Director Paul Wendkos, who helmed several stylish made-for-television horror movies, died on Thursday from a lung infection, at the age of 84. The Reuters obituary being reprinted at various outlets (including ABC News) identifies Wendkos as the director of GIDGET (1959), starring Sandra Dee, but barely mentions his fine genre work.
Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Wendkos’ television work was notable for its stylization. At a time when the made-for-television film was in its infancy, most examples of the form utilized a point-and-shoot approach to camerawork, with little effort made to use the visual medium to full potential. Wendkos’s tele-films looked more like features, using unusual camera angles and low-key lighting to good effect. His genre credits include:
- FEAR NO EVIL (1969): a pilot that never went to series, starring Louis Jourdan as a paranormal investigator. Co-starring Lynda Day George, Carroll O’Connor and Bradford Dillman, the film scripted by Richard Alan Simmons based on a story by Guy Endore (The Werewolf of Paris).
- THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE BELL (1970), a made-for-television movie with Glenn Ford as a man called upon to perform a service for the satanic society that helped him become a success
- THE MEPHISTO WALTZ (1971), a feature film with Alan Alda, Jacqueline Bisset and Bradford Dillman, about a young pianist whose body is possessed by that of his dying mentor.
- HAUNTS OF THE VERY RICH (1972), a TV movie with Lloyd Bridges, Cloris Leachman, Ed Asner and Anne Francis as millionaires who arrive on a lonely island after escaping a close brush with death – or did they?
- THE LEGEND OF LIZZY BORDERN (1975), a televsion dramatization of the infamous murder, depicting the title character (Elizabeth Montgomery0 as the murderer (although she was in fact acquitted in real life), with Fionnula Flanagan (THE OTHERS) in a supporting role.
- GOOD AGAINST EVIL (1977), a disappointing rip-off of THE EXORCIST, penned by the once-talented Jimmy Sangster (CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN), starring Dack Rambo, Elyssa Davalos, Richard Lynch and Dan O’Herlihy – apparently intended as a pilot for a series.
- THE BAD SEED (1985), a television remake of the familiar classic, with Blair Brown, Lynn Redgrave, and David Carradine.
- FROM THE DEAD OF NIGHT (1989), andother spooky TV movie, this time with Lindsay Wagner (THE BIONIC WOMAN) and Bruce Boxleitner (BABYLON 5).
Wendkos also directed episodes of THE INVADERS and THE WILD, WILD WEST.
Wendkos was the subject of an extensive interview in the Spring 1972 issue of Cinefantastique (Volume 2, Number 1). Of working in the fantastic genre, he said:
Since my whole approach to art is to create for an audience a shared experience, and to illustrate a little bit of knowledge about themselves, in dealing with bizarre, semi-occult material, I don’t have that satisfaction of being able to deal within the normal range of human experience. I’m dealing with a trick, an entertainment, and that’s all it can be. I can’t pull an audience outside its range of experience if they’re already skeptical. It’s a very serious problem, how to make that kind of material touch everybody in a meaningful way. I could reach them in some primeval, atavistic way, but I don’t think anybody knows how to tap it. In the final analysis, that genre must be entertainment, pure and simple, some kind of titillation to life you out of your own, narrow experimental limitations.