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• 
  

• 
  Canada
  Canada ( /ˈkænədə/) is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean. Spanning over 9,900,000 km² (3,800,000 sq mi), Canada is the world's second-largest country by total area, and its common border with the United States is the longest land border in the world.
  The land that is now Canada has been inhabited for millennia by various Aboriginal peoples. Beginning in the late 15th century, British and French colonial expeditions explored, and later settled, along the region's Atlantic coast. France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763 after the Seven Years' War. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces. This began an accretion of provinces and territories and a process of increasing autonomy; the Canada Act 1982 severed the vestiges of legal dependence on Britain.
  
  wn.com/Canada
• 
  Grand Guignol
  Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol (French pronunciation: [ɡʁɑ̃ ɡiɲɔl]: "The Theater of the Big Puppet") — known as the Grand Guignol — was a theatre in the Pigalle area of Paris (at 20 bis, rue Chaptal). From its opening in 1897 until its closing in 1962 it specialized in naturalistic horror shows. Its name is often used as a general term for graphic, amoral horror entertainment, a genre popular from Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre (for instance Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus and Webster's The White Devil) to today's splatter films.
  Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol was founded in 1894 by Oscar Méténier, who planned it as a space for naturalist performance. With 293 seats, the venue was the smallest in Paris. A former chapel, the theater's previous life was evident in the boxes — which looked like confessionals — and in the angels over the orchestra.
  
  wn.com/Grand_Guignol
• 
  United Kingdom
  The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK, or Britain) is a sovereign state located off the north-western coast of continental Europe. The country includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel and the Irish Sea.
  The United Kingdom is a unitary state governed under a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary system, with its seat of government in the capital city of London. It is a country in its own right and consists of four countries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. There are three devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff, the capitals of Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Associated with the UK, but not constitutionally part of it, are three Crown Dependencies. The United Kingdom has fourteen overseas territories. These are remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in 1922, encompassed almost a quarter of the world's land surface and was the largest empire in history. British influence can still be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former territories.
  
  wn.com/United_Kingdom
• 
  United States
  The United States of America (commonly abbreviated to the United States, the U.S., the USA, America, and the States) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west, across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Pacific and Caribbean.
  At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km²) and with over 312 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest by both land area and population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The U.S. economy is the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2011 GDP of $15.1 trillion (22% of nominal global GDP and over 19% of global GDP at purchasing-power parity). Per capita income is the world's sixth-highest.
  
  wn.com/United_States
• 
  Weimar Republic
  The Weimar Republic (Weimarer Republik [ˈvaɪmaʁɐ ʁepuˈbliːk] ( listen)) is the name given by historians to the federal republic and parliamentary representative democracy established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government. It was named after Weimar, the city where the constitutional assembly took place. Its official name was German Reich (Deutsches Reich)
  Following World War I, the republic emerged from the German Revolution in November 1918. In 1919, a national assembly convened in Weimar, where a new constitution for the German Reich was written, then adopted on 11 August of that same year. The ensuing period of liberal democracy lapsed in the early 1930s, leading to the ascent of the nascent Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler in 1933. The legal measures taken by the Nazi government in February and March 1933, commonly known as Gleichschaltung ("coordination") meant that the government could legislate contrary to the constitution. The republic nominally continued to exist until 1945, as the constitution was never formally repealed. However, the measures taken by the Nazis in the early part of their rule rendered the constitution irrelevant. Thus, 1933 is usually seen as the end of the Weimar Republic and the beginning of Hitler's Third Reich.
  
  wn.com/Weimar_Republic

• 
  Alfred Hitchcock
  Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood. On 19 April 1955, he became an American citizen while remaining a British subject.
  Over a career spanning more than half a century, Hitchcock fashioned for himself a distinctive and recognisable directorial style. He pioneered the use of a camera made to move in a way that mimics a person's gaze, forcing viewers to engage in a form of voyeurism. He framed shots to maximise anxiety, fear, or empathy, and used innovative film editing. His stories frequently feature fugitives on the run from the law alongside "icy blonde" female characters. Many of Hitchcock's films have twist endings and thrilling plots featuring depictions of violence, murder, and crime, although many of the mysteries function as decoys or "MacGuffins" meant only to serve thematic elements in the film and the extremely complex psychological examinations of the characters. Hitchcock's films also borrow many themes from psychoanalysis and feature strong sexual undertones. Through his cameo appearances in his own films, interviews, film trailers, and the television program Alfred Hitchcock Presents, he became a cultural icon. Hitchocks reputation as a filmmaker is offset by claims that he engaged in obsessive and controlling behaviour towards many of his leading ladies, and that in some cases this extended to physical abuse and sexual harrassment.
  
  wn.com/Alfred_Hitchcock
• 
  Anne Rice
  Anne Rice (born Howard Allen Frances O'Brien; October 4, 1941) is a best-selling American author of metaphysical gothic fiction, Christian literature and erotica from New Orleans. Her books have sold nearly 100 million copies, making her one of the most widely read authors in modern history. She was married to poet and painter Stan Rice for 41 years until his death from brain cancer in 2002.
  Rice was born the second of four daughters of Irish Catholic parents, Howard O'Brien and Katherine "Kay" Allen O'Brien, in New Orleans. Rice's father worked for the U.S. Postal Service and authored the book, The Impulsive Imp, which was published posthumously. Rice's older sister, the late Alice Borchardt, was a noted genre author. Her husband, Stan Rice was a highly regarded poet, and their son, Christopher Rice is a bestselling author.
  Rice's early years were marked by coping with her mother's advancing alcoholism and poverty. She lived in the Irish Channel of New Orleans, which she describes as an Irish Catholic ghetto, in the rented home of her maternal grandmother, Alice Allen, known as "Mamma Allen," at 2301 St. Charles Avenue. Mamma Allen, a hard working Irish Catholic woman who worked as a domestic after she separated from her alcoholic husband, was an important early influence in Rice's life, keeping the family and household together while Rice's mother sank deeper into alcoholism. She died in 1949, but the O'Briens remained in her home until 1956, when they moved to 2524 St. Charles Avenue, a former rectory, convent, and school owned by the parish, to be closer to the church and support for her mother's advanced alcoholism.
  
  wn.com/Anne_Rice
• 
  Ava Gardner
  Ava Lavinia Gardner (December 24, 1922 – January 25, 1990) was an American actress.
  She was signed to a contract by MGM Studios in 1941 and appeared mainly in small roles until she drew attention with her performance in The Killers (1946). She became one of Hollywood's leading actresses, considered one of the most beautiful women of her day. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her work in Mogambo (1953).
  She appeared in several high-profile films from the 1950s to 1970s, including The Hucksters (1947), Show Boat (1951), The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), The Barefoot Contessa (1954), Bhowani Junction (1956), On the Beach (1959), Seven Days in May (1964), The Night of the Iguana (1964), The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972), Earthquake (1974), and The Cassandra Crossing (1976). Gardner continued to act regularly until 1986, four years before her death from pneumonia, at age 67, in 1990.
  She is listed 25th among the American Film Institute's Greatest female stars.
  
  wn.com/Ava_Gardner
• 
  Bela Lugosi
  Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó (20 October 1882 – 16 August 1956), commonly known as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian actor of stage and screen. He was best known for having played Count Dracula in the Broadway play and subsequent film version, as well as having starred in several of Ed Wood's low budget films in the last years of his career.
  Lugosi, the youngest of four children, was born as Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó in Lugos (at the time part of Austria–Hungary, now Lugoj in Romania), to Paula de Vojnich and István Blaskó, a banker. He later based his last name on his hometown. He and his sister Vilma were raised in a Roman Catholic family. At the age of 12, Lugosi dropped out of school. He began his acting career probably in 1901 or 1902. His earliest known performances are from provincial theaters in the 1903–1904 season, playing small roles in several plays and operettas. He went on to Shakespeare plays and other major roles. Moving to Budapest in 1911, he played dozens of roles with the National Theater of Hungary in the period 1913–1919. Although Lugosi would later claim that he "became the leading actor of Hungary's Royal National Theater", almost all his roles there were small or supporting parts.
  
