Born John Howard Carpenter on January 16 1948 in Carthage, New York and raised in Bowling Green, Kentucky, John first developed an interest in music at a young age with his father, Howard Carpenter, performing as a session musician for the likes of Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash. During the 1950’s, John Carpenter became seduced by the wave of b-movies that took the country by storm (such as The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Thing from Another World and Forbidden Planet) and soon found himself seduced by such filmmakers as Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock. He soon began shooting short films on 8mm, whilst also experimenting with homemade special effects, resulting in his own science fiction epics, including Sorcerer from Outer Space, Gorgon the Space Monster and Revenge of the Colossal Beasts, all of which would flirt with the various themes and styles that would later become Carpenter trademarks.

After attending Western Kentucky University, he enrolled at the University of Southern California (USC), where he would make his first professional film, The Resurrection of Broncho Billy, a twenty-three minute short directed by classmate James R. Rokos and produced by John Longenecker. Carpenter edited and scored the film, which would win an Academy Award for Best Short, but soon afterwards he decided that he wanted to direct a film himself. Along with fellow student Dan O’Bannon, for his master’s thesis Carpenter would pay homage to Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey with his story Dark Star, a tale of a group of hippie astronauts on a mission in deep space to destroy unstable planets whilst also questioning their own place in the universe. Due to both a lack of funds and personnel, Carpenter and O’Bannon would perform most of the duties themselves, although future collaborators Nick Castle and Tommy Lee Wallace would also be among the crew.

Having raised funds from family and friends to produce the fifty-minute piece, Carpenter and O’Bannon eventually decided that they wanted to expand their film to feature-length and so classmate Jonathan Kaplan donated $10,000, although this would barely cover the cost of one elaborate effects sequence. Once again broke, the project managed to attract the attention of an independent distributor called Jack H. Harris, who agreed to help expand the miniscule budget to $60,000 and blow the print up from 16mm to 35mm in return for the rights. After a brief release by Harris, the film was sold onto a company called Bryanston Distribution but failed to generate much interest at the box office. Having struggled to find work within the industry, Carpenter wrote several screenplays, with one optioned as his first commercial vehicle, Siege, an urban action flick modelled after the Howard Hawks classic Rio Bravo, which saw a Lieutenant and a convict fighting side-by-side against a street gang. Having attended a screening at the Milan Film Festival, independent producer Irwin Yablans offered to distribute the movie under the alternative title Assault on Precinct 13. The film was an immediate success in Europe and brought Carpenter to the attention of major studios, resulting in Warner Bros. offering him the chance to write and direct a TV movie.

Having found minor acclaim with his small screen thriller Someone’s Watching Me, Carpenter was eager to direct another feature and so when Yablans suggested a low budget horror about a babysitter being stalked by the bogeyman, Carpenter immediately commenced work on a script with his producer partner Debra Hill. With Yablans stating that the film should be set over one night and be called Halloween, Carpenter began crafting a script about an escaped killer returning to his hometown to continue what he had started fifteen years earlier. Having gained funding from Syrian producer Moustapha Akkad, Carpenter commenced work with a budget of $300,000 and screen veteran Donald Pleasence in the lead role. Halloween was released in October of 1978 and became a surprise success, earning a phenomenal $47m at the US box office. Not only was the movie critically acclaimed and helped cement Carpenter’s reputation as a master filmmaker, it also inspired countless producers to fund their own variant, resulting in an endless spree of what would be dubbed ’slasher films.’

After scoring further critical acclaim with his 1979 TV biopic Elvis (which would mark his first collaboration with actor Kurt Russell), Carpenter returned to the horror genre with The Fog, a ghost story with a slasher twist in which the spirits of murdered sailors exact bloody vengeance upon a small seaside community. His next project would be Escape From New York, a concept he had initially conceived in the mid-1970’s but was unable to gain the backing, which would tell of disgraced war hero Snake Plissken, who is sent into the maximum security prison of Manhattan Island in order to rescue the president after Air Force One crash lands behind the walls. With Russell cast against type as the Clint Eastwood-style ‘hero’ Snake, the movie was a huge success and would propel Carpenter into the mainstream, resulting in him being hired to direct a big budget remake of The Thing for Universal. Once again reuniting with Russell, the film would feature groundbreaking special effects by Rob Bottin (The Howling), but the release of Steven Spielberg’s more family-orientated alien feature E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial two weeks earlier caused the movie to perform below expectations.

With Carpenter’s popularity rising, perhaps it was inevitable that he would eventually make a movie based on a novel by the most successful author of the era. Published in April 1983, Christine was the tenth full-length book by Stephen King (not counting anthologies or stories written under his alias Richard Bachman) and was released during the height of his success, following acclaimed adaptations of Carrie and The Shining. Following the romantic fantasy Starman, Carpenter directed Big Trouble in Little China, a stylish mix of martial arts, magic and Kurt Russell, once again coming across like a Howard Hawks antihero. Forced to work under the strict rules of a major studio, and faced with the competition from the Eddie Murphy flick The Golden Child, the movie was not the success that Carpenter had hoped and so he retreated away from the mainstream, instead opting for low budget projects where he could exorcise more creative control. In early 1987, Carpenter signed a three-feature deal with Alive Pictures, commencing with the supernatural chiller Prince of Darkness.

The following year, Carpenter chose to adapt a short story by Ray Nelson into a science fiction satire with They Live, which used an alien race’s attempts to brainwash America as a metaphor for the propaganda that the media and consumerists would feed to the masses through television and billboard ads. Starring professional wrestler Roddy Piper and The Thing’s Keith David, many fans would consider They Live as the closing chapter of Carpenter’s heyday. It would be a further four years before he released another movie, with 1992’s Chevy Chase vehicle Memoirs of an Invisible Man failing to make the comeback many had hoped for. In 1993, he once again returned to the small screen for the horror anthology Body Bags, in which he would direct two of the three segments, whilst the final would be helmed by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Tobe Hooper. Following on from The Thing and Prince of Darkness, Carpenter finally completed his ‘apocalypse trilogy’ in 1995 with In the Mouth of Madness, in which a private detective investigates the mysterious disappearance of a Stephen King-like author, leading him to the fictional town where the novels are set.

Having directed a remake of the 1960 classic Village of the Damned, Carpenter chose to make a sequel to one of his most popular movies with Escape From LA, in which once again Snake Plissken is forced to enter a maximum security prison in order to rescue something which can compromise the safety of the country. Whilst failing to gain the acclaim that its predecessor had received, the film was still an enjoyable treat for fans and a welcome return for their favourite character. Once again, Carpenter chose to blend genres together for his western road movie Vampires in 1998, which saw a team of vampire hunters hired by the Vatican attempting to track down and destroy the master. With Assault on Precinct 13 having twisted the formula of Rio Bravo, Carpenter decided to do the same with his own movie by making Ghosts of Mars, which took the concept of Assault on Precinct 13 and turned it into a science fiction horror.

Since the release of Ghosts of Mars in 2001, Carpenter has yet to release a feature. Having directed two episodes of the acclaimed show Masters of Horror (one of which, Cigarette Burns, shared certain similarities with In the Mouth of Madness), Carpenter finally planned his highly anticipated return with The Ward, a supernatural horror starring Amber Heard (All The Boys Love Mandy Lane), Danielle Panabaker (Friday the 13th) and Jared Harris (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), set for release in 2010. Other projects that he has been associated with over the last twelve months that have yet to enter production are L.A. Gothic and Scared Straight with Nicolas Cage. Despite many considering Carpenter to have had his moment of glory, he is still an inventive and stylish director that prefers to comfort of independent filmmaking to the pressures of the mainstream.

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Robert Winthrop Ginty was born on November 14 1948 in Brooklyn, New York. His mother, Elsie O’Hara, was employed b the government whilst his father, Michael Joseph, was a construction worker. At the age of sixteen, Ginty became passionate about music and began touring with various groups, appearing alongside the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, John Lee Hooker and Carlos Santana. He soon began to flirt with acting, studying drama at the Actors Studio, the Yale School of Drama and the Neighborhood Playhouse. He began appearing in various stage productions, including an adaptation of Orpheus Descending by Tennessee Williams and Midsummer Night’s Dream. His first big break came when he was discovered off-Broadway by television producers, who suggested that he move out to Los Angeles.

Taking his theatre company, Ginty managed to make guest appearances on various shows but soon found himself landing proper acting roles, which would result in his first success, Baa Baa Black Sheep, in 1976 for ABC. Later that year, he would be cast in the first of two feature films for filmmaker Hal Ashby, with Bound for Glory co-starring David Carradine (Kung Fu) and Deliverance’s Ronny Cox. Two years later, Ashby hired him again for Coming Home, which saw Vietnam vet Bruce Dern returning to America, only to find himself unable to cope with normal life. Based on the novel by George Davis, the movie would be nominated for eight Academy Awards, eventually winning three for co-stars Jon Voight and Jane Fonda and writers Robert C. Jones, Waldo Salt and Nancy Dowd.

