gordon hessler
gordon hessler: i must say that wilfred josephs' music held the picture up, it made it more mysterious .
presents this exclusive new interview with director gordon hessler. mr. hessler was kind enough to meet me in person to discuss the four films he did for american international pictures - -
gordon hessler was born in germany, the son of a danish mother and an english father. educated in england, he moved to the us while in his late teens and spent several years working in documentaries. at universal ,
i guess because i had an english accent
, hessler was placed under contract to
gordon hessler, the british feature film and television director, passed away in his sleep on sunday, january 19, 2014 after an undisclosed illness. he was 88, although most sources erroneously list him as being born in 1930. the news was confirmed by douglas dunning of cinema epoch, who was a good friend of mr. hessler’s. in addition to director, mr. hessler was also a screenwriter and a producer .
gordon hessler: she made some very well known pictures. again, that was deke heyward' s idea. she was marvelous, out of her depths and aged at the time, and playing a very strange part. but she gave it her everything .
gordon hessler: hilary dwyer was almost under contract. i don' t know what the situation was, but they liked her and they kept pushing you to use certain actors. i guess the management must have thought she was star material or something like that .
gordon hessler: yes, it would be 1. 85. by that time we were composing the films that way, but we were also conscious of the television ratio. we had to be careful because the soundman would always dip his microphone into the picture frame .
gordon hessler: yeah, it was a gift you know. the gift of hiring the person who had researched all the stuff for a richard burton picture, or a big universal picture of some kind. he would understand the authenticity of what you were trying to do .
gordon hessler, the british - born director who was best known for his horror films but who had a longer career as a producer and director of american episodic television, died on january 19 at the age of 87. although mainstream outlets have yet to announce hessler’s death, it has been confirmed by his wife yvonne (via historian tom weaver) and a friend .
– something of a comedown from the prestigious association with hitchcock .) hessler worked on the first season of
( 1978). (oddly, a fangoria post with tributes to hessler from two kiss members appeared ahead of any confirmation of his death .) of the episodic work, hessler contributed to some good shows :
in its final (1966 - 1967) season, under executive producer gordon oliver. at least two of those, “the fatal mistake” and “blind man’s bluff, ” were english - flavored suspense pieces that deliberately sought to recapture the
below is an image taken of mr. hessler’s last appearance at the new beverly, with cinema proprietor michael torgan .
de sade with keir dullea is one of mr. hessler’s weirdest films. panned by many but i enjoyed it .
i would also add that, frustratingly, i could not verify which episodes of the chrysler theater hessler produced, beyond the two mentioned above. hessler was at the outset one of four producers working under gordon oliver on just the fourth season ‘s 21 dramatic segments (the comedies were produced by people drawn from bob hope’s camp), the other three being jack laird, stanley chase, and ron roth. later bert mulligan joined the rotation. math would suggest that hessler handled at least one to three other segments (unless perhaps mulligan replaced him ?). does anyone out there have that information ?
gordon hessler: well, i' m sure he was, he was very careful with money. what aip would do was probably give him a very liberal expense account per week so he could stay at the best hotels. he stayed in tiny little rooming houses, so i' m sure he was spending the rest of the money on art. deke was buying art too .
gordon hessler: lilli palmer had a big part. she was vital to the plot and by cutting her scenes down, it was like she was an extra in the film. i don' t know what she must have thought when she saw it, she must have been astounded. she' s a fantastic actress when you think about all the films she' s done .
gordon hessler: i always got along well with him. he was very politically adept at handling things at aip. he would protect you from [ sam ] arkoff and [ james ] nicholson because they' d come into town and stay at the savoy hotel, and then they' d go in to discuss the picture, or they would see the finished product and make their suggestions .
gordon hessler: i think they were upset with murders in the rue morgue, at least i suspected that. aip started to disintegrate after that point. when arkoff received my letter concerning my thoughts on rue morgue, i' m sure he wasn' t too pleased with it, although it was a reasonable letter i thought. but again, we had great fun making those pictures .
the end of the war meant that hessler was entering the workforce just as thousands of servicemen came home to reclaim their old jobs. while still in the army, hessler knocked on doors in the film industry, working as an extra (somewhere in the background of
, to star clint walker and suzanne pleshette. that production was cancelled at the last minute and hessler moved immediately to another indie ,
hessler also directed theater productions in his spare time. but at universal, competent producers were in shorter supply than directors, and the studio consistently (and rather cruelly) blocked hessler’s attempts to transition into directing, even though he made it clear to anyone who would listen that that was his goal. following harrison’s departure in 1963, hessler was promoted to producer, but even then he was seen as a junior staffer, subordinate not only to lloyd (now the showrunner, and with whom hessler had a good and lasting relationship; he cast lloyd in his final film ,
were adaptations of short stories, and as “story editor” hessler was essentially a glorified reader. he did talk his way into directing a single hitchcock episode in 1961, as well as some actors’ screen tests for universal. hessler didn’t get a regular screen credit until 1962, when the series expanded into
gordon hessler: yes, deke heyward was a wonderful character, literally running aip in london, which was where they were making all their movies at the time. they had a staff in los angeles, but they weren' t making any movies, and of course they were very jealous of that london department. deke had a tiny office and since he collected art, he had all these paintings as well as an organ there (laughs) .