  wn.com/Bela_Lugosi
• Bob Clark
  Benjamin "Bob" Clark (August 5, 1939 – April 4, 2007) was an American actor, director, screenwriter and producer best known for directing and writing the script with Jean Shepherd to the 1983 Christmas film A Christmas Story. Although he worked primarily in the United States, from 1973 to 1983 he worked in Canada and was responsible for some of most successful films in Canadian history such as Black Christmas (1974), Murder by Decree (1979), Tribute (1980), and Porky's (1982).
  Clark was born in New Orleans, but grew up in Birmingham, Alabama and later moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He grew up poor, as his father died during his childhood and his mother was a barmaid. After attending Catawba College majoring in philosophy, Clark won a football scholarship to Hillsdale College in Michigan, where he played quarterback. Eventually he studied theater at the University of Miami, turning down offers to play professional football. He did briefly play semi-pro for the Fort Lauderdale Black Knights.
  
  wn.com/Bob_Clark
• 
  Boris Karloff
  William Henry Pratt (23 November 1887 – 2 February 1969), better known by his stage name Boris Karloff, was an English actor.
  Karloff is best remembered for his roles in horror films and his portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), and Son of Frankenstein (1939). His popularity following Frankenstein was such that for a brief time he was billed simply as "Karloff" or "Karloff the Uncanny." His best-known non-horror role is as the Grinch, as well as the narrator, in the animated television special of Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966).
  Karloff was born at 36 Forest Hill Road, Honor Oak, London, England, where a blue plaque can now be seen. His parents were Edward John Pratt, Jr. and Eliza Sarah Millard. His paternal grandparents were Edward John Pratt, an Anglo-Indian,^{[citation needed]} and Eliza Julia (Edwards) Pratt, a sister of Anna Leonowens (whose tales about life in the royal court of Siam [now Thailand] were the basis of the musical The King and I). The two sisters were also of Anglo-Indian heritage.
  
  wn.com/Boris_Karloff
• 
  Bram Stoker
  Abraham "Bram" Stoker (8 November 1847 – 20 April 1912) was an Irish novelist and short story writer, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula. During his lifetime, he was better known as personal assistant of actor Henry Irving and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London, which Irving owned.
  Stoker was born on 8 November 1847 at 15 Marino Crescent, Clontarf, on the northside of Dublin, Ireland. His parents were Abraham Stoker (1799–1876), from Dublin, and Charlotte Mathilda Blake Thornley (1818–1901), who came from Ballyshannon, County Donegal. Stoker was the third of seven children. Abraham and Charlotte were members of the Church of Ireland Parish of Clontarf and attended the parish church with their children, who were baptised there.
  Stoker was bed-ridden until he started school at the age of seven, when he made a complete recovery. Of this time, Stoker wrote, "I was naturally thoughtful, and the leisure of long illness gave opportunity for many thoughts which were fruitful according to their kind in later years." He was educated in a private school run by the Rev. William Woods.
  
  wn.com/Bram_Stoker
• 
  Brian De Palma
  Brian Russell De Palma (born September 11, 1940) is an American film director and writer. In a career spanning over 40 years, he is probably best known for his suspense and crime thriller films, including such box office successes as the horror film Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Scarface, The Untouchables, and Mission: Impossible.
  Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, De Palma worked repeatedly with actors Jennifer Salt, Amy Irving, Nancy Allen (his wife from 1979 to 1983), Gary Sinise, John Lithgow, William Finley, Charles Durning, Gerrit Graham, cinematographers Stephen H. Burum and Vilmos Zsigmond (see List of noted film director and cinematographer collaborations), set designer Jack Fisk, and composers Bernard Herrmann, John Williams and Pino Donaggio. De Palma is credited^{[by whom?]} with fostering the careers of or outright discovering Robert De Niro, Jill Clayburgh, John C. Reilly, John Leguizamo, Andy Garcia and Margot Kidder.
  De Palma, whose background is Italian Roman Catholic, was born in Newark, New Jersey, the son of Vivienne (née Muti) and Anthony Federico De Palma, an orthopedic surgeon. He was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire in various Protestant and Quaker schools, eventually graduating from Friends' Central School. He won a regional science-fair prize for a project titled "An Analog Computer to Solve Differential Equations".
  
  wn.com/Brian_De_Palma
• 
  Burgess Meredith
  Oliver Burgess Meredith (November 16, 1907 – September 9, 1997), known professionally as Burgess Meredith, was an American actor in theatre, film, and television, who also worked as a director. Active for more than six decades, Meredith has been called "a virtuosic actor" who was "one of the most accomplished actors of the century." Meredith won several Emmys, was the first man to win two times the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor, and was nominated for Academy Awards.
  Meredith was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Ida Beth (née Burgess) and Canadian-born William George Meredith, M.D.
  He graduated from Hoosac School in 1926 and then attended Amherst College as a member of the Class of 1931. Meredith served in the United States Army Air Forces in World War II, reaching the rank of captain. He was discharged in 1944 to work on the movie The Story of G.I. Joe, in which he starred as the popular war correspondent Ernie Pyle.
  In 1933, he became a member of Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre company in New York City. Although best known to the larger world audience for his film and television work, Meredith was an influential actor and director for the stage. He made his Broadway debut as Peter in Le Gallienne's production of Romeo and Juliet (1930) and became a star in Maxwell Anderson's Winterset (1935), which became his film debut the following year. His early life and theatre work were the subject of a New Yorker profile.
  
  wn.com/Burgess_Meredith
• 
  Chris Hemsworth
  Chris Hemsworth (born 11 August 1983) is an Australian actor best known for portraying Thor in the Marvel Studios films Thor (2011) and The Avengers (2012), and Curt Vaughan in The Cabin in the Woods (2012). Hemsworth is set to continue his role as Thor in the upcoming film Thor 2 in 2013. He also starred as Kim Hyde in the Australian soap opera Home and Away. He is the older brother of Liam Hemsworth and the younger brother of Luke Hemsworth, both actors.
  Hemsworth was born in Melbourne, the son of Leonie, an English teacher, and Craig Hemsworth, a social-services counselor. He was raised both there and in the Northern Territory, in a little Aboriginal community in the Outback, called Bulman. He has stated, "My earliest memories were on the cattle stations up in the Outback, and then we moved back to Melbourne and then back out there and then back again. Certainly most of my childhood was in Melbourne but probably my most vivid memories were up there in Bulman with crocodiles and buffalo. Very different walks of life." He attended primary school at Southwood Primary school and high school at Heathmont College, before his family again returned to the Northern Territory, and then moved a few years later, to Phillip Island.
  
  wn.com/Chris_Hemsworth
• 
  Christopher Lee
  Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee, CBE, CStJ (born 27 May 1922) is an English actor and musician. Lee initially portrayed villains and became famous for his role as Count Dracula in a string of Hammer Horror films. Other notable roles include Francisco Scaramanga in the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), Saruman in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy (2001–2003), and Count Dooku in the final two films of the Star Wars prequel trilogy (2002, 2005). He has collaborated with director Tim Burton in five films, most recently with Dark Shadows (2012).
  Lee considers his most important role to be his portrayal of Pakistan's founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah in the biopic Jinnah (1998); however, he considers his best role to be that of Lord Summerisle in the British cult classic The Wicker Man (1973), which he also believes to be his best film. Lee is well known for his deep, strong voice and imposing height. He has performed roles in 275 films since 1946 making him the Guinness World Record holder for most film acting roles ever. He was knighted for services to drama and charity in 2009, and received the BAFTA Fellowship in 2011.
  
  wn.com/Christopher_Lee
• 
  Christopher Walken
  Christopher Walken (/ˈwɔːkən/; born March 31, 1943) is an American stage and screen actor. He has appeared in more than 100 movies and television shows, including The Deer Hunter, Annie Hall, The Prophecy trilogy, The Dogs of War, Sleepy Hollow, Brainstorm, The Dead Zone, A View to a Kill, At Close Range, King of New York, True Romance, Catch Me If You Can, Pulp Fiction, Wedding Crashers, The Rundown, Click, and Hairspray, as well as music videos by recording artists such as Madonna, Journey, Run DMC, The Left Rights and Fatboy Slim.
  Walken's films have grossed more than $1.8 billion in the United States. He has also played the main role in the Shakespeare plays Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Coriolanus. He is also a popular guest-host of Saturday Night Live, having hosted 7 times as of April 2008. His most notable roles on the show include record producer Bruce Dickinson (no relation to the singer with the same name) in the "More Cowbell" sketch and his multiple appearances as The Continental.
  