Having enjoyed a recurring role in the series The Paper Chase, Ginty himself would portray a soldier who had returned from Vietnam to find a world that he finds difficult to adapt to in the 1980 thriller The Exterminator. Written and directed by Glickenhaus, the movie told of a man who exacts revenge of a gang of punks after brutally attacking his best friend. Catering for the same crowd who had enjoyed Death Wish, Rolling Thunder and Mad Max, the film became an unexpected hit and gave Ginty his first starring role. Although the opening Vietnam sequence had been rather graphic (including a beheading), the story would avoid the usual gratuitous violence and nudity that had become commonplace at that time and would receive several positive reviews, particularly for Ginty’s performance.

Guest roles in several popular television shows soon followed, including the police series ChiPs, Diff’rent Strokes, The Love Boat and Quincy M.E. Following the success of The Exterminator, Ginty would be offered a variety of action-orientated roles, including David Worth’s Warrior of the Lost World (alongside screen legend Donald Pleasence) and Philip Chalong’s Gold Raiders, as well as The Alchemist for independent filmmaker Charles Band, who would become a major player in the b-movie industry throughout the 1980s with his production company Empire Pictures. Ginty also appeared in an episode of the cult show Knightrider, in which he would cameo alongside Leave it to Beaver’s Tony Dow.

Another significant role would see him co-star with Lindsay Wagner and Harry Dean Stanton in the 1983 TV movie I Want to Live!, in which Wagner would portray the husband of Barbara Graham, who was sentenced to death in the gas chamber on June 3 1955. Incidentally, I Want to Live! had already been told once before by Robert Wise (of The Day the Earth Stood Still fame) in 1958, with Susan Hayward in the lead role. Having recently divorced his first wife, The Paper Chase co-star Francine Tacker (with whom he would have a son, James Francis Ginty, born on December 4 1980), Ginty would once again tie the knot, this time with Lorna Patterson, who had appeared in the hit spoof Airplane! and would take the lead role of the TV show Private Benjamin.

With sequels and franchises becoming such big business in the wake of the never-ending Friday the 13th series, it was inevitable that The Exterminator 2 would eventually surface. With Glickenhaus absent from the production, the task of writing and directing a follow-up fell to Mark Buntzman, who had produced the first movie. With John Eastland now patrolling the streets as a crime-fighting vigilante, he falls foul of a local gang, which results in the death of his girlfriend. Recycling ideas from Glickenhaus’s original, The Exterminator 2 was a modest success thanks its distributors, Cannon Films (who would also release another unnecessary sequel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2), resulting in the film making over $3.7m at the box office. The movie would also mark the debut of Mario Van Peebles, whose subsequent acting and directing career would include New Jack City, Posse and Panther.

After the release of The Exterminator 2, Ginty continued to appear in a string of b-movies such as Maniac Killer, Programmed to Kill, The Mission… Kill and Code Name Vengeance. Soon afterwards, Ginty launched his own production company, Ginty Film, and tried his hand at other talents, resulting in his directorial debut, The Bounty Hunter, in 1989. Also marking his first attempt at a screenwriter (alongside Thomas Baldwin), Ginty starred as a cop-turned-bounty hunter who heads into a small town to track down the crooked sheriff (played by Bo Hopkins of Dynasty fame). His second feature as director, Vietnam, Texas, was released the following year and saw Ginty as a priest who discovers that he had become a father whilst fighting in Vietnam.

For the next few years, Ginty would balance his careers as an actor and director, appearing in shows like Falcon Crest and Matlock, whilst directing episodes of the erotic comedy Dream On and China Beach. In 1993, he would co-write and direct Woman of Desire, in which Jeff Fahey played a man accused of murdering his boss and raping his wife (Bo Derek), forcing attorney Robert Mitchum to defend him. Ginty continued to direct successful shows like the spin-off Here Come the Munsters (which co-starred The Lost Boys‘ Edward Herrmann as Herman and ‘future Mrs. Ben Stiller’ Christine Taylor as Marilyn Hyde). He also worked on episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess, Nash Bridges and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. Meanwhile, he still continued to occasionally appear before the camera, taking small roles in Murder, She Wrote, Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man and Baywatch Nights.

Since his acting career began to slow down, Ginty has continued to work and gain recognition for his talents. Having become a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1996, Ginty also attended Harvard University, where he directed Picasso at the Lapin Agile for comedian Steve Martin. He was also awarded the Signet Society medal from the university for his work in the industry. Other notable achievements included being elected a member of the Society of Canadian Artists and being appointed ambassador for the Prince’s Trust by Prince Charles. In 2004, he scored further success with a musical production of A Clockwork Orange in Toronto and last year was elected a member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Sadly, Ginty would pass away from cancer on September 21 2009 in Los Angeles. He is survived by his third wife, Michelle Ginty, and his son, James Francis Ginty.

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Moving to Pittsburgh in 1957, Romero began to study commercial art at the Carnegie Institute of Technology but knew that his ambitions lay elsewhere. Finally he decided to leave his course and try to find work within the movie industry, with his first proper job being as a gopher on the set of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 classic North by Northwest. Wanting to become more creative, Romero set up a production company called The Latent Image with a group of friends: John Russo, Russ Steiner and Richard Ricci. Focusing mainly on commercials, the business soon became highly profitable and Romero would hone his craft as a filmmaker, directing various adverts based on his favourite movies. But soon they began discussing the possibility of making a feature film. Through their venture, they had managed to purchase a 35mm camera and editing equipment in an effort to make their commercials appear as professional as possible, and so the group felt that they would be more than capable of shooting a real movie. Eventually, idle discussion turned to sincere suggestions, with Russo suggesting that they draft in the services of several more likeminded people, each throw in $600-a-piece and they would have an adequate budget with which to play with. They began searching around friends and local companies, bringing in Gary Streiner and Rudy Ricci to join their brothers, business partners Marilyn Eastman and Karl Hardman of Hardman Associates, Inc. and lawyer David Clipper.

Operating under the new moniker The Image Ten, the new company commenced work on what they had decided would be a low budget horror movie. Romero took inspiration from Anubis, a short story he had written after reading Richard Matheson’s post-apocalyptic novel I Am Legend. The various principals decided that in an effort to save cost and time they would take supporting roles, thus Hardman and Eastman would portray bickering couple Harry and Helen Cooper, whilst Hardman’s own daughter, Kyra Schon, would play his on-screen offspring who, due to a zombie bite, has become increasingly sick and in need of medical attention. Streiner would take an uncredited role as Johnny, Barbra’s brother who is attacked by a ghoul during the opening scene, only to resurface during the final reel as one of the undead. Not wanting to be excluded, Russo would cameo as military reporter whilst Romero as a journalist. Even Richard and Rudy Ricci would appear briefly as zombies. Shot over four months on a budget of $114,000 on black and white 35mm film stock, Night of the Living Dead was released on October 1 1968 and became a surprise success, although the critical response was somewhat mixed. Over the years, however, it has since become hailed as one of the greatest horror movies of all time.

Despite the success and adoration received from Night of the Living Dead, Romero’s second feature would be an unpleasant and disappointing experience. Based on his thirty-minute piece entitled At Play with the Angels, Rudy Ricci adapted the concept into a feature length script whilst The Image Ten put up the necessary budget. But creative differences between the director and his collaborators would result in an uneven production and a film that no one involved was pleased with. The experience had severed the friendships of those involved and a legal battle commenced over ownership of the company and their successful first feature. Romero decided to return to the horror genre with Season of the Witch, which he would be forced to put up a $100,000 loan in order to move the project into production. Having entered into a deal with a company that had guaranteed him $250,000 and now facing debt, Romero soldiered on through a restrictive shoot that would force the director to remove elements from his script due to budgetary issues. Forcing a social commentary into the mix (an aspect of Night of the Living Dead that had been applauded) and lacking the style of his debut, Season of the Witch would sink without a trace and leave its creator feeling disillusioned and broke.

Remaining within the horror genre, his next effort would be The Crazies, also know as Code Name: Trixie, in which a small town is placed under military quarantine after a viral outbreak, an obvious influence on David Cronenberg’s most successful 1977 flick Rabid. Having already secured a deal in which he would be allocated three pictures at $250,000 each, which he had been cheated out of on Season of the Witch, Romero was asked by the producer to re-write the script that had been submitted by Paul McCollough and adapt it into an action-orientated tale. The Crazies would begin a trend within the genre of films in which the naïve and power-hungry military fail to contain a disaster due to their own arrogance and stupidity, thus risking to create a nationwide or worldwide epidemic. Desperate for a hit after several years of disappointments, Romero eventually formed a new company, Laurel Entertainment, with journalist Richard Rubinstein and the two planned their first venture together. Having already spun the zombie genre on its head, he now planned to do the same with vampires. Told of a crazed young man who lives the life of a bloodsucker, believing that he is in fact eight-four years old and immortal. This project would mark his first collaboration with an up-and-coming special effects artist who would have a profound effect on his career: Tom Savini.