gordon hessler: herbert lom is a character actor anyway, so he fitted right into the part. jason robards was hired by aip because of his name, and he was quite well respected. most actors like to play a horror part at some point in their life, so he was brought onboard. he was fine to work with, but about two weeks into the picture, he said ,
gordon, i' m doing the wrong part, i should be doing the other part .
i said ,
jason, you' re the star, you could' ve chosen any part you wanted, you just had to ask for it !
it' s always the monster who gets the best part in a horror picture, it' s much more juicy .
at this point during our 1997 interview i started counting on my fingers, because every reference source gave hessler’s date of birth as december 12, 1930. hessler conceded that, having sensed the film industry’s potential for ageism early on, he had subtracted four years from his age at the start of his career .
“i hated the studio system, ” hessler told me flatly. “i was not cut out for it. i liked to freelance. ” leaving universal in 1967
hessler was born in berlin, to an english mother and a danish father, in 1926. his father died when he was three and hessler, whose first language was german (but only “kinderdeutsch, ” he said), moved back to england with his mother as “things got a little steamy there” in germany. as a teenager he studied aeronautical engineering, and “at the tail end” of world war ii he was conscripted into the british army, although the war ended before hessler saw combat .
hessler, with his sheepish grin and self - effacing air, was a genial and always accessible friend to film historians. he came across as so quintessential an english gentleman to americans that i fear hessler’s quiet ambition, and his attitudinal kinship with the “angry young man” generation of his countrymen, have been overlooked in accounts of his career .
fordel films employed some fellow english expatriates, and hessler worked his way up to “running the company, [ as ] sort of a vice president of directing pictures, ” hessler said. he made documentaries in atlanta (about the school system) and annapolis (about st. john’s college). the tv listings of the may 20, 1956 edition of
hessler was out of work for a year before mca, which was expanding in conjunction with its acquisition of universal studios, hired him in june of 1958, initially as an assistant to story editor mae livingston. he became one of four or five people who “floated around the lot, ” assigned to various producers (including, in hessler’s case, former
hessler worked as an editor first for a company called films for industry and then for fordel films, in the bronx. “i had no formal education on editing, ” said hessler, who scrambled to learn the trade from anyone who would show him. the first film he was assigned was directed by jack arnold, who would soon go to hollywood to make pictures like
flavor, and thus bore hessler’s clear fingerprints. he also got to direct “blind man’s bluff” – it was his second episodic television credit as director, only six years after the first .
than any other series, perhaps a definitive signal that hessler’s enthusiasm and good taste didn’t align with first - rate opportunities as often as he, or his admirers, might have hoped .
gordon hessler: well no, that' s not true actually. you see, they have wonderful costumes in england. when they would make a classic period film, something like a shakespeare film with richard burton, all those costumes that were made would go back to the rental house, and they' re ready to be rented. and of course you' d get them for practically nothing, so we got all the best costumes. you couldn' t get that in hollywood rental places, everything they had was just awful. mgm studios had their own costume place, but the rental houses in hollywood had nothing .
on a personal note, hessler was one of the first people i interviewed at length when i was a film school undergraduate in los angeles. he invited me up to his lovely home overlooking sunset boulevard not once, but twice, enduring many of the same questions a second time after i discovered that a mysterious tape recorder malfunction wiped out most of the first go - round. gordon also generously brokered introductions to norman lloyd and ray bradbury, both of whom i suspect would otherwise have been inaccessible to me at that point. how, i ask, can you not hold in special esteem the person who brings ray bradbury into your life ?
gordon hessler: oh, marvelous, he was a marvelous man, highly intelligent. i remember at shepperton studios, during the oblong box, we had an african prince who was the head of this tribe. so we put them in the film for this dance sequence. i asked vincent if he wouldn' t mind having lunch with this african prince, or king, or whatever he was. you know, most actors always talk about themselves; vincent was completely the opposite. he talked to him about african art, and all about the various art he knew about and so on. i was just stunned at the conversation and his knowledge. what a unique man .
gordon hessler: i got on very well with christopher lee. he became even more talented as he moved on in his career. i was quite surprised at how good he was in certain movies. when you' re shooting, you' re so busy and you never really get to know the actors very well. you meet them and they get a sense of what you want, and then you don' t see them again because they' re off doing another picture. i think that the thing with a horror picture is that you have to convince your actors to believe in what they' re doing. you really have to get embellished in it and enjoy it .