  wn.com/Christopher_Walken
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  Ciarán Hinds
  Ciarán Hinds (English pronunciation: /ˈkɪərɔːn ˈhaɪndz/ KEER-awn HYNDZ; born 9 February 1953) is an Irish film, television and stage actor. He has built up a reputation as a versatile character actor appearing in such high profile films as Road to Perdition, The Phantom of the Opera, Munich, There Will Be Blood, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. His television roles include Gaius Julius Caesar in Rome and DCI James Langton in Above Suspicion. As a stage actor, Hinds has enjoyed spells with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National Theatre in London and six seasons with Glasgow Citizens' Theatre.
  Hinds was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Brought up as a Catholic in North Belfast, he was one of five children and the only son of his doctor father and schoolteacher mother. His mother, Moya, was also an amateur actress. He was an Irish dancer in his youth and was educated at Holy Family Primary School and St. Malachy's College. After leaving St. Malachy's, he enrolled as a law student at Queen's University, but was soon persuaded to pursue acting and abandoned his studies at Queen's to enroll at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA).
  
  wn.com/Ciarán_Hinds
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  Daniel Radcliffe
  Daniel Jacob Radcliffe (born 23 July 1989) is an English film and stage actor who rose to prominence playing the title character in the Harry Potter film series.
  Radcliffe made his acting debut at age ten in BBC One's 1999 television movie David Copperfield, followed by his film debut in 2001's The Tailor of Panama. At age eleven he was cast as the title character in the first Harry Potter film, and he starred in the series for ten years until the release of the eighth and final film in July 2011. He also began to branch out to stage acting in 2007, starring in the London and New York productions of the play Equus and in the 2011 Broadway revival of the musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. In addition, he starred in 2007's December Boys and the 2012 hit horror film The Woman in Black. He will play beat poet Allen Ginsberg in 2013 indie film Kill Your Darlings.
  Radcliffe has contributed to many charities, including Demelza House Children's Hospice and The Trevor Project. He has also made public service announcements for the latter. In 2011, he was awarded the Trevor Project's "Hero Award".
  
  wn.com/Daniel_Radcliffe
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  David Cronenberg
  David Paul Cronenberg, OC, FRSC (born March 15, 1943) is a Canadian filmmaker, screenwriter and actor. He is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror or venereal horror genre. This style of filmmaking explores people's fears of bodily transformation and infection. In his films, the psychological is typically intertwined with the physical. In the first half of his career, he explored these themes mostly through horror and science fiction, although his work has since expanded beyond these genres. He has been called "the most audacious and challenging narrative director in the English-speaking world."
  Born in Toronto, Canada, Cronenberg was the son of Esther (born Sumberg), a musician, and Milton Cronenberg, a writer and editor. His family has been described as "a nurturing middle class family." He began writing as a child and wrote constantly. He attended high school at Harbord Collegiate Institute. A keen interest in science, especially botany and lepidopterology, led him to enter the Honours Science program the University of Toronto in 1963, but he switched to Honors English Language and Literature later in his first year. Cronenberg's fascination with the film Winter Kept Us Warm (1966) by classmate David Secter sparked his interest in film. He began frequenting film camera rental houses, learning art of filmmaking and made two 16mm films (Transfer and From the Drain). Inspired by the New York underground film scene, he founded the Toronto Film Co-op with Iain Ewing and Ivan Reitman. After taking a year off to travel in Europe, he returned to Canada in 1967, graduating from University College at the top of his class.
  
  wn.com/David_Cronenberg
• Don Siegel
  Donald Siegel (October 26, 1912 - April 20, 1991) was an American film director and producer. His name variously appeared in the credits of his films as both Don Siegel and Donald Siegel. He was best known for the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and five films with Clint Eastwood, including Dirty Harry (1971) and Escape from Alcatraz (1979).
  Born in Chicago, with Jewish origins, he attended schools in New York and later graduated from Jesus College, Cambridge in England. For a short time he studied at Beaux Arts in Paris, France, but left at age 20 and later made his way to Los Angeles.
  Siegel found work in the Warner Bros. film library after meeting producer Hal Wallis, and later rose to head of the Montage Department, where he directed thousands of montages, including the opening montage for Casablanca. In 1945 two shorts he directed, Hitler Lives? and Star in the Night, won Academy Awards, which launched his career as a feature director.
  He directed whatever material came his way, often transcending the limitations of budget and script to produce interesting and adept works. He made the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers in 1956. He directed two episodes of The Twilight Zone, "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" and "Uncle Simon". He worked with Elvis Presley and Dolores del Río in Flaming Star (1960), with Steve McQueen in Hell Is for Heroes and Lee Marvin in the influential The Killers (1964) before directing a series of five films with Clint Eastwood that were commercially successful in addition to being well received by critics. These included the policiers Coogan's Bluff and Dirty Harry, the Budd Boetticher-scripted Western Two Mules for Sister Sara, the cynical American Civil War melodrama The Beguiled and the prison-break picture Escape from Alcatraz. He was a considerable influence on Eastwood's own career as a director, and Eastwood's film Unforgiven is dedicated "for Don [Siegel] and Sergio [Leone]".
  
  wn.com/Don_Siegel
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  Edgar Allan Poe
  Edgar Allan Poe (born Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.
  He was born as Edgar Poe in Boston, Massachusetts; he was orphaned young when his mother died shortly after his father abandoned the family. Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan, of Richmond, Virginia, but they never formally adopted him. He attended the University of Virginia for one semester but left due to lack of money. After enlisting in the Army and later failing as an officer's cadet at West Point, Poe parted ways with the Allans. His publishing career began humbly, with an anonymous collection of poems, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), credited only to "a Bostonian".
  
  wn.com/Edgar_Allan_Poe
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  Eli Wallach
  Eli Herschel Wallach (born December 7, 1915) is an American film, television and stage actor who gained fame in the late 1950s. For his performance in Baby Doll he won a BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer and a Golden Globe nomination. Among his most famous roles are Tuco in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) and Calvera in The Magnificent Seven. Other portrayals include Don Altobello in The Godfather Part III, Cotton Weinberger in The Two Jakes, and Arthur Abbott in The Holiday. He has remained active well into his nineties, with roles in recent movies such as Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and The Ghost Writer.
  Wallach has received BAFTA Awards, Tony Awards and Emmy Awards for his work. He received an Honorary Academy Award at the 2nd Annual Governors Awards, presented on November 13, 2010.
  Wallach was born in Red Hook, Brooklyn at 166 Union St., the son of Polish Jewish immigrants Bertha (née Schorr) and Abraham Wallach. They were the only Jewish family in an otherwise predominantly Italian American neighborhood. His parents owned "Bertha's", a candy store. Wallach graduated in 1936 from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in history and in 1938 received a masters degree in education from the City College of New York. He gained his first Method experience at the Neighborhood Playhouse. While attending the University of Texas Wallach performed in a play with fellow students Ann Sheridan and Walter Cronkite.
  
  wn.com/Eli_Wallach
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  Georges Méliès
  Georges Méliès (English pronunciation: /mɛ.li.'ez/); (8 December 1861 – 21 January 1938), full name Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès, was a French illusionist and filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest days of cinema. Méliès, a prolific innovator in the use of special effects, accidentally discovered the substitution stop trick in 1896, and was one of the first filmmakers to use multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves, and hand-painted color in his work. Because of his ability to seemingly manipulate and transform reality through cinematography, Méliès is sometimes referred to as the first "Cinemagician". Two of his most well-known films are A Trip to the Moon (1902) and The Impossible Voyage (1904). Both stories involve strange, surreal voyages, somewhat in the style of Jules Verne, and are considered among the most important early science fiction films, though their approach is closer to fantasy. Méliès was also an early pioneer of horror cinema, which can be traced back to his Le Manoir du diable (1896).
  
  wn.com/Georges_Méliès
• Guy Hamilton
  Guy Hamilton (born 16 September 1922) is an English film director.
  Hamilton was born in Paris, France where his English parents were living. Remaining in France during the Nazi occupation, he was active in the French Resistance. After the end of the war, he worked as an assistant to Carol Reed on films including The Fallen Idol (1948) and The Third Man (1949), before turning to directing with his first film The Ringer in 1952. He made 22 films from the 1950s to the 1980s, including four installments of the James Bond series, based on the novels by Ian Fleming.
  He was married at one time to actress Naomi Chance.
  Hamilton was originally chosen to direct Superman: The Movie in 1978, but due to his status as a tax exile he was only allowed to be in England for thirty days, where production had moved at the last minute to Pinewood Studios. The job of director was then passed to Richard Donner, but Hamilton insisted he be paid in full.
  In the late 1980s Guy Hamilton was also approached to direct Batman.
  