Having resisted the temptation to simply rush a sequel to Night of the Living Dead into production, Romero had spent the better part of a decade attempting to escape the label of ‘horror movie director,’ but after several unsuccessful features he finally gave in. With the legal wrangling between himself and Night’s co-author Russo finally laid to rest, Romero commenced work on his follow-up, an epic tale of a group of survivors who take refuge in an abandoned shopping mall, only to become seduced by their environment and eventually devoured by the invading zombies. Partially funded by Italian filmmaker Dario Argento (Suspiria), Dawn of the Dead would become Romero’s most acclaimed and successful work to date, immediately eliminating all memory of his previous work and once again reinforcing his status as master of the zombies. Whilst Night had been shot in black and white with only one scene of gut munching, Dawn would be awash with blood and gore in full-blown colour, with over-the-top makeup effects by Savini. Once again utilising a social commentary, Dawn would kick-start Romero’s career, finally allowing him to once again enjoy his success.

Choosing to follow the victory of Dawn of the Dead three years later with Knightriders, a King Arthur on motorcycles yarn which co-starred Savini and Dawn’s Ken Foree and Scott Reiniger. Once again, Romero found himself with a commercial flop and so he immediately commenced work on his next feature, a horror anthology based on stories by best selling horror author Stephen King. Once again working with Savini, who had become one of the most successful makeup artists of his generation after his work on Friday the 13th, Romero created a tongue-in-cheek pastiche of the old EC Comics that he had devoured as a young boy. Featuring a cast of cult names that included Leslie Neilson (who had recently made the transformation from serious actor to comedy genius with Airplane!), Adrienne Barbeau (Escape from New York) and even King himself. Creepshow would become a modest hit and would once again see Romero receiving praise for his inventive and playful side. Soon, however, he began considering bringing his ‘Dead‘ trilogy to a conclusion with what promised to be the most exciting chapter to-date.

Romero’s initial idea for Day of the Dead had been even more epic in scope than Dawn, with zombie soldiers leading the fight against the resistance. At first the budget was to have been $7m, far higher than its predecessor, yet the investors demanded that the movie be R-rated in order to obtain a commercial release. Dawn had been released unrated due to its excessive gore; it had been a gamble but it had paid off, and Romero wanted to try this again. Given the option of reducing the violence or the budget, he eventually settled on $3.5m. This forced drastic changes to his script, reducing both the scope of the action and the size of the cast, resulting in a few survivors taking refuge in an underground military base. The nihilistic tone and claustrophobic environment would prompt a negative response from both his fans and critics, who had hoped for another Dawn of the Dead. One aspect that was universally applauded by fans was the gore, in which Savini had created the most impressive work of his career. Sadly, it would take twenty years before Day of the Dead began to receive the recognition it deserved.

Three years later and Romero would commence work on Monkey Shines, an interesting-if-flawed horror that would enjoy modest success at the box office. Once again re-teaming with Argento, Romero directed one half of Two Evil Eyes, two tales based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. This would mark Savini’s last outing as Romero’s special effects artist and the movie would prove to be another disappointment. Over the next few years, Savini would remake Night of the Living Dead and Creepshow would become a mediocre franchise, whilst Romero would narrowly miss out on directing another Stephen King adaptation, Pet Semetary. Instead, his next project was The Dark Half, which King had been inspired to write due to the success of his literary alter ego, Richard Bachman. The movie would fail to generate the kind of enthusiasm that King fans had given to Creepshow and Pet Semetary and Romero eventually disappeared without a trace, not resurfacing for another eight years until Bruiser slipped under the radar.

By 2005, it had been twenty years since the release of Day of the Dead and Romero would announce his return with Land of the Dead, an action-packed zombie flick which would co-star screen legend Dennis Hopper (Apocalypse Now), cult favourite John Leguizamo (Carlito’s Way) and Argento’s daughter Asia. With two decades of expectations building into a frenzy, fans and critics were particularly harsh on the movie, criticising it for not featuring Savini’s trademark effects (in his place was Greg Nicotero, who had first started out on Day). If they felt disillusioned by Land then Romero’s next effort would prove to be the greatest disappointment of his career. Diary of the Dead had been intended as a fresh start for his zombie franchise, taking the action back to the first night but instead of being set in a farmhouse the action would be seen through the lens of a camera (following the trend that The Blair Witch Project had popularised several years earlier). Lacking any kind of character of commentary, the movie was a major anticlimax and once again critics began to speculate as to whether or not Romero had finally had his day. The knives are ready once again as Romero’s latest opus, Survival of the Dead, is set for release next year.

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During his time at the paper, he interviewed a filmmaker who would help give him his first big break, Sergio Leone. Having already scored international success with the Clint Eastwood spaghetti western ‘Dollars‘ trilogy, Leone had become a highly respected artist and this proved to be a major chance for Argento, who would spend the next six months crafting a treatment together with Bernardo Bertolucci. When their story for C’era una volta il West (Once Upon a Time in the West) had finally been submitted, Dario was disappointed to only be paid a mere $800 for all his hard work, though he appreciated what an opportunity it was to work on such a project. Bertolucci approached Argento with a story by Fredric Brown called The Screaming Mimi that he urged the young writer to read. Despite changing the main plot points, Argento kept the essence of the book and began develop a thirty-page treatment whilst on the set of Armando Crispino’s Commandos in 1968. As supportive as ever, Salvatore formed Seda Spettacoli Company and agreed to produce his son’s feature, though it would take a further eighteen months to raise the necessary $500,000 budget. L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo (The Bird With the Crystal Plumage) was released in Italy on 19th February 1970 and was an unexpected success.

CCC Kunst, the German distributors, approached Argento about directing another murder mystery in a similar vein, and thus Il gatto a nove code (The Cat O’ Nine Tails) was born. Argento had recently read an article on how scientific research had revealed how criminal behaviour can be effected by their genetic makeup, with the usual chromosomes of XY for male and XX for female being replaced by the uncommon XYY. The concept would be adapted into a screenplay by Dardano Sacchetti, who would also write Bava’s Reazione a Catena (Twitch of the Death Nerve) the same year, and Luigi Collo. With a budget of approximately $1m and barely breaking even at the box office, The Cat O’ Nine Tails was a disappointment for everyone involved and Argento decided that he would make one more giallo to please his loyal fan base before taking his career in a new direction.

Feeling the pressure of not only his rising success but also of the various filmmakers that had begun to emulate him, Argento knew that he had to improve his repertoire if he was to stay ahead of his contemporaries. With the unique premise of a murderer’s image being caught on the victim’s retina at the time of death, Argento crafted his screenplay for 4 mosche di velluto grigio (Four Flies on Grey Velvet). Unsure of what direction to take next, Argento was offered the chance to produce a four-part thriller series for television after his father had negotiated long and hard with the network, RAI Uno. Prepping whilst still working on Four Flies on Grey Velvet, Argento created La porta sul buio (Door into Darkness), which would see each of the four episodes helmed by a different director.

Retreating to his parents’ country house near Rome to develop his next story, Argento returned with the premise for Deep Red (Profondo rosso), his next giallo effort that he hoped would revitalise his flagging career. Collaborating with Bernadino Zapponi, who had enjoyed success with renowned filmmaker Federico Fellini on such classics as Roma, Argento wrote a complex and detailed screenplay that would perfect the elements he had used in his first three thrillers. Deep Red would mark his first collaboration with Daria Nicolodi, an actress and writer whom he would begin a complex relationship with, resulting in the birth of a daughter, Asia, on 20th September 1975, just six months after the release of the movie. Despite Deep Red proving to be his greatest success so far, Argento knew that he had to stay fresh and constantly reinvent himself and so decided to try his hand at the supernatural. As a sick young boy, he would spend his hours in bed reading various books on the occult and had developed an interest in witches, eventually becoming convinced that his headmistress was one who wanted to eat him. Nicolodi would tell him about her grandmother, Yvonne, who had discovered whilst studying at an academy that her teachers practised black magic. Intrigued by the concept, the two of them would write the screenplay for what would become Suspiria, a nightmarish and bizarre supernatural thriller that would become Argento’s greatest success to date. Soon after completion, Argento heard that a sequel was in development for the 1968 zombie classic and that its director, George A. Romero, was looking for funding. Inviting him over to Rome to discuss the project, the two eventually agreed that in return for Argento co-financing the feature he would own the European distribution rights. Recutting the film, adding a new score by Goblin and retitling it Zombi, Romero’s Dawn of the Dead became a major success all around the world and gave Argento even more recognition within the industry.