gordon hessler: well, he never really understood scream and scream again. i don' t think he liked it. he was very upset that he wasn' t in murders in the rue morgue, but i had nothing to with that. i really don' t know the contractual details though. i know that when we did cry of the banshee, he was very upset with aip. when we had the wrap party, he didn' t want to come if arkoff was there. i told him that i wouldn' t dream of having the party without him. so he came, and of course he was quite drunk. it was most embarrassing (laughs) .
gordon hessler: i imagine it was a contractual tiff of some kind. i never knew what it was about exactly. these after - picture parties are usually so boring, so i requested that everyone dress in costumes, we had hundreds of these period costumes left over. i wanted everybody in costume, including arkoff and nicholson. i think we had a naked (or semi naked) girl pop out of a huge cake. but vincent really didn' t want to come if arkoff was there. he did finally agree, and when we were looking for the knife to cut the cake, vincent said ,
take the knife that' s in my back and use that !
drawing - room suspense niche. this, his second feature, was filmed at the end of 1967 but released two years later. by that time, hessler had taken a job at aip, in what at first appeared to be another staff producing role. happily, it evolved into an opportunity to direct a series of english horror pictures that starred the genre icons of the day: vincent price, christopher lee, peter cushing. those four films became the works for which hessler is best remembered :
gordon hessler: well, spain was a very cheap place to film. hollywood made a great deal of their large pictures in spain, where you could get the crowds cheaply and horses, etc. all the david lean pictures for columbia were being made in spain. you would bring in a skeleton crew - - either from hollywood or london - - and the rest was a very elaborate, well - trained spanish crew, and they would give you anything you wanted. we shot that in toledo, and the streets there are so similar to paris. you couldn' t shoot that in london unless you built sets. we just shut down toledo when we made tha, and shot in the streets and in this theater - - it was a very french - looking theater. so that' s why i chose that .
gordon hessler: well, they didn' t know what the film was about and were always questioning what i was doing. the editor kept assuring them that everything was fine, but they didn' t quite know what they had as a picture. i' m sure they were a little queasy when that film came out because arkoff had to try and sell it. we knew we had a good film. it was different. it was a science fiction film really, but the thing is, although the pulp book was very badly written, once chris wicking had put the nucleus of that idea into it, it elevated the whole picture and made it much more interesting. but all these pictures were made so quickly with so little money, i think we shot that in three or four weeks. but we had fun making it .
although he directed clusters of little - known features in both the early seventies and late eighties, hessler spent much of the time in between directing american episodic television and movies of the week. of the latter, the best known fall, fittingly, into the horror genre: 1973’s
gordon hessler: it' s amazing. deke was the one who put that animation in, always being way in advance of everyone else. about the music, i suspect that les baxter was a great friend of somebody high up at aip and was doing scores for them at the time. perhaps he or someone else saw it and criticized the music, so they were advised to change it. wilfred josep hs is perhaps not the greatest composer in the world, but he certainly did a good job. the music is very important to these movies, and to take it off after spending so much money was a huge decision by somebody. but to have les baxter do a kind of period picture where you have minuet dancing and that sort of thing, it' s ludicrous. you really have to have somebody who has an idea of that time period .
gordon hessler: no, i was only on it shortly on a production level. then i was totally concentrated on this horror picture, which is kind of a formula script. the way they worked, i assume, because hammer worked the same way, is they' d have a poster drawn with their star in it and present it to the distributor as their next picture. the script was then written around that. it happened to be an english writer / director who had written the script, lawrence huntington. i never met him, it was just a script that arrived. christopher wicking was brought in originally by michael reeves, and that' s how i met him. wicking did an enormous amount of re - writing on the oblong box. so my association with him began as a result of working on this film together. then he worked on all the pictures that i did for aip .
under the legendary director’s banner. the hands - on producers were joan harrison, who was english, and new jersey - born norman lloyd, whose mid - atlantic erudition was so cultivated that he was often taken for an englishman. hessler assumed that he got the job simply because his accent fit in .
. like the chrysler theatre s, this carried some dna from his hitchcock gig: the film was based on a novel – jay bennett’s catacombs – that had been rejected for hitchcock, and hessler brought in joel murcott, one of the series’ regular writers, to do an uncredited rewrite of daniel mainwaring’s screenplay. )
, he lurks) and talking his way into a meeting with alexander korda’s right - hand man. but he observed that “there was a depression in england in the film business. it was pretty tough – you couldn’t get financing. ” hessler opted to emigrate to the united states, figuring he’d have a better chance to break into filmmaking there .