  wn.com/Guy_Hamilton
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  Henry James
  Henry James, OM ((1843-04-15)15 April 1843 – 28 February 1916(1916-02-28)) was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.
  James alternated between America and Europe for the first 20 years of his life, after which he settled in England, becoming a British subject in 1915, one year before his death. He is primarily known for the series of novels in which he portrays the encounter of Americans with Europe and Europeans. His method of writing from the point of view of a character within a tale allows him to explore issues related to consciousness and perception, and his style in later works has been compared to impressionist painting.
  James contributed significantly to literary criticism, particularly in his insistence that writers be allowed the greatest possible freedom in presenting their view of the world. James claimed that a text must first and foremost be realistic and contain a representation of life that is recognisable to its readers. Good novels, to James, show life in action and are, most importantly, interesting. The concept of a good or bad novel is judged solely upon whether the author is good or bad. His imaginative use of point of view, interior monologue and possibly unreliable narrators in his own novels and tales brought a new depth and interest to narrative fiction. An extraordinarily productive writer, in addition to his voluminous works of fiction he published articles and books of travel, biography, autobiography, and criticism, and wrote plays, some of which were performed during his lifetime with moderate success. His theatrical work is thought to have profoundly influenced his later novels and tales.
  
  wn.com/Henry_James
• Jack Clayton
  Jack Clayton (1 March 1921 – 26 February 1995) was a British film director, who specialised in bringing literary works to the screen.
  A native of East Sussex, Clayton started his career as a child actor on the 1929 film Dark Red Roses. He later worked for Alexander Korda's Denham Film Studios and rose from tea boy to assistant director to film editor.
  While in service with the Royal Air Force during World War II, Clayton shot his first film, the documentary Naples is a Battlefield (1944), representing the problems in the reconstruction of Naples, the first great city liberated in World War II, ruined after Allied bombing and destruction caused by the retreating Nazis. After the war Clayton became an associate producer on many of Korda's films, then directed the Oscar-winning short The Bespoke Overcoat (1956) based on Wolf Mankowitz's theatrical version (1953) of Nikolai Gogol's short story The Overcoat (1842). In this film Gogol's story is re-located to a clothing warehouse in the East End of London and the ghostly protagonist is a poor Jew.
  
  wn.com/Jack_Clayton
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  James Whale
  James Whale (22 July 1889 – 29 May 1957) was an English film director, theatre director and actor. He is best remembered for his work in the horror film genre, having directed such classics as Frankenstein (1931), The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Whale directed over a dozen films in other genres, including what is considered the definitive film version of the musical Show Boat (1936). He became increasingly disenchanted with his association with horror, but many of his non-horror films have fallen into obscurity.
  Born into a large family in Dudley, England, Whale early discovered his artistic talent and studied art. With the outbreak of World War I, Whale enlisted in the British Army and became an officer. He was captured by the Germans and during his time as a prisoner of war he realized he was interested in drama. Following his release at the end of the war he became an actor, set designer and director. His success directing the 1928 play Journey's End led to his move to the United States, first to direct the play on Broadway and then to Hollywood to direct motion pictures. Whale lived in Hollywood for the rest of his life, most of that time with his longtime companion, producer David Lewis. Including Journey's End (1930), Whale directed a dozen films for Universal Studios between 1930 and 1936, developing a style characterized by the influence of German Expressionism and a highly mobile camera.
  
  wn.com/James_Whale
• Janet McTeer
  Janet McTeer, OBE (born 5 August 1961)^{Dubious: Discuss} is an English actress.
  McTeer was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, the daughter of Jean (née Morris) and Alan McTeer, and spent her childhood in York. She attended the now defunct Queen Anne Grammar School for Girls, and worked at the Old Starre Inn, at York Minster and at the Theatre Royal. She then trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, beginning a successful theatrical career with the Royal Exchange Theatre after graduating.
  McTeer's television work includes the BBC production of Nigel Nicolson's book Portrait of a Marriage in which she played Vita Sackville-West and the popular ITV series The Governor written by Lynda La Plante. She made her screen debut in Half Moon Street, a 1986 film based on a novel by Paul Theroux. In 1991, she appeared in Catherine Cookson's The Black Velvet Gown, with Bob Peck and Geraldine Somerville; this won the International Emmy award for best drama. She appeared in the 1992 film version of Wuthering Heights (co-starring Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes) and the 1995 film Carrington (which starred Emma Thompson and Jonathan Pryce).
  
  wn.com/Janet_McTeer
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  Jeff Goldblum
  Jeffrey Lynn "Jeff" Goldblum (born October 22, 1952) is an American actor. His career began in the mid-1970s and he has appeared in major box-office successes including The Fly, Jurassic Park and its sequel Jurassic Park: The Lost World, and Independence Day. He starred as Detective Zach Nichols for the eighth and ninth seasons of the USA Network's crime drama series Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
  Goldblum was born in the Pittsburgh suburb of West Homestead, Pennsylvania, the son of Shirley S. (née Temeles), a radio broadcaster who later ran a kitchen equipment and appliances sales firm, and Harold L. Goldblum, a medical doctor. He has a sister, Pamela, and an older brother, Lee. Another older brother, Rick, died at age 23. His family is Jewish and belonged to an Orthodox synagogue.
  Goldblum's parents were interested in show business. Goldblum moved to New York City at 17 to become an actor. Goldblum worked on the stage and studied acting at the renowned Neighborhood Playhouse under the guidance of acting coach Sanford Meisner. He made his Broadway debut in the Tony Award-winning musical Two Gentlemen of Verona. He is also an accomplished jazz pianist and declared that if he did not act, he would have become a professional musician. He made his film debut as a thug in the 1974 Charles Bronson film Death Wish. He briefly appeared as a protester in the TV movie Columbo A Case of Immunity (1975).
  
  wn.com/Jeff_Goldblum
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  John Carpenter
  John Howard Carpenter (born January 16, 1948) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, editor and composer. Although Carpenter has worked in numerous film genres in his four-decade career, his name is most commonly associated with horror and science fiction.
  Carpenter was born in Carthage, New York, the son of Milton Jean (née Carter) and Howard Ralph Carpenter, a music professor. He and his family moved to Bowling Green, Kentucky in 1953. He was captivated by movies from an early age, particularly the westerns of Howard Hawks and John Ford, as well as 1950s low budget horror films, such as The Thing from Another World and high budget science fiction like Forbidden Planet and began filming horror shorts on 8 mm film even before entering high school. He attended Western Kentucky University where his father chaired the music department, then transferred to the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts in 1968, but later dropped out to make his first feature.
  
  wn.com/John_Carpenter
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  Joss Whedon
  Joseph Hill "Joss" Whedon ( /ˈwiːdən/; born June 23, 1964) is an American screenwriter, executive producer, director, comic book writer, occasional composer and actor, founder of Mutant Enemy Productions and co-creator of Bellwether Pictures. He is best known as the creator and showrunner of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003), Angel (1999–2004), Firefly (2002) and Dollhouse (2009–2010), as well as the short film Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (2008). Whedon co-wrote and produced the horror film The Cabin in the Woods (2012), and wrote and directed the film adaptation of Marvel's The Avengers (2012).
  He is also notable for his work in film, comic books, and online media. Many of Whedon's projects enjoy cult status.
  Joss Whedon was born in New York City. He has been described as the world's first third-generation TV writer, as he is the son of Tom Whedon, a screenwriter for The Electric Company in the 1970s and The Golden Girls in the 1980s, and the grandson of John Whedon, a writer for The Donna Reed Show in the 1950s. His mother, Lee Stearns, taught history at Riverdale Country School as Lee Whedon, and was an unpublished novelist. Joss Whedon is the younger brother of Samuel and Matthew Whedon and older brother of writers Jed Whedon and Zack Whedon.
  