Twentieth Century Fox, who had distributed Suspiria in the US, were looking for a similar project and so the director suggested making a follow up, to be set in New York. Nicolodi once again provided the story, with Argento developing it into a screenplay, partially inspired by an unpleasant visit to New York. The studio would budget the project at $3m, but their constant interfering during pre-production proved a nightmare for Argento, particularly with regards to casting. The project took an astonishing eighteen months from start to finish, with principal photography commencing on May 21st 1979 for a fourteen shoot that would take the production from Rome to New York. Despite the success of Suspiria, Inferno was not released by Twentieth Century Fox outside of Italy for five years, eventually sending it straight-to-video. Following the disappointment, Argento once again employed the tactic that he had done after the failure of Le cinque giornate (The Five Days of Milan) and returned to the style of his early work. His first giallo since Deep Red, Tenebrae was to once again centre on a foreign artist who becomes mixed up in a confusing murder plot who wears black gloves while carrying out his grizzly deeds. Released during the height of the slasher craze in America (which his earlier had films had played some part in inspiring), Tenebrae was full of sexuality and graphic violence, even more so than his previous work.

Immediately after the release of Tenebrae, Argento began work on his next script, which would predominantly feature insects, something he had toyed with in Four Flies on Grey Velvet, Suspiria and Inferno. Having been fascinated by them since he was a child, it was perhaps inevitable that they would play a major part in his work, and upon reading how they are often used by the police during murder investigations, the pieces for Phenomena slowly started to fall into place. The appeal of Dario Argento could possibly be summed up by one simple image. A shot from his 1987 effort, Opera, featured a young girl (Cristina Marsillach) with nails attached to her eye lids, forcing her to watch horrific images without the option of looking away or closing her eyes. This can be said of much of Argento’s work, as the ‘car crash syndrome’ that many of them exhibit – where their disturbing scenes are so repulsive that one wants to look away but is unable to for fear of missing something interesting – is what makes his films demand a second viewing. His relationship with Nicolodi was doomed and their frustrations had been represented on screen, with each of her characters receiving a more gruesome death than the last, and Opera would see the actress looking through a keyhole, only to be shot through the eye.

Argento had expressed interest in adapting a story by cult author Edgar Allen Poe and had suggested an anthology, with him directing The Black Cat and three other stories to be made by Romero, John Carpenter and Stephen King, respectively, to be released as Due occhi diabolici (Two Evil Eyes). Unfortunately, Carpenter was busy working on his science fiction satire They Live and King was also preoccupied, so Argento managed to raise a $9m budget for himself and Romero to shoot in Pittsburgh (Argento’s first full feature to be made in America). Trauma was Argento’s US counterpart to his giallo repertoire and, he hoped, would allow him his American breakthrough. With money raised from three separate production companies, Trauma was made on a budget of $7m in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, from 3rd August to 26th September 1992, when Asia was only sixteen. Trauma would mark her first nude scene, where she would appear topless, and would co-star Piper Laurie (Carrie), Frederic Forrest (Falling Down) and Christopher Rydell (Mask).

Sadly, Trauma would prove to be another flop for Argento and he returned to Italy where he would remain for the rest of his career. His next two features would both star Asian and mark a major decline in the commercial appeal of his work. The first, La sindrome di Stendhal (The Stendhal Syndrome), was notable as the first Italian film to use CGI, whilst his follow up, Il fantasma dell’opera (The Phantom of the Opera), was a sexually explicit and stylish adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s 1911 novel that failed to live up to its premise and only served to reinforce how the days of Deep Red and Suspiria were long behind him. Once again returning to the giallo formula, filming on Mon ho sonno (Sleepless) commenced from May 15 to July 2 2000 and would see the master of terror working alongside renowned actor Max Von Sydow of The Exorcist fame. His first film to not star daughter Asia since Two Evil Eyes, Sleepless saw a disturbed killer mutilating young girls, as is common with an Argento feature. Proving to be his most well received movie since Opera, the filmmaker finally found his stride again, although his next two projects, Il cartaio (The Card Player) and Ti piace Hitchcock? (Do You Like Hitchcock?), would be less acclaimed.

For the last twenty-seven years, Argento had been under pressure to complete his ‘Three Mothers‘ trilogy, after the success of Suspiria and the underrated Inferno. Despite attempting to write a follow up in the mid-’80’s, Argento had been unable to create a worthy continuation, but in 2003 he announced that he was preparing for La terza madre (Mother of Tears), the third and final chapter of his series. Marking a return for Asia, the script would be full of religious imagery and disturbing sequences, but its delayed release caused a media backlash, with critics speculating that the reason was due to the movie being a disaster. When it was first screened, the audience laughed throughout the film, resulting in Mother of Tears being quietly released to video. One again returning to his most trusted of genres, Giallo enjoyed its debut at the Edinburgh Film Festival in June 2009 to a mixed response. The film was a love letter to the likes of Deep Red and Tenebrae and would tell of a burnt-out detective hunting a serial killer who targets beautiful young women. Boasting an impressive turn by Adrian Brody and a haunting score by Marco Werba, Giallo was a stylish thriller that featured the usual Argento and some truly gruesome sequences. Despite both Mother of Tears and Giallo showing that he still has a few tricks up his sleeve, fans and critics continue to speculate as to whether his glory days are long behind him. But having spent the last forty years dividing his audiences with his incoherent plots and beautifully orchestrated violence, Argento is no stranger to criticism.

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Buechler was first introduced to cinema at the age of three when he fell in love with King Kong. He began experimenting with special effects by sculpting clay and playing with latex, whilst reading various magazines about monsters and fantasy. It was here that he first discovered Rick Baker, who had begun as an assistant to makeup legend Dick Smith on The Exorcist before finding acclaim with his own work on the likes of It’s Alive and John Guillermin’s 1976 remake of King Kong. After corresponding with Baker, Buechler was invited for a short apprentice, where he learnt the basics of special effects within the film industry. His first work as a makeup artist was on Jason of Star Command in 1978, a Saturday morning show for CBS that ran for twenty-eight episodes. He then worked alongside rising artist Stan Winston on The Island and provided the makeup for a low budget movie called Mausoleum.

Soon afterwards, Buechler was invited by legendary producer Roger Corman to join his FX team at New World, creating the special effects for such cult favourites as Android, Sorceress, Forbidden World and Deathstalker, the latter of which he would also perform second unit directing chores on. After finally running New World’s makeup department, Buechler left the company and soon afterwards joined Empire, a low budget production and distribution company based in Rome and run by producer Charles Band. It would be here that he would first develop his filmmaking skills and receive major acclaim for his work as a makeup artist. Aside from directing a segment of The Dungeonmaster in 1984, much of Buechler’s early work with the studio would involve creating the impressive makeup for a variety of cult classics, ranging from Re-animator and Ghoulies to From Beyond and Prison.

It was around this time that he started his own FX company, Mechanical and Makeup Imageries (later renamed Magical Media Industries Inc.), which would handle all of the effects for Empire. Having previously attempted to convince Corman to produce a script he had written entitled Troll, he decided to pitch his idea to Band. Whilst he was intrigued by the idea, Band felt that the story was too elaborate for the kind of budget that would be available, and so Buechler was forced to scale down his vision and instead set the action in an apartment block, with just brief glimpses of the magical world of the evil wizard Turok. The enclosed environment allowed Buechler to show an array of weird and wonderful creatures and demonstrate his company’s impressive talents. Incidentally, a few years later two Italian movies were produced that were released under the titles Troll 2 and Troll 3, neither being official sequels or relating in any way to Buechler’s movie.

Troll would make enough of an impression on Frank Mancuso Jr. at Paramount that he would offer him the director chores on the latest sequel of the long-running Friday the 13th franchise. Initially intended to have been Freddy vs. Jason (a crossover with A Nightmare on Elm Street, that was eventually released in 2003), Paramount and Elm Street’s owners New Line Cinema were unable to come to an agreement and so the story was instead adapted into a Jason vs. Carrie-like tale, in which a teenage girl with telekinetic powers accidentally resurrects Jason Voorhees from the bottom of Camp Crystal Lake and is forced to use her gift to defeat him. Knowing Buechler’s background as an effects artist, Mancuso Jr. was confident that the inexperienced director would be more than capable of handling elaborate set pieces and action sequences.

