardist Pete Jolly (Peter Ceragioli, Jr.) died of bone marrow can
cer on November 6th, aged 72. As well as touring with the Pete Jolly Trio since 1964, he also contributed to the themes for such TV series as Get Smart, The Love Boat and I Spy.

  American film and stage star Howard Keel (Harold Clifford Leek, aka “Harold Keel”), best known for his musical and Western roles, died of colon cancer on November 7th, aged 87. He appeared in the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical Carousel on stage in both the US and UK, and starred in the Arabian Nights musical Kismet and the 1963 film of John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids. Later in his career he guest-starred in an episode of Fantasy Island and portrayed “Clayton Farlow” on the hit TV series Dallas for ten years.

  Stage and screen actor Norman Rose died after a brief illness on November 12th, aged 87. Best known for more than a decade as the voice of Juan Valdez in the TV coffee commercials, his credits include Pinocchio in Outer Space and Message from Space. He narrated a radio adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles and was the voice of God in Woody Allen’s movie Love and Death.

  Thirty-five-year-old Russell T. Jones, better known as rapper “O.D.B.” (Ol’ Dirty Bastard), “Osirus” and “Big Baby Jesus”, a founding member of the Wu-Tang Clan, died of the combined effects of cocaine and the painkiller Tramadol after collapsing with chest pains inside a Manhattan recording studio on November 13th. He had recently completed a prison sentence for drug possession and was posthumously featured in a three-episode reality TV show. He had children with eight different mothers.

  Hollywood swimming stuntwoman Patricia Dean Hulsman, whose credits include The Creature from the Black Lagoon, died on November 16th, aged 81.

  Actress Marion Schilling, who toured with Bela Lugosi in the stage version of Dracula, died on November 18th, aged 93. Her film credits include The Clutching Hand, Captured in Chinatown, A Shot in the Dark and The Red Rider.

  Comedian and actor Dayton Allen, best known as the voice of cartoon characters “Deputy Dawg” and “Heckle and Jeckle”, died the same day after suffering a stroke. He was 85.