  wn.com/Joss_Whedon
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  Kate Beckinsale
  Kathrin Romary "Kate" Beckinsale (born 26 July 1973) is an English actress. After some minor television roles, she made her film debut in Much Ado About Nothing (1993) while still a student at Oxford University. She then appeared in British costume dramas such as Prince of Jutland (1994), Cold Comfort Farm (1995), Emma (1996) and The Golden Bowl (2000), in addition to various stage and radio productions. She began to seek film work in the United States in the late 1990s and, after appearing in small-scale dramas The Last Days of Disco (1998) and Brokedown Palace (1999), she had a breakout year in 2001 with starring roles in the war epic Pearl Harbor and the romantic comedy Serendipity. She built on this success with appearances in the bio-pic The Aviator (2004) and the comedy Click (2006).
  Beckinsale became known as an action star following an appearance in 2003's Underworld and has since starred in many action films, including Van Helsing (2004), Underworld: Evolution (2006), Whiteout (2009), Contraband (2012), and Underworld: Awakening (2012). She also makes occasional appearances in smaller dramatic projects such as Snow Angels (2007), Winged Creatures (2008), Nothing but the Truth (for which she earned a Critic's Choice Award nomination in 2008) and Everybody's Fine (2009). Her next onscreen appearance will be in the sci-fi action remake Total Recall, due for release in August 2012.
  
  wn.com/Kate_Beckinsale
• Kristen Connolly
  Kristen Connolly is an American actress. She is best known for her role as the main protagonist, Dana, in the Joss Whedon/Drew Goddard film The Cabin in the Woods. She has also done several turns on soap operas, including recurring roles on Guiding Light and As the World Turns.
  
  wn.com/Kristen_Connolly
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  Mario Bava
  Mario Bava (31 July 1914 – 25 April 1980) was an Italian director, screenwriter, special effects artist, and cinematographer remembered as one of the greatest names from the "golden age" of Italian horror films.
  Mario Bava was born in Sanremo, Liguria, Italy. The son of Eugenio Bava, a sculptor who became a pioneer of special effects photography and subsequently one of the great cameramen of Italian silent pictures, Mario Bava's first ambition was to become a painter. Unable to turn out paintings at a profitable rate, he went into his father's business, working as an assistant to other Italian cinematographers like Massimo Terzano, while also offering assistance to his father who headed the special effects department at Benito Mussolini's film factory, the Istituto LUCE.
  Bava became a cinematographer in his own right in 1939, shooting two short films with Roberto Rossellini. He made his feature debut in the early 1940s. Bava's camerawork was an instrumental factor in developing the screen personas of such stars of the period as Gina Lollobrigida, Steve Reeves and Aldo Fabrizi.
  
  wn.com/Mario_Bava
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  Matthew Hopkins
  Matthew Hopkins (c. 1620 – 12 August 1647) was an English witchhunter whose career flourished during the time of the English Civil War. He claimed to hold the office of Witchfinder General, although that title was never bestowed by Parliament. His witchhunts mainly took place in the eastern counties of Suffolk, Essex, Norfolk, and occasionally in Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, and Huntingdonshire.
  Hopkins' witch-finding career began in March 1645 and lasted until his retirement in 1647. During that period, he and his associates were responsible for more people being hanged for witchcraft than in the previous 100 years, and were solely responsible for the increase in witch trials during those years. He is believed to have been responsible for the deaths of 300 women between the years 1644 and 1646. It has been estimated that all of the English witch trials between the early 15th and late 18th centuries resulted in fewer than 500 executions for witchcraft. Therefore, presuming the number executed as a result of investigations by Hopkins and his colleague John Stearne is at the lower end of the various estimates, their efforts accounted for about 40 per cent of the total; in the 14 months of their crusade Hopkins and Stearne sent to the gallows more people than all the other witchhunters in the 160 years of persecution in England.
  
  wn.com/Matthew_Hopkins
• Michael Curtiz
  Michael Curtiz (December 24, 1886 – April 10, 1962) was an Academy award winning Hungarian-American film director. He had early credits as Mihály Kertész and Michael Kertész. He directed more than fifty films in Europe and more than one hundred in the United States, many of them cinema classics, including The Adventures of Robin Hood, Captain Blood, Dodge City, The Sea Hawk, Angels with Dirty Faces, Casablanca, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director, Yankee Doodle Dandy, and White Christmas. He thrived in the heyday of the Warner Bros. studio in the 1930s and '40s.
  He was less successful from the late 1940s onwards, when he attempted to move from studio direction into production and freelance work, but he continued working until shortly before his death.
  Curtiz was born Kertész Kaminer Manó to a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary (then Austria-Hungary). He claimed to have been born December 24, 1886. Both the date and the year are open to doubt: he was fond of telling tall stories about his early years, including that he had run away from home to join the circus and that he had been a member of the Hungarian fencing team at the 1912 Olympic Games, but he seems to have had a conventional middle-class upbringing. He studied at Markoszy University and the Royal Academy of Theater and Art, Budapest, before beginning his career as an actor and director as Mihály Kertész at the National Hungarian Theater in 1912.
  
  wn.com/Michael_Curtiz
• Michael Ealy
  Michael Brown (born August 3, 1973), professionally known as Michael Ealy, is an American actor.
  Ealy started his acting career in the late-1990s, appearing in a number of off-Broadway stage productions. Among his first film roles were Bad Company and Kissing Jessica Stein. His breakout role came in 2002's Barbershop, in which he plays reformed street thug Ricky Nash, a role that he reprised in the 2004 sequel, Barbershop 2: Back in Business. In 2003, he played the role of Slap Jack in the second installment of the Fast and the Furious film series, 2 Fast 2 Furious. Later in 2004, Ealy appeared in Never Die Alone with DMX. He also appeared in Mariah Carey's music video for her hit single "Get Your Number" from her 2005 album The Emancipation of Mimi.
  In 2005, Ealy co-starred in the telefilm version of Their Eyes Were Watching God, produced by Oprah Winfrey and Quincy Jones, and starring Academy Award-winning actress Halle Berry. The same year, he starred in the independent film Jellysmoke, directed by Mark Banning. He starred in the Showtime television series Sleeper Cell, the first season of which aired from December 4–18, 2005, and the second season, Sleeper Cell: American Terror, which aired December 10–17, 2006.
  
  wn.com/Michael_Ealy
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  Michael Reeves
  Michael Reeves (October 17, 1943 - February 11, 1969) was an English film director and screenwriter. He is best known for the 1968 American International Pictures/Tigon motion picture Witchfinder General (known in the U.S. as The Conqueror Worm). He died at age 25 from alcohol and barbiturate overdose.
  Reeves was born in Sutton, Surrey,and grew up in Suffolk, whose landscape made a deep impression on his best known film, Witchfinder General. His father died when he was young, but his mother was a devoted single parent. As a child he began making short films, some of which starred his lifelong friend, the actor Ian Ogilvy. As a boarder at Radley College he obsessively broke bounds to attend the cinema, and was utterly single minded about his ambition to work in film. Upon leaving school he turned up on the doorstep of his favourite director, Don Siegel, who promptly employed him as an assistant. Subsequently he worked in Italy, where he eventually directed La Sorella di Satana (1965; also called Revenge of the Blood Beast and also known in Italy as Il Lago di Satana). The film was made very cheaply, and is remembered for an appearance by horror icon Barbara Steele, of whose time Reeves was given four days. Back in London in 1966, Reeves made The Sorcerers, starring Boris Karloff, an effective 'swinging London' picture with supernatural overtones. Both films also starred Ian Ogilvy.
  
  wn.com/Michael_Reeves
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  Paul Wegener
  Paul Wegener (11 December 1874 – 13 September 1948) was a German actor, writer and film director known for his pioneering role in German expressionist cinema.
  