One decision that Buechler would make with the movie that would have a profound impact on the subsequent sequels was with the casting of Jason. Although C.J. Graham had been a popular choice after his work on Part VI, Buechler insisted on stuntman Kane Hodder, whom he had previously worked with on Renny Harlin’s Prison. Mancuso Jr. was unconvinced, claiming that he lacked the physical requirements for the role, and so Hodder performed a test screening in full makeup (which would include segments of flesh missing to reveal the spine beneath) and gained Mancuso Jr.’s immediate approval. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood was released in 1988, and whilst it may have failed to impress the critics, the fans were more than happy with their new take on Jason, although the film would prove to be the least successful at that time (a trend that would continue until Freddy vs. Jason fifteen years later).

Over the next few years, Buechler and his company would provide the special effects for a whole host of successful movies, including A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and Bride of Re-Animator, before returning to the director’s chair once again in 1991 with Ghoulies Go to College. Having been the one who had created the creatures for the original movie back in 1985, and its sequel two years later, Buechler would take the series in a more comedic direction, even allowing his antagonists to spout out one-liners (as had happened with the Gremlins sequel the previous year). The movie originally scheduled to have been released theatrically but Vestron Pictures, the company responsible for its distribution, suffered a great loss and were unable to back the film.

In 199, Buechler would collaborate for the first time in a decade with Corman, working on the fantasy Carnosaur. This would lead to several more projects together, including Piranha (a TV remake of the Joe Dante classic, also produced by Corman), Inhumanoid and Watchers Reborn, another directorial effort from Buechler. He would also continue to work alongside Band, whose defunct Empire had been replaced by his straight-to-video company Full Moon. Marking their first pairing since 1992′s Demonic Toys, Pulse Pounders would soon be followed by Dr. Moreau’s House of Pain, Evil Bong and The Gingerdead Man, which would produce the humorously titled sequel Gingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust. After completing work on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 2006, Buechler would finally get to produce his goriest work since The New Blood (which had sadly been neutered by the MPAA prior to release).

Adam Green was a thirty-year old horror fan who had written a script that was intended as an homage to the old school slasher films of the 1980’s that he had grown up on. Hatchet would boast a selection of recognisable faces from within the horror genre, including Robert ‘Freddy Krueger’ Englund, Tony ‘Candyman’ Todd and Hodder, once again teaming up with the man who made him a horror icon as Jason, Buechler. The special effects on display in Hatchet were extremely gruesome, specifically one scene in which a woman is brutally hacked in half by the antagonist, Victor Crowley (Hodder). The movie would unsurprisingly encounter issues with the MPAA, who wanted much of the violence removed, but the film eventually found its audience on DVD, curiously of an unrated cut. There has since been talk of a possible sequel, although neither Green nor Buechler have revealed if they intend to return.

In 2007, Buechler announced his plans to remake Troll as a big budget fantasy adventure. The project was conceived with the help of producer Steve Waterman (Casper, Stuart Little) and was to star Hathaway as Turok, whilst a casting call was put out for young actors to audition for the role of Harry Potter Jr. (Buechler refused to change the name of his hero, despite the success of the Harry Potter franchise). Whilst all had been quiet on the project for some time, Buechler has recently announced that he plans to start shooting in February, with cameos from Anne Lockhart and Phil Fondacaro, both of whom appeared in the original. Finally, after over twenty years, Buechler will get the chance to bring his original vision to the screen. He had previously stated that he also intends to adapt a new version of Frankenstein, although the fate of this project is unclear.

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Born in Roanne, Loire, on September 3 1953, Jeunet first developed a serious taste for filmmaking at the age of seventeen, when a friend of the family introduced him to a Super-8 camera. Eventually managing to raise enough money to purchase one of his own, he began to experiment with cinema whilst studying animation at Cinémation Studios. Around this time, he made the acquaintance of designer Marc Caro and the two made their first short animation together, L’évasion, in 1978. Their next effort, Le manège, would follow two years later, scoring a César Awards for ‘Best Short Film’ and scoring the animators minor acclaim. For their next project, they decided to shoot a live action short and began practicing the various aspects of real filmmaking for what would become Le bunker de la dernière, a twenty-six minute black and white piece that was produced by Zootrope, a company named after William George Horner’s nineteenth-cenury toy which would create the illusion of movement, thus being one of the first animation devices.

Both Jeunet and Caro had developed a mutual partnership, with the former handling the direction, whilst the latter would work on the design and look of the film. Although co-written by Caro, Jeunet’s next film, Pas de repos pour Billy Brakko, would be a solo effort as director. In 1989, he shot Foutaises, co-written by Pas de repos pour Billy Brakko’s cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel (who would later lens Amélie, A Very Long Engagement and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince). This would prove to be a significant film as not only would it demonstrate the director’s love of lists (the film’s English title is Things I Like, Things I Don’t Like) but would also mark the first collaboration with Dominique Pinon.

Soon, Jeunet and Caro began discussing the possibility of making a feature film. Their initial idea had been La cité des enfants perdus, but the concept had proved too expensive and so the filmmakers were forced to develop something more cost-effective. Jeunet had once lived above a butcher’s shop and would often be woken by the sound of carving, prompting his fiancée to begin suggesting that the butcher could be chopping his way through their fellow residents. This struck a note with Jeunet and he began to play around with various ideas before suggesting them to Caro, who immediately became enthusiastic over the story and came up with a title – Delicatessen – a name he had been hoping to use for some time. Unlike their previous script, this would be set in one building and could therefore be produced on a relatively low budget. All they would need is an investor and a crew of talented individuals.

Claudie Ossard had previously provided assistance for Jeunet on Foutaises and had produced Pinon’s first feature, Diva, and would prove to be one of Jeunet and Caro’s greatest assets. Having spent over a year attempting to sell the script to a variety of studios, she would eventually find success with Union Générale Cinématographique (UGC), who would decide to take a chance on their bizarre screenplay. Set in a post-apocalyptic future, the tenants of an apartment block try to survive the dangerous butcher who works below with the help of an army of vegetarian freedom fighters. Demonstrating Jeunet and Caro’s background in cartoons by presenting a world full of unusual and exaggerated characters. Pinon would take the lead role of Louison, a circus clown who has recently taken residence in the building. For the part, he would be forced to learn how to perform tricks with bubbles, including filling them with smoke and placing one inside another.

Released in France on April 17 1991, Delicatessen would later be picked up for distribution by Miramax Films in the United States, resulting in the movie becoming an unexpected success. This newfound fame allowed the directors to move onto their long-cherished project, La cité des enfants perdus. Once again set in a dystopian future, the story tells of crazed scientist Krank who attempts to capture children’s dreams in order to keep him young. Once again, Jeunet and Caro would surround themselves with both cast and crew that they had built up a repertoire with on their first feature. These would include actors Pinon, Rufus, Ticky Holgado and Jean-Claude Dreyfus, as well as Ossard, cinematographer Darius Khondji and editor Hervé Schneid. With a more substantial budget, however, they were able to hire more experienced talent, resulting in the cast being headed by American actor Ron Perlman, who had previously starred in The Name of the Rose, Cronos and the hit show Beauty and the Beast, and Daniel Emilfork, whose forty-year career had included roles in Notre Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) and What’s New Pussycat. The score, meanwhile, would be composed by David Lynch regular Angelo Badalamenti.

Although Jeunet would be unimpressed with the film, La cité des enfants perdus became another success and soon Hollywood came calling. Although he was attempting to a more personal story (that would eventually become Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain), and was also reluctant to be embraced by the American studio system, he eventually agreed to shoot the fourth entry in Twentieth-Century Fox’s long-running Alien franchise. Working from a script by Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and once again starring Sigourney Weaver, the movie was intended to rescue the series after the commercial failure of Alien 3. Whilst the cast would consist of such Hollywood stars as Winona Ryder, Brad Dourif (who had previously starred in the Alien spoof Critters 4) and Dan Hedaya, Jeunet was able to bring in the familiar talents of Pinon and Perlman, although this would mark his first feature film as sole director, with Caro only on hand as a ‘design supervisor.’

Whilst Jeunet’s previous work had been critically acclaimed and the Alien franchise had been a huge success, Alien Resurrection would be considered by most as a complete failure. The ending, in particular, seemed to anger and disappoint the most, with Variety stating that the ‘downside is a laughable Newborn that all but blows the pic’s finale.’ The reaction to the movie prompted Jeunet to return to France and lick his wounds by continuing with his Amélie script. The film would eventually be released in 2001 and would become the most successful film of his career; a beautiful and surreal fairytale, depicting a young woman’s quest to improve the lives of those around her in an effort to ignore her own isolation. The titular role would go to Audrey Tautou, whose Audrey Hepburn-like innocence would win over cinemagoers and help critics forget about the disaster that was Alien Resurrection. Roger Ebert, who had always been a little cynical about Jeunet’s work, described Amélie as ‘a delicious pastry of a movie…It takes so much confidence to dance on the tightrope of whimsy. Amelie takes those chances, and gets away with them.’

