Michael Winner…And to this day, Death Wish 2 still bears the proud scars of battle with the BBFC

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See article from en.wikipedia.org

British film maker Michael Winner has died from liver disease at the age of 77. His wonderful career started in Britain with a varied assortment of generally light hearted films, often starring Oliver Reed. He moved across to the US where his films took a harder edge, most notably with the Death Wish series with Charles Bronson. These got him into all sorts of censorship tussles with the UK censor, James Ferman. The ongoing tussle was noted in a lecture by Ferman when he recalled the particularly heavy cutting inflicted on Death Wish 2. Referring to 3:42s of cuts to two gang rapes, Ferman quipped: I cut three minutes 42 seconds of that stuff, a record I think. Winner was furious. Thereafter Winner was something of a champion against censorship. He regularly took part in TV discussions, arguing the case against censorship. Filmography Shoot to Kill (1960) Some Like It Cool (1961) Old Mac (1961) Out of the Shadow (1961) Play it Cool (1962) The Cool Mikado (1962) West 11 (1963) The System (1964) You Must Be Joking! (1965) The Jokers (1967) I’ll Never Forget What’s'isname (1967) Hannibal Brooks (1969) The Games (1970) Lawman (1971) The Nightcomers (1972) Chato’s Land (1972) The Mechanic (1972) Scorpio (1973) The Stone Killer (1973) Death Wish (1974) Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976) The Sentinel (1977) The Big Sleep (1978) Firepower (1979) Death Wish II (1982) The Wicked Lady (1983) Scream for Help (1984) Death Wish 3 (1985) A Chorus of Disapproval (1988) Appointment With Death (1988) Bullseye! (1990) Dirty Weekend (1993) Parting Shots (1999) Burke & Hare (2010)

Herbert Lom…A long and memorable film career comes to a close

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Herbert Lom, the actor, who has died aged 95, brought to the screen a remarkable gallery of monarchs and gangsters, witchfinders, psychiatrists and spies, dictators and assassins, cops and robbers. A ladykiller and several times Napoleon, he will, above all, be remembered as the French police chief driven gradually mad by the antics of Peter Sellers’s Inspector Jacques Clouseau in the long-running Pink Panther series of films. Herbert Lom’s long filmography includes many appearances in notable films in Melon Farming genres: Hammer’s Phantom of the Opera (1962) Jess Franco’s 99 Women , a  Women in Prison film (1969) Mark of the Devil , a massively controversial witchfinder film which is still cut in the UK Jess Franco’s Count Dracula . Lom played Van Helsing (1970) Massimo Dallamano’s Dorian Gray (1970) Murders in the Rue Morgue (1971)

Stanley Long’s Last Adventure…Director of some of the best known British sex comedies dies aged 78

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Prolific British exploitation filmmaker Stanley Long has died, aged 78. Long died of natural causes on Monday in Buckinghamshire. Dubbed the King of Sexploitation , Long produced and/or directed a series of successful X certificate movies between 1958 and 1983. His director’s credits featured: Naughty! Bread Sex and the Other Woman Sex Through the Ages Adventures of a Taxi Driver Adventures of a Private Eye It Could Happen to You Adventures of a Plumber’s Mate Long was also hired by other filmmakers to work on their features, such as Roman Polanksi who approached Long to complete camera-work on his movie Repulsion . Recently, Long worked with his company Salon and made it one of the most popular post-production facilities in Europe, working on blockbusters such as V for Vendetta and Batman Begins .

Tony Scott…True Romance director dies aged 68

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See  article from  latimesblogs.latimes.com See article from en.wikipedia.org

True Romance director Tony Scott ended his life when he jumped off the Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro on Sunday afternoon, according to Los Angeles police sources. Investigators recovered the body and found a suicide note in his car, which was parked on the bridge. Anthony David Scott (June 21, 1944 — August 19, 2012) was an English film director. His films include: The Hunger Top Gun Beverly Hills Cop II The Last Boy Scout True Romance Crimson Tide Enemy of the State Spy Game Man on Fire De’ja’ Vu The Taking of Pelham 123 Unstoppable. He was the younger brother of fellow film director Ridley Scott. Scott’s films were generally box office successes, though he was never nominated for an Academy Award and received little critical praise. I don’t know about the lack of critical praise but the Melon Farmers consider True Romance to be one of the movie greats of the era.

David Hess…Noted for censor baiting performances in The Last House on the Left and The House on the Edge of the Park

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Based on article from en.wikipedia.org

The US music maker and actor, David Hess, has died aged 69. Interleaved in a long career in the music industry were a few film acting performances that have secured him a place in the Melon farming Hall of Memory. His first major appearance was as the ultra thug Krug in Wes Craven’s landmark 1972 film, The Last House of the Left. Hess also composed the score. Hess also played another notable thug in Ruggero Deodato’s 1980 film, The House on the Edge of the Park. He also appeared in later films by the same directors. He played a villain in Wes Craven’s 1982 Swamp Thing, and appeared in the 1987 slasher, Body Count, for Ruggero Deodato.

David Z Goodman…Noted for the controversial screenplay for Straw Dogs

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David Z Goodman, who died on September 26 aged 81, wrote the screenplay for the controversial thriller Straw Dogs (1971), one of the great banned films of the 1970s, which revealed rural Britain to be just as brutal as the mean streets of downtown America. Though based on The Siege Of Trencher’s Farm, a 1969 novel by the Scottish author Gordon Williams, the director, Sam Peckinpah, ordered Goodman to write in some controversial scenes that do not occur in the original. David Zelag Goodman was born on January 15 1930 in New York. His orthodox Jewish parents wanted him to become a rabbi, sending him to a yeshiva to be trained. But at 18 he became totally secular, took a degree in English at Queens’ College, studied Drama at Yale University, and became a playwright. His film breakthrough came in England in 1959, at the Bray studios in Berkshire, with the script for the Hammer adventure film Stranglers of Bombay. During the 1960s he wrote American television episodes of The Untouchables, Combat! and Mr Broadway. For Hollywood Goodman scripted the mystery thriller Man on a Swing (1974), starring Cliff Robertson, and Farewell, My Lovely (1975), a remake of the Raymond Chandler story starring Robert Mitchum as Philip Marlowe.