  
  At the age of 20 Wegener decided to end his law studies and concentrate on acting, touring the provinces before joining Max Reinhardt's acting troupe in 1906. In 1912, he turned to the new medium of motion pictures and appeared in the 1913 version of The Student of Prague. It was while making this film that he first heard the old Jewish legend of the Golem and proceeded to adapt the story to film, co-directing and co-writing the script with Henrik Galeen. His first version of the tale The Golem (1915, now lost) was a success and firmly established Wegener's reputation. In 1917, he made a parody of the story called Der Golem und die Tänzerin, but it was his reworking of the tale, The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920) which stands as one of the classics of German cinema and helped to cement Wegener's place in cinematic history. Another of his early films was Der Yoghi (1916), in which he played the role of a yogi and young inventor, and which provided him with the opportunity to accommodate three of his interests, trick photography (it was one of the first films to feature invisibility), the supernatural and Eastern mysticism.
  
  wn.com/Paul_Wegener
• Peter Cushing
  Peter Wilton Cushing, OBE (26 May 1913 – 11 August 1994) was an English actor, known for his many appearances in Hammer Films, in which he played the distinguished-looking but sinister scientist Baron Frankenstein and the vampire hunter Dr. Van Helsing, amongst many other roles, often appearing opposite Christopher Lee, and occasionally Vincent Price. A familiar face on both sides of the Atlantic, his most famous roles outside of "Hammer Horror" include his many appearances as Sherlock Holmes, as Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars (1977) and as the mysterious Doctor in Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD in 1965 and 1966, two cinema films based on the television series Doctor Who.
  Cushing was born in Kenley, Surrey, a son of George Edward Cushing and Nellie Marie (King) Cushing. He was brought up in Kenley and in Dulwich, South London. Cushing left his first job as a surveyor's assistant to take a scholarship at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. After working in repertory theatre in Worthing, Sussex, he left for Hollywood in 1939, debuting in The Man in the Iron Mask, then returned in 1941 after roles in several films. In one, A Chump at Oxford (1940), he appeared alongside Laurel and Hardy. His first major film part was as Osric in Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948).
  
  wn.com/Peter_Cushing
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  Quasimodo
  Quasimodo is a fictional character in the novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831) by Victor Hugo. Quasimodo was born with a hunchback and feared by the townspeople as a sort of monster but he finds sanctuary in an unlikely love that is fulfilled only in death. The role of Quasimodo has been played by many actors in film and stage adaptations, including Lon Chaney, Sr. (1923) and Charles Laughton (1939), as well as the 1996 Disney animated adaptation. In 2010, a British researcher found evidence suggesting there was a real-life hunchbacked stone carver who worked at Notre Dame during the same period Victor Hugo was writing the novel and they may have even known one another.
  Quasimodo was born with physical deformities, which Hugo describes as a huge wart that covers his right eye and a severely hunched back. He is found abandoned in Notre Dame (on the foundlings' bed, where orphans and unwanted children are left to public charity) on Quasimodo Sunday, the first Sunday after Easter, by Claude Frollo, the Archdeacon of Notre Dame, who adopts the baby, names him after the day the baby was found, and brings him up to be the bell-ringer of the Cathedral. Due to the loud ringing of the bells, Quasimodo also becomes deaf. Although he is hated for his deformity, it is revealed that he is fairly kind at heart.
  
  wn.com/Quasimodo
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  Richard Matheson
  Richard Burton Matheson (born February 20, 1926) is an American author and screenwriter, primarily in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres. He is perhaps best known as the author of The Incredible Shrinking Man, What Dreams May Come, Bid Time Return (filmed as Somewhere in Time), A Stir of Echoes, and I Am Legend, all of which have been adapted as major motion pictures, the last at least three times. Matheson has also written for several The Twilight Zone television show episodes such as "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet", and adapted his 1971 short story "Duel" into a screenplay later that year for the Steven Spielberg–directed television movie of the same name.
  Matheson was born in Allendale, New Jersey, the son of Norwegian immigrants Fanny (née Mathieson) and Bertolf Matheson, a tile floor installer. Matheson was raised in Brooklyn and graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School in 1943. He then entered the military and spent World War II as an infantry soldier. In 1949 he earned his bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and moved to California in 1951. He married Ruth Ann Woodson on July 1, 1952 and has four children, three of whom (Chris, Richard Christian, and Ali Matheson) are writers of fiction and screenplays.
  
  wn.com/Richard_Matheson
• 
  Rob Zombie
  Rob Zombie (born Robert Bartleh Cummings; January 12, 1965) is an American musician, film director, screenwriter and film producer. He founded the heavy metal band White Zombie and has been nominated three times as a solo artist for the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance. Zombie's lyrics are noted for their horror and sci-fi themes, and his live shows for their elaborate shock rock theatricality.
  Zombie has also established a career as a film director, creating the movies House of 1000 Corpses, The Devil's Rejects, the 2007 remake of Halloween, its sequel, and The Haunted World of El Superbeasto. His next film will be the upcoming The Lords of Salem which is scheduled to premiere in theaters sometime in 2012.
  Born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, he was the first of two brothers. His younger brother Michael David Cummings was born on August 25, 1968 and is better known as Spider One, the frontman of alternative metal group Powerman 5000.
  Based in New York, White Zombie was originally a noise rock band in the vein of fellow New York band Sonic Youth and Texas experimental punk band Butthole Surfers. White Zombie was known for combining heavy-metal music with driving guitar riffs (as on "Super-Charger Heaven"), overlayed with lyrics heavily influenced by horror films and pseudo-Satanic imagery.
  
  wn.com/Rob_Zombie
• Robert Wiene
  Robert Wiene (27 April 1873 – 16 June 1938) was an important film director of the German silent cinema.
  Robert Wiene was born in Breslau, as the elder son of the successful theatre actor Carl Wiene. His younger brother Conrad also became an actor, but Robert Wiene at first studied law at the University of Berlin. In 1908 he also started to act, at first in small parts on stage. His first involvement with film was in 1912, writing and directing Die Waffen der Jugend.
  His most memorable feature films are the 1920 horror film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Raskolnikow (1923), an adaptation of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, both of which had a deep influence on the German cinema of that time.
  After Hitler took power in Germany, Wiene left Berlin, and went first to Budapest, where he directed One Night in Venice (1934), later to London, and finally to Paris where together with Jean Cocteau he tried to produce a sound remake of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
  Wiene died in Paris ten days before the end of production of a spy film, Ultimatum, after having suffered from cancer. The film was finished by Wiene's friend Robert Siodmak.
  
  wn.com/Robert_Wiene
• 
  Robert Wise
  Robert Earl Wise (September 10, 1914 – September 14, 2005) was an American film director, producer and editor. He twice won Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture, for West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of Music (1965). He was also nominated for Best Film Editing for Citizen Kane (1941) and Best Picture for The Sand Pebbles (1966).
  Among his other films are The Body Snatcher; Born to Kill; The Set-Up; The Day the Earth Stood Still; Destination Gobi; Run Silent, Run Deep; I Want to Live!; The Haunting; The Andromeda Strain; The Hindenburg; and Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
  Wise was the president of the Directors Guild of America from 1971 to 1975 and later became the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
  Often contrasted with 'auteur' directors such as Stanley Kubrick who tended to bring a distinctive directorial "look" to a particular genre, Wise is famously viewed to have allowed his (sometimes studio assigned) story to dictate style. Later critics such as Martin Scorsese expanded that characterization, insisting that despite Wise's notorious workaday concentration on stylistic perfection within the confines of genre and budget, his choice of subject matter and approach still functioned to identify Wise as an artist and not merely an artisan. Through whatever means, Wise's approach brought him critical success as a director in many different traditional film genres: horror, noir, western, war, science fiction, musical and drama, with many repeat successes within each genre. Wise's tendency towards professionalism led to a degree of preparedness which, though nominally motivated by studio budget constraints, nevertheless advanced the moviemaking art, with many Academy Award-winning films the result. Robert Wise received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1998.
  
  wn.com/Robert_Wise
• 
  Roger Corman
  Roger William Corman (born April 5, 1926) is an Academy Award winning American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Some of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 2009 he won an Honorary Academy Award for his body of work. Corman has occasionally taken minor acting roles in such films as The Silence of the Lambs, The Godfather Part II, Apollo 13 and Philadelphia. A documentary about Roger Corman's life and career entitled Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel premiered at Sundance and Cannes Film Festivals in 2011, directed by Alex Stapleton. The film's TV rights were picked up by A&E IndieFilms after a well-received screening at Sundance.
  Corman has been a mentor to young film directors including Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Peter Bogdanovich, Jonathan Demme, James Cameron, Curtis Hanson, John Sayles, and many others. He has also helped launch the careers of actors including Jack Nicholson, William Shatner, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Talia Shire and Robert De Niro.
  
  wn.com/Roger_Corman
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  Roman Polanski
  Roman Polanski (born 18 August 1933) is a French-Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Having made films in Poland, Britain, France and the USA, he is considered one of the few "truly international filmmakers." Polanski's films have inspired diverse directors, including the Coen brothers,Atom Egoyan,Darren Aronofsky,Park Chan-wook,Abel Ferrara, and Wes Craven.
  Born in Paris to Polish parents, he moved with his family back to Poland in 1937, shortly before the outbreak of World War II. He survived the Holocaust and was educated in Poland and became a director of both art house and commercial films. Polanski's first feature-length film, Knife in the Water (1962), made in Poland, was nominated for a United States Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film but was beaten by Federico Fellini's 8½. He has since received five more Oscar nominations, along with two Baftas, four Césars, a Golden Globe Award and the Palme d'Or of the Cannes Film Festival in France. In the United Kingdom he directed three films, beginning with Repulsion (1965). In 1968 he moved to the United States, and cemented his status by directing the Oscar-winning horror film Rosemary's Baby (1968).
  