It would be a further three years before Jeunet’s next movie would be released, which would see him once again re-teaming with Tautou. Based on Sébastien Japrisot’s novel of the same name, Un long dimanche de fiançailles (A Very Long Engagement) was a dark love story set against the backdrop of the First World War or, more specifically, the years afterwards. Refusing to believe that her fiancée was killed at the Somme, Mathilde sets out on a quest to discover the truth, despite constant claims that he was executed for treason after purposely mutilating his hand to avoid battle. With a guest appearance from Jodie Foster and a haunting score by Badalamenti, A Very Long Engagement marked another phenomena success for Jeunet, with the movie being nominated for ‘Best Achievement in Art Direction’ and ‘Best Achievement in Cinematography’ at the 2005 Academy Awards.

Jeunet’s latest project is Micmacs à tire-larigot (Micmacs), co-written by Guillaume Laurant, who had previously helped with the scripts for Amélie and A Very Long Engagement. Starring André Dussollier (who had appeared in his previous two films) and Jean-Pierre Marielle (who co-starred in The Da Vinci Code alongside Tautou), the black comedy tells of two friends who attempt to bring down weapons manufacturers. Having enjoyed its first screening last Tuesday at the Toronto International Film Festival, the movie is set to be released theatrically in France on October 28 2009, followed by the UK in January. Almost twenty years after first gaining acclaim alongside Caro for Delicatessen, Jeunet is still producing unique and fascinating stories and stands as one of the most interesting filmmakers working today.

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Ricci was born on February 12, 1980, in Santa Monica, California, to a lawyer and former model. The youngest of four children, Ricci was first discovered at the age of seven at a school Christmas pageant, performing in a production of The Twelve Days of Christmas. Her mother was initially reluctant to introduce her daughter to the horrors of the industry, having been a Ford model as a child and witnessed the way some children are treated. Having auditioned but failed to land a role in Mary Lambert’s adaptation of the Stephen King novel Pet Sematary, Ricci would score her first movie at the age of nine alongside Cher, Winona Ryder and Bob Hoskins in the comedy drama Mermaids. The film would become a huge success, spawning a number one song and introducing the world to its young star.

Her next role would be less significant, as the daughter of Annabella Sciorra in John Badham’s action comedy The Hard Way. Paying homage to the ‘good cop, bad cop’ thrillers of the eighties, the movie would see tough detective James Woods on the trail of a serial killer, who is then reluctantly saddled with spoilt actor Michael J. Fox in an attempt to land him the role of a lifetime. In between the action, Woods is dating Sciorra, much to the disapproval of her overprotective daughter, Bonnie (Ricci). The movie would be a minor success, but had little impact on Ricci’s career. It would be her next role that would launch her to stardom and change both her life and career forever.

The Addams Family was the directorial debut of Barry Sonnenfeld, who had previously worked as a cinematographer for the Coen Brothers on their first three features. A big budget update of the cult show, the movie would see screen legend Raúl Juliá as Gomez Addams, with Anjelica Huston as his wife Morticia. Their two children, Pugsley and Wednesday, were played by Jimmy Workman and Ricci. Whilst her co-star would fail to launch his career on the back of The Addams Family, Ricci would immediately become an overnight sensation, thanks in part to her deadpan performance. After minor acclaim with her next project, The Cemetery Club, Ricci once again returned to the role of Wednesday with its sequel Addams Family Values, a film that managed to improve upon the original.

With Ricci still only being thirteen, her mother would read the scripts that she was offered first, deciding whether or not it would be suitable for a child actress, before passing them onto her daughter. She would begin to show the first stages of maturity with Casper in 1995, which would become a huge success and help cement Ricci’s reputation as bankable talent. Further acclaim would come the same year with her turn in Lesli Linka Glatter’s Now and Then, which sees a group of adults reminiscing about their childhood together. Ricci would portray the young counterpart of Rosie O’Donnell, whilst her young co-stars would include Thora Birch (later of American Beauty fame), Gaby Hoffman and Ashleigh Aston Moore (who would sadly pass away from pneumonia and bronchitis at the age of twenty-six).

Arguably Ricci’s first major step towards more adult material was with The Ice Storm, in which she would portray the daughter of Kevin Kline and Joan Allen and sister of Tobey Maguire. Whilst its performance at the box office was less than expected it was a huge hit with critics, and soon afterwards Ricci reinvented herself as a Lolita-style vixen for Don Roos’ The Opposite of Sex, bleaching her hair blonde and seducing Ivan Sergei, the partner of her gay half brother Martin Donovan. Her performance prompted critic Roger Ebert to state that she ‘has left all memories of The Addams Family far behind.’ Over the next eighteen months, Ricci would become the queen of the indie scene, beginning with Vincent Gallo’s cult flick Buffalo ‘66.

After making her first (albeit brief) appearance alongside Johnny Depp in the surreal classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Ricci would once again continue to work with independent filmmakers, resulting in several acclaimed flicks that would help build her reputation as a unique character actor. After portraying the girlfriend of photographer Edward Furlong in John Waters’ drama Pecker, she would appear in the likes of Desert Blue, 200 Cigarettes (an ensemble piece that would also feature Ben Affleck, Courtney Love and Paul Rudd) and No Vacancy, before joining Depp again for Tim Burton’s gothic horror fantasy Sleepy Hollow. Ricci and Depp would later appear together again in The Man Who Cried and Breakfast with Hunter. During this time, she would also make her foray into producing with Prozac Nation, which would fail to impress both cinemagoers and critics.

Over the next few years, Ricci would continue to appear in a variety of low-key roles, ranging from Miranda and Anything Else to such TV shows as Malcolm in the Middle and Ally McBeal. She would star in two horror films, one that would receive great acclaim, whilst the other was heavily criticised. Having previously worked together on the hit slashers Scream and Scream 2, director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson decided to try their hand at a werewolf flick, resulting in the abysmal disaster that was Cursed. The other project was Monster, playing the lover of serial killer Aileen Wuornos, portrayed by Academy Award winner Charlize Theron. Whilst Theron received the most praise, many critics still acknowledged Ricci’s outstanding performance.

In 2006, she co-starred alongside Samuel L. Jackson and pop star Justin Timberlake in Craig Brewer’s drama Black Snake Moan, in which she would spend the majority of its running time in her underwear and chained up by Jackson. The film received a mixed response but, once again, it was noted how Ricci’s performance stood out amongst the mediocre storyline and pedestrian direction. Naturally, due to the state of her character, there were some complaints from feminists due to the portrayal of sexuality in the movie and its relation to violence. Other roles to follow soon afterwards included Penelope, Speed Racer and a voiceover for the video game The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon, as well as an acclaimed cameo in the medical drama Grey’s Anatomy.

Ricci’s next project is to be alongside Liam Neeson, Justin Long and Celia Weston in the psychological horror After.Life, both written and directed by first-time filmmaker Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo. Shot in New York last winter, the movie is scheduled to be released on October 9 2009, and sees Ricci as a young woman who has passed away and is trapped between life and death. She has also made several appearances in TNT’s Saving Grace as the temporary partner of unorthodox detective Grace Hanadarko, played by Holly Hunter. As Ebert had commented, the days of The Addams Family are long behind Ricci, having now taken on a variety of adult roles. Whilst she has still refused to completely embrace the A-list, her résumé is littered with various cult classics.

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Born Danielle Andrea Harris on June 1 1977 and was raised in Queens, New York. After appearing in several commercials, she won her first break at the age of eight as Sami Garretson in ABC’s popular daytime soap One Life to Live, followed by an episode of Spencer: For Hire. In 1988, the long dormant Halloween franchise (that had been effectively killed with the critically panned Halloween III: Season of the Witch in 1982) was finally to be resurrected, with original star Donald Pleasence once again returning as Dr. Loomis, the determined and demented adversary of series antagonist Michael Myers. With Halloween’s heroine Jamie Lee Curtis no longer willing to portray the role of Laurie Strode, having since found fame with the likes of Trading Places and A Fish Called Wanda, the producers were forced to have to create a new character for the fans.

Their replacement was to be Jamie Lloyd, Laurie’s daughter, who had been adopted by a new family after Laurie had died in a car crash (this would later be revealed as fake in Halloween H20). Michael, who had spent the last decade in a coma, suddenly awakens and, determined to sever his family’s bloodline for good, heads back to Haddonfield to kill his niece, with Loomis once again in pursuit. Harris managed to give a successful audition, although she would receive stiff competition for the role from another young hopeful, Melissa Joan Hart, who would later find fame in the title role of the hit show Sabrina the Teenage Witch (after losing out on Halloween 4, Hart would not act again until 1991 when she would star in Nickelodeon’s hit show Clarissa Explains It All). Her co-stars would be impressed by just how professional and mature the young actress was, who would celebrate her eleventh birthday on set. As a further treat, once Pleasence had completed filming his scenes, he allowed Harris to move into his luxurious trailer, who would be required to work for thirty-six of the forty-one days of shooting. Her Michael Myers co-star George P. Wilbur, would often remove his mask in between takes to reassure Harris that he was only acting, although she was always well aware that it was make believe.

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers would prove to be a major success, with fans eager to see their favourite slasher villain again after his absence in the third movie. Impressed by the box office figures, the producers decided to immediately rush a new sequel into production, with both Pleasence and Harris agreeing to return. Whilst Halloween 4 had ended with Michael seemingly dead and Jamie having adopted his evil, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers would see Harris’ character once again the victim, now having gained a psychic connection with her uncle. Harris would once again spend her birthday on set, although there would be some tension between Pleasence and Swiss director Dominique Othenin-Girard (who would lack the easygoing attitude of Halloween 4’s Dwight H. Little).

As with Halloween 4, Harris would leave an impression on both her co-stars and the filmmakers with her intelligence and commitment to her role. One scene in particular which proved especially challenging was the laundry chute sequence, in which Jamie attempts to climb as Michael repeatedly stabs his large knife through the side. Initially, Jamie was to have been stabbed in the leg, with KNB EFX creating a bloody stump to be attached to the actress, but the producers eventually decided that the scene was too bloody and so removed the effect. Harris would keep the prop as a souvenir of her time on set (just as she had done with the clown costume from Halloween 4). Whilst the previous film had been a hit with the fans, Halloween 5 was greeted with a mostly negative response, mainly due to the incoherent storyline and writers’ decision to ignore Jamie’s fate at the end of the fourth movie.

After Halloween 5, Harris began to branch out into other genres, even appearing alongside such stars as Bruce Willis and Steven Seagal. Many of these successful features included Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead (a vehicle for Married With Children’s Christina Applegate), City Slickers, Marked for Death and The Last Boy Scout. She would also make regular appearances in various television shows like Eerie, Indiana and Growing Pains, before landing the role of Molly Tilden in the hit sitcom Roseanne. After another success with Free Willy, Harris was approached by the producers of Halloween to once again reprise the role of Jamie, although the treatment of her character (murdered early on in the film, shortly after giving birth), coupled with the producers’ refusal to pay her salary of $5,000 (less than she had been paid in the previous films), resulted in her declining, with the role eventually going to newcomer J.C. Brandy.

In 1996, Harris would co-star alongside another action hero, Sylvester Stallone, in Rob Cohen’s Daylight (which would also include Viggo Mortensen and Dan Hedaya). Other television roles would come with Boy Meets World, E.R. and Diagnosis Murder, before making her return to the horror genre in 1998 with Urban Legend. Unlike her role in Halloween, Harris would portray Tosh Guaneri, an aggressive and death-obsessed goth, who is brutally murdered whilst the heroine is asleep in the next bed. Going against her previous nice-girl image, fans would be shocked by the mean streak of her character, but the movie would become a huge success, with Wes Craven’s Scream having renewed the cinemagoers’ interest in the slasher genre.

Harris would next enjoy a frequent role in the animated series The Wild Thornberrys, before revamping her character Debbie Thornberry for Rugrats Go Wild. With the Halloween franchise dead and gone in the wake of the abysmal performance of Halloween Resurrection in 2002, rock star-turned-filmmaker Rob Zombie had been hired by Dimension to direct a remake of John Carpenter’s original classic, which would see the return of both Michael Myers and Laurie Strode, albeit played by different actors. For the role of Annie Brackett, originally portrayed by Nancy Loomis, Zombie eventually settled on Harris, which would see her return to the series after an eighteen-year absence. Following on from his sleazy and sadistic road movie The Devil’s Rejects, fans opinions of his trailer trash take on Myers were mixed, although the news of Harris’ return was unanimously applauded.

One aspect of her performance that would both shock and please fans, however, was the news that the actress, then twenty-nine would bear her breast for the role. She would not be on her own, with co-stars Hanna Hall and Kristina Klebe showing even more. The (supposed) death of Annie would be far more brutal than in Carpenter’s movie, with Harris being repeatedly stabbed by Michael, now portrayed by Tyler Mane. Yet, despite her father discovering her close to death and covered in blood, Zombie decided to resurrect her once again for the recent sequel Halloween II. Ironically, Harris would prove to be more popular with the fans than Scout Taylor-Compton, who would take over from Curtis in the role of Laurie.

Thanks to her appearance in Halloween, Harris’ popularity is higher than ever, with roles in several horror films on the horizon, including Left for Dead and Blood Night, whilst she also makes her directorial debut alongside fellow scream queens Langenkamp and Halloween 4 co-star Ellie Cornell with Prank. Another role of interest is in Fear Clinic, the web series created by FEARnet and starring horror legends Robert ‘Freddy Krueger’ Englund and Kane ‘Jason Voorhees’ Hodder. Over twenty years after her first appearance in Halloween 4 and Harris, now thirty-two, has established herself as one of the most popular actresses in the horror genre, with the promise of more to come.

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Born Drew Blyth Barrymore on February 22 1975 in Culver City, California, she was born into a family of entertainers, with her father, John Drew Barrymore, enjoying minor success during the 1960’s, although this would often be threatened by his unpredictable behaviour and lifestyle. Her mother, Ildikó Jaid Makó, was born to Hungarian World War II refugees in a displaced persons camp in Germany and had later relocated to America, where she acted under the name Jaid Barrymore. Drew was first introduced to the industry when her parents auditioned her for a Puppy Chow commercial when she was eleven months old. Her first professional acting appearance was uncredited in the 1978 television movie Suddenly, Love, followed two years later by a role in the cult flick Altered States. In 1982, she would be cast in the role of Gertie in E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, directed by her godfather Steven Spielberg.

Her next two projects would both be based on the writings of Stephen King. The first, Firestarter, would feature Barrymore as a girl able to command fire at will, whilst the second feature, Cat’s Eye, was an anthology which would see a cat on a mission to save Barrymore. Also, she would gain critical acclaim for her role in Irreconcilable Differences, but soon afterwards both her career and life would come under threat. At the age of nine, Barrymore would begin drinking, and soon cigarettes and marijuana would follow. By the time she was twelve, she was regularly snorting cocaine, unable to deal with the pressures of sudden fame at such a young age. Her mother would finally send her to the ASAP Family Treatment Center, a private hospital that specialised in addiction.

Eventually, Barrymore would once again relapse and in 1989, tried to commit suicide by slashing her wrists, resulting in another visit to rehab. Upon release, a more sober and wiser Barrymore vows to remain clean and commences work on an autobiography, detailing her struggles with fame and addiction. In 1991, she would move into her own apartment and begin her premature adulthood, making a minor comeback the following year in the erotic drama Poison Ivy, one of many films that attempted to capitalise on the success of Fatal Attraction a few years earlier. Over the next twelve months she would work on a variety of low-key projects that would re-establish her reputation as a competent and likeable actress, such as Waxwork II: Lost in Time, Guncrazy and the horror flick Doppelganger.

In 1993, Barrymore would star in The Amy Fisher Story, a dramatised account of a true story in which a young girl would embark on an affair with a married man and eventually shoot his wife. The film would once again see the young star being praised by critics for her standout performance and help convince filmmakers to offer her more interesting roles. After a cameo in the Mike Myers comedy Wayne’s World 2, Barrymore would suffer several box office failures with Bad Girls, Boys on the Side and Mad Love, before enjoying another popular cameo, this time in Joel Schumacher’s blockbuster Batman Forever in 1995. Along with her business partner, Nancy Juvonen, Barrymore would launch her own production company, Flower Films, whilst also appearing nude in an issue of Playboy, prompting Spielberg to mail her a quilt with a note that read ‘Cover yourself up.’

The following year, her career would receive a much-needed boost when she was approached by cult horror filmmaker Wes Craven for a role in his latest project Scream. Although originally offered the lead, Barrymore felt that she would be more suitable for the opening sequence, in which she would be brutally slaughtered by the killer. Barrymore, an animal lover, gave an impressive performance due to Craven, who would constantly remind her of an upsetting news story, causing her to cry just before filming. The film was a phenomenal success and Barrymore’s face would be featured on all of the promotional material, making her premature death all the more shocking. Scream would give Barrymore credibility and would finally launch her into the Hollywood A-list status.