  wn.com/Roman_Polanski
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  Rouben Mamoulian
  Rouben Zachary Mamoulian (pronounced: roo-BEN ma-mool-YAN; October 8, 1897 – December 4, 1987) was an Armenian-American film and theatre director.
  Mamoulian was born in Tbilisi, Georgia (ruled at that time by imperial Russia) to an Armenian family. His mother, Virginia (née Kalantarian), was a director of the Armenian theater, and his father, Zachary Mamoulian, was a bank president. Mamoulian relocated to England and started directing plays in London in 1922. He was brought to America the next year by Vladimir Rosing to teach at the Eastman School of Music and was involved in directing opera and theatre.
  In 1925, Mamoulian was head of the School of Drama, where Martha Graham was also working at the time. Among other performances, together they produced a short two-color film called The Flute of Krishna, featuring Eastman students. Mamoulian left Eastman shortly thereafter and Graham chose to leave also, even though she was asked to stay on. In 1930, Mamoulian became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
  
  wn.com/Rouben_Mamoulian
• 
  Sam Raimi
  Samuel Marshall "Sam" Raimi (October 23, 1959) is an American film director, producer, actor and writer. He is best known for directing cult horror/comedy films the Evil Dead series, the action/superhero film Darkman, crime thriller A Simple Plan and supernatural horror Drag Me to Hell, as well as the blockbuster Spider-Man films and the producer of the successful TV series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Xena: Warrior Princess, Legend of the Seeker (also the creator) and Spartacus: Blood and Sand. He is also the founder of Renaissance Pictures.
  Raimi, the fourth of five children, was born in Royal Oak, Michigan, and grew up in Birmingham, Michigan. He was raised in Conservative Judaism; his ancestors immigrated from Russia and Hungary. Raimi attended Groves High School, and Michigan State University and majored in English, leaving after three semesters to film The Evil Dead. He is Ted Raimi's older brother.
  
  wn.com/Sam_Raimi
• Simon Quarterman
  Simon Quarterman is a British actor. He was born in Sussex, England on 14th November 1991,
  He has appeared in many British television shows, including Down to Earth, Midsomer Murders, Holby City and EastEnders, playing Paul Jenkins, and the miniseries Victoria & Albert. He is one of the main characters in The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior. He also plays Father Ben Rawlings in The Devil Inside.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Simon_Quarterman
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  Stephen King
  Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books. As of 2011, King has written and published 49 novels, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, five non-fiction books, and nine collections of short stories. Many of his stories are set in his home state of Maine.
  King has received Bram Stoker Awards, World Fantasy Awards, British Fantasy Society Awards, his novella The Way Station was a Nebula Award novelette nominee, and in 2003, the National Book Foundation awarded him the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He has also received awards for his contribution to literature for his whole career, such as the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement (2004), the Canadian Booksellers Association Lifetime Achievement Award (2007) and the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America (2007).
  
  wn.com/Stephen_King
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  Stephen Rea
  Stephen Rea (born 31 October 1946) is an Irish film and stage actor. Rea has appeared in high profile films such as V for Vendetta, Michael Collins, Interview with the Vampire and Breakfast on Pluto. Rea was nominated for an Academy Award for his lead performance as Fergus in the 1992 film The Crying Game.
  Rea was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the son of a bus driver. One of four children in a working class Presbyterian family, he attended Belfast High School and the Queen's University of Belfast, taking a degree in English. Politically, Rea is a Protestant nationalist.
  Rea trained at the Abbey Theatre School in Dublin. In the late 1970s, he acted in the Focus Company in Dublin with Gabriel Byrne and Colm Meaney. During the broadcasting ban on Sinn Féin imposed by Margaret Thatcher's government, in order to cut the 'oxygen of publicity', it was interpreted that Sinn Féin members could not be heard making statements expressing the views of Sinn Féin, so Rea was one of many actors contacted to provide an actor's voice to get around that problem. After appearing on the stage and in television and film for many years in Ireland and Britain, Rea came to international attention when he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for the film The Crying Game. He is a frequent collaborator with Irish film maker Neil Jordan. Rea has long been associated with some of the most important writers in Ireland. His association with playwright Stewart Parker, for example, began when they were students together at the Queen's University of Belfast.
  
  wn.com/Stephen_Rea
• 
  Steven Spielberg
  Steven Allan Spielberg (born December 18, 1946) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as archetypes of modern Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking. In later years, his films began addressing such issues as the Holocaust, slavery, war and terrorism. He is considered one of the most popular and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. He is also one of the co-founders of DreamWorks movie studio.
  Spielberg won the Academy Award for Best Director for Schindler's List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). Three of Spielberg's films—Jaws (1975), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and Jurassic Park (1993)—achieved box office records, each becoming the highest-grossing film made at the time. To date, the unadjusted gross of all Spielberg-directed films exceeds $8.5 billion worldwide. Forbes puts Spielberg's wealth at $3.0 billion.
  
  wn.com/Steven_Spielberg
• Terence Fisher
  Terence Fisher (23 February 1904 – 18 June 1980) was a film director who worked for Hammer Films. He was born in Maida Vale, a district of London, England.
  Fisher was one of the most prominent horror directors of the second half of the 20th century. He was the first to bring gothic horror alive in full colour, and the sexual overtones and explicit horror in his films, while mild by modern standards, were unprecedented in his day. His first major gothic horror film was The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), which launched Hammer's long association with the genre and made British actors Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee leading horror stars of the era. He went on to film a number of adaptations of classic horror subjects, including Dracula (1958), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959) and The Mummy (1959).
  Given their subject matter and lurid approach, Fisher's films, though commercially successful, were largely dismissed by critics during his career. It is only in recent years that Fisher has become recognised as an auteur in his own right. His films are characterised by a blend of fairy-tale, myth and sexuality. They may have drawn heavily on Christian themes, and there is usually a hero who defeats the powers of darkness by a combination of faith in God and reason, in contrast to other characters, who are either blindly superstitious or bound by a cold, godless rationalism (as noted by critic Paul Leggett in Terence Fisher: Horror, Myth and Religion, 2001). For a detailed discussion of Fisher's works, see The Charm of Evil: The Films of Terence Fisher by Wheeler Winston Dixon (Metuchen N.J. and London: Scarecrow Press, 1991).
  
  wn.com/Terence_Fisher
• Tobe Hooper
  Tobe Hooper (born January 25, 1943) is an American film director and screenwriter, best known for his work in the horror film genre. His works include the cult classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), along with its first sequel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986); the three-time Emmy-nominated Stephen King film adaptation Salem's Lot (1979); and the three-time Academy Award-nominated, Steven Spielberg-produced Poltergeist (1982).
  Hooper was born in Austin, Texas, the son of Lois Belle (née Crosby) and Norman William Ray Hooper, who owned a theater in San Angelo. He first became interested in filmmaking when he used his father's 8 mm camera at age 9. Hooper took Radio-Television-Film classes at the University of Texas at Austin and studied drama in Dallas under Baruch Lumet.
  Hooper spent the 1960s as a college professor and documentary cameraman. His short film The Heisters (1965) was invited to be entered in the short subject category for an Oscar, but was not finished in time for the competition that year. In 1969, Hooper wrote, directed and edited Eggshells, a film about a group of hippies in a commune house having to deal with the presence of a possible supernatural force. Eggshells did not receive a theatrical release, but did win Hooper several awards, including the Atlanta Film Festival Award, when the film played around different colleges. Hooper had shot over 60 documentaries, commercials, and short films before making The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. His intention was to go to Hollywood to become a feature film director.
  
  wn.com/Tobe_Hooper
• Tod Browning
  Tod Browning (born Charles Albert Browning, Jr., July 12, 1880 – October 6, 1962) was an American motion picture actor, director and screenwriter.
  Browning's career spanned the silent and talkie eras. Best known as the director of Dracula (1931), the cult classic Freaks (1932), and classic silent film collaborations with Lon Chaney, Browning directed many movies in a wide range of genres.
  He was born Charles Albert Browning, Jr., in Louisville, Kentucky, the second son of Charles Albert and Lydia Browning, and the nephew of baseball star Pete Browning. As a young boy, he put on amateur plays in his backyard. He was fascinated by the circus and carnival life, and at the age of 16 he ran away from his well-to-do family to become a performer.
  Changing his name to "Tod", he traveled extensively with sideshows, carnivals, and circuses. His jobs included working as a talker (barker, as the term is also known, isn't correct) for the Wild Man of Borneo, performing a live burial act in which he was billed as "The Living Corpse", and performing as a clown with the Ringling Brothers Circus. He would draw on this experience as inspiration for some of his film work.
  
  wn.com/Tod_Browning
• Val Lewton
  Val Lewton (May 7, 1904 – March 14, 1951) was an American film producer and screenwriter, best known for a string of low-budget horror films he produced for RKO Pictures in the 1940s.
  Lewton was born Vladimir Ivanovich Leventon (Russian: Владимир Иванович Левентон, Ukrainian: Володимир Іванович Левентон) in Yalta, Imperial Russia (now in Ukraine), in 1904. He was of Jewish descent, the son of moneylender Max Hofschneider and Nina Leventon, a pharmacist's daughter. The family converted to Christianity. He was nephew of actress Alla Nazimova.
  His mother left his father and moved to Berlin, taking her children with her. In 1909, they emigrated to the United States, where his name was changed to Val Lewton. He was raised in suburban Port Chester, New York.
  He studied journalism at Columbia University and authored eighteen works of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. Lewton once lost his job as a reporter for the Darien-Stamford Review after it was discovered that a story he wrote about a truckload of kosher chickens dying in a New York heat wave was a total fabrication.
  
  wn.com/Val_Lewton
• 
  Victor Hugo
  Victor-Marie Hugo (French pronunciation: [viktɔʁ maʁi yɡo]) (26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist^{[citation needed]} and exponent of the Romantic movement in France.
  In France, Hugo's literary fame comes first from his poetry but also rests upon his novels and his dramatic achievements. Among many volumes of poetry, Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles stand particularly high in critical esteem, and Hugo is sometimes identified as the greatest French poet. Outside France, his best-known works are the novels Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris (also known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame).
  Though a committed royalist when he was young, Hugo's views changed as the decades passed; he became a passionate supporter of republicanism^{[citation needed]}, and his work touches upon most of the political and social issues and artistic trends of his time. He is buried in the Panthéon.
  Hugo was the third, illegitimate, son of Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Hugo (1774–1828) and Sophie Trébuchet (1772–1821); his brothers were Abel Joseph Hugo (1798–1855) and Eugène Hugo (1800–1837). He was born in 1802 in Besançon (in the region of Franche-Comté) and lived in France for the majority of his life. However, he decided to live in exile as a result of Napoleon III's Coup d'état at the end of 1851.
  
  wn.com/Victor_Hugo
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  Vincent Price
  Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. (May 27, 1911 – October 25, 1993) was an American actor, well known for his distinctive voice and serio-comic performances in a series of horror films made in the latter part of his career.
  Price was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Marguerite Cobb (née Wilcox) and Vincent Leonard Price, Sr., who was the president of the National Candy Company. His grandfather, Vincent Clarence Price, invented "Dr. Price's Baking Powder," the first cream of tartar baking powder, and secured the family's fortune.
  Price attended St. Louis Country Day School. He was further educated at Yale in art history and fine art. He was a member of the Courtauld Institute, London. He became interested in the theatre during the 1930s, appearing professionally on stage for the first time in 1935.
  He made his film debut in 1938 with Service de Luxe and established himself in the film Laura (1944), opposite Gene Tierney, directed by Otto Preminger. He also played Joseph Smith, Jr. in the movie Brigham Young (1940) and William Gibbs McAdoo in Wilson (1944) as well as a pretentious priest in The Keys of the Kingdom (1944).
  
  wn.com/Vincent_Price
• 
  Washington Irving
  Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American author, essayist, biographer and historian of the early 19th century. He is best known for his short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle", both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. His historical works include biographies of George Washington, Oliver Goldsmith and Muhammad, and several histories of 15th-century Spain dealing with subjects such as Christopher Columbus, the Moors, and the Alhambra. Irving also served as the U.S. ambassador to Spain from 1842 to 1846.
  He made his literary debut in 1802 with a series of observational letters to the Morning Chronicle, written under the pseudonym Jonathan Oldstyle. After moving to England for the family business in 1815, he achieved international fame with the publication of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. in 1819. He continued to publish regularly—and almost always successfully—throughout his life, and completed a five-volume biography of George Washington just eight months before his death, at age 76, in Tarrytown, New York.
  
  wn.com/Washington_Irving
• Wes Craven
  Wesley Earl "Wes" Craven (born August 2, 1939) is an American film director, writer, producer, actor, perhaps best known as the director of many horror films, particularly slasher films, including the famed A Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven's New Nightmare, and he also co-wrote A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors with Bruce Wagner, featuring the iconic Freddy Krueger character and has directed the entire Scream series, featuring Ghostface. Some of his other films include, The Hills Have Eyes, The Last House on the Left, The Serpent and the Rainbow, The People Under the Stairs, Vampire in Brooklyn, Red Eye, and My Soul to Take.
  Craven was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Caroline (née Miller) and Paul Craven. He had a strict Baptist upbringing. Craven earned an undergraduate degree in English and Psychology from Wheaton College in Illinois, and a masters degree in Philosophy and Writing from Johns Hopkins University. Prior to landing his first job in the film industry as a sound editor for a post-production company in New York City, Craven briefly taught English at Westminster College and was a humanities professor at Clarkson College of Technology (now Clarkson University) in Potsdam, New York. He left the academic world for the more lucrative role of pornographic film director. In the documentary Inside Deep Throat, Craven says on camera he made "many X-rated films" under pseudonyms, learning his directing craft. While his role in Deep Throat is undisclosed, most of his early known work involved writing, film editing or both. In 1972 Wes Craven directed his first feature film The Last House on the Left.
  
  wn.com/Wes_Craven
• William Brent Bell
  William Brent Bell is an American screenwriter and film director.
  Bell was born in Lexington, Kentucky. In 1999, Bell wrote and directed his first feature, Sparkle and Charm. In 2000, along with writing partner Matthew Peterman, Bell wrote screenplay Mercury, which was bought by Universal Studios with Gale Anne Hurd producing.
  Since then, Bell and Peterman have set up several film projects at studios. Some include Ignition, a kid’s action-drama set up at Warner Bros. with Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn producing and Illusion, a thriller set up at Walt Disney Pictures. On the television side the duo have created several one-hour TV series including Eye to Eye with Warner Bros. Television and McG, Worthy and McGraw with ABC Television and Tim Minear as well as The Fix with Sarah Timberman and Sony Television. Bell and Peterman have also developed a number of videogames including Master Thief, with John Woo.
  Bell's most recent project is as co-writer and director of the horror thriller, Stay Alive, which was produced with McG and Peter Schlessel and financed by Spyglass Entertainment and Endgame Entertainment. Stay Alive was acquired and distributed domestically by Buena Vista Pictures and internationally by Universal Pictures. He directed The Devil Inside, his second horror film, written with Matt Peterman. He is currently working on his third horror film, Wer.
  
  wn.com/William_Brent_Bell
• William Castle
  William Castle (April 24, 1914 – May 31, 1977) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. Castle was known for directing films with many gimmicks which were ambitiously promoted, despite being reasonably low budget B-movies.
  William Castle was born William Schloss in New York City to a Jewish family. Schloss is German for "castle", and Castle chose to translate his surname into English to use as his pseudonym. Orphaned at the age of 11, he would drop out of high school and spend most of his teenage years working on Broadway in a number of jobs ranging from set building to acting. This stood him in good stead when he became a director, and he left for Hollywood at the age of 23, going on to direct his first film six years later. He also worked an as assistant to director Orson Welles, doing much of the second unit location work for Welles' noir classic, The Lady from Shanghai.
  Castle began directing films in the early 1940s, and later television, before moving on to the "gimmick films". Five of these were scripted by adventure novelist Robb White. Two of his films have been remade by his daughter Terry Ann Castle who served as Co-Producer, House on Haunted Hill in 1999, and Thirteen Ghosts in 2001 (the latter retitled Thir13en Ghosts).
  
  wn.com/William_Castle

Horror Film (2012)

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• Comedy
• Horror
• Short
• Thriller

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