Her next substantial hit was in 1998 with the Adam Sandler romantic comedy The Wedding Singer, which would earn almost $22m during its opening weekend in the US. This would help reinvent Barrymore as a ‘rom-com’ star, which would soon be followed by Never Been Kissed, the first project produced by her company Flower Films. When the movie became a hit at the box office, the company was able to finance much larger projects, resulting in a big screen adaptation of Charlie’s Angels in 2000, which would co-star Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu as a trio of sexy crime fighters. Soon afterwards, Barrymore would help finance Donnie Darko, a low budget cult flick that would mark the directorial debut of Richard Kelly. Postponed after the attacks of 9/11, Donnie Darko would become a huge hit on home video and would launch the career of its lead, Jake Gyllenhaal, who would later appear in Jarhead, Brokeback Mountain and Zodiac.

Behind the scenes, Barrymore had enjoyed a brief-yet-eventful relationship with oddball comedian Tom Green, standing by him during his battle with testicular cancer (the operation would be aired on his show) and making an appearance in his gross-out star vehicle Freddie Got Fingered. The couple would narrowly escape when their Beverly Hills home caught fire, only realising after their dog had woken them. When their marriage had finally ended, Barrymore then began to date Fabrizio Moretti, drummer of the band-of-the-moment Strokes. Her career, meanwhile, continued to thrive with roles in Riding in Cars with Boys, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, another successful for Flower Films that would also mark a brief comeback for former Hollywood star Demi Moore.

For the final of Fever Pitch, her collaboration with comedian Jimmy Fallon, both stars accompanied the Red Sox for their first World Series title in over eighty years with a camera to capture the event on film. In late 2004, Barrymore was forced to reconcile with her estranged father after discover that he was suffering from bone-marrow cancer, which he would eventually succumb to on November 29 2004 at the age of seventy-two. The same year, she would reunite with The Wedding Singer co-star Adam Sandler for another romantic comedy, 50 First Dates. Her next relationship would be with Justin Long, whom she had appeared with in He’s Just Not that Into You, although the two would separate a year later.

For the last few years, Barrymore has focused on a variety of commercial projects, most notably comedies such as Music and Lyrics, Lucky You and Beverly Hills Chihuahua, as well as a recurring role in the hit animated series Family Guy. In 2009, she made her directorial debut with Whip It!, based on the novel Derby Girl by Shauna Cross and starring Ellen Page (Hard Candy, Juno), Fallon, Juliette Lewis and Barrymore. It seems that the hellraising days of the troubled child star are long behind her and have instead been replaced by a level headed and shrewd producer and actress. It has been some time since she has appeared in a horror movie (Scream), despite being a regular of the genre during her youth, yet her popularity is higher than ever.

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Born Winona Laura Horowitz in Olmsted County, Minnesota on October 29 1971 to hippies Michael and Cindy Horowitz, Winona was named after the nearby town and county of Winona. Her childhood was a somewhat unconventional one, having spent time in Colombia before returning to the United States to settle at a commune near Elk in California. With no access to television, Winona would develop a taste for literature, particularly the likes of Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Her family would have associations with an array of unusual characters, including beat writer Allen Ginsberg, Laura Huxley (wife of Brave New World author Aldous Huxley) and LSD guru Timothy Leary, who would become Winona’s godfather. Occasionally, Cindy was able to screen films for her daughter using an old projector in the barn, which would eventually fuel her taste for acting.

The family would once again relocate to Petalum, California when she was ten years old, where she would be bullied during her first week of school (due to the children believing she was a camp boy, due to her scrawny figure and her now dying her blonde hair black), resulting in her parents giving her home tuition. It was during this difficult time that she would take her first steps towards acting by attending the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, where she would land her first break at the age of thirteen when she was requested to audition for a role in Desert Bloom, which would star Jon Voight and JoBeth Williams. Although she would fail to land the part, she would eventually come to the attention of David Seltzer, the renowned author of The Omen who was in pre-production on his new feature Lucas. The film would see her co-star along side several young actors who were on the brink of stardom, including Corey Haim and Charlie Sheen.

Whilst Lucas may have been her screen debut, it would also be significant for another reason. When asked by the producers how she would want to be credited for the role, Winona decided to use a different surname, eventually settling on Ryder, after cult singer Mitch Ryder, whose albums she had seen in her parents’ record collection. Under her new moniker, Ryder would follow up her critically acclaimed turn in Lucas with another well-received performance in Square Dance, but it would be her next project that would first bring her to the attention of the mainstream. As the well meaning yet misunderstood goth teen Lydia in the macabre fairytale Beetlejuice, Ryder would co-star alongside Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis and Michael Keaton, one year removed from his star-making turn in Batman, also directed by Burton.

Her next movie would arguably be the role of her career, in which she would portray a former geek desperate to be accepted by the high school clique in Michael Lehmann’s biting satire Heathers. Far removed from the sickly sweet image of teenage life that had been represented in the works of John Hughes, Heathers would see Ryder and fellow outsider Slater offing the obnoxious students of their school by making them appear to be suicides, inadvertently turning the victims in heroes to their classmates. Smoking, swearing and shooting her way through the movie, Ryder would become the coolest young actress in Hollywood although, ironically, her agent had gone so far as to get down on her knees and plead with her not to take the role.

Following on from the lukewarm response of Jim McBride’s Jerry Lee Lewis bio Great Balls of Fire!, Ryder once again re-team with Burton for the bizarre fantasy Edward Scissorhands. Whilst the eponymous role of Edward had originally been linked to the likes of Tom Cruise, Burton would eventually manage to convince the studio to cast Johnny Depp, a young heartthrob previously known for his lead role in the cult show 21 Jump Street and his graphic demise in Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. Edward Scissorhands would mark the first role that Ryder would display her natural blonde hair, having dyed it since childhood. Her performance would result in a Best Actress nomination for a Saturn Award and critical acclaim, although this would sadly mark the end of her collaboration with Burton. Her off-screen romance with Depp would result in him having a tattoo that proudly stated ‘Winona Forever,’ but after their break-up he would have it modified to read ‘Wino Forever.’

1990 would mark both a successful and difficult year for Ryder, following her appearance in Edward Scissorhands with a role in Mermaids, alongside singing legend Cher and child actress Christina Ricci. To coincide with the release of the movie, she would also appear in the music video The Shoop Shoop Song with her two co-stars. Due to exhaustion, Ryder eventually had to withdraw from Francis Ford Coppola’s long-awaited sequel The Godfather Part III, in which she was set to appear in the role of Mary Corleone, the daughter of Al Pacino’s character Michael Corleone. Unable to commit to the project, Ryder was replaced by the director’s daughter, Sofia Coppola, whose performance would receive negative reviews. Following on from Jim Jarmusch’s independent flick Night on Earth, Ryder would fulfil her obligation to Coppola by starring in his belated adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, in which she would play the love interest of the count, brilliantly portrayed by English actor Gary Oldman.

Ryder would continue to enjoy success throughout the mid 1990’s, ranging from the cult comedy drama Reality Bites (which would mark the directorial debut of Ben Stiller) to her Academy Award nominations with The Age of Innocence and Little Women. Other notable appearance included The House of the Spirits, How to Make an American Quilt, The Crucible and a cameo in the hit show The Simpsons. In 1997, she would co-star alongside Sigourney Weaver in the science fiction horror Alien Resurrection, the fourth entry of the long-running franchise that had once been a critical favourite but had since been reduced to an embarrassment. Directed by French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet (previously know for his collaborations with co-director Marc Caro) and featuring Ron Perlman, Michael Wincott, Dan Hedaya and genre icon Brad Dourif, the movie would see Ryder taking the role of Call, the latest addition to a crew of mercenaries who is eventually revealed to be an android.

After starring in and producing an adaptation of Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted, Ryder’s career would soon encounter difficulty with a string of unsuccessful movies including Autumn in New York and Lost Souls. Having received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in October 2000, her life would be fraught with scandal after being arrested on December 12 2001 for shoplifting $5,500 worth of merchandise from Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills. Having been shamed and found guilty, the future of Ryder’s became uncertain, further fuelled by the critical and commercial failure of S1m0ne, in which she would co-star with Al Pacino. Aside from a cameo in Asia Argento’s The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, Ryder would fail to attract a positive response from critics.

Her first substantial role in many years would come in 2006 with A Scanner Darkly, in which she would co-star alongside Keanu Reeves and Robert Downey Jr., two actors she had previously worked with on Bram Stoker’s Dracula and 1969, respectively. Filmed in rotoscope (animation drawn over live action) and directed by acclaimed filmmaker Richard Linklater (Slacker, Before Sunrise), the movie was based on a story by cult author Philip K. Dick and would mark a successful return to form. In 2007, she reunited with her Heathers writer Daniel Waters for the black comedy Sex and Death 101, leading to speculation as to whether or not a sequel was in the works for the high school flick. More recently, she made a cameo as Spock’s mother in J.J Abrams’ blockbuster Star Trek. Fans still hope, however, that Ryder will once again collaborate with Tim Burton or make a second Heathers movie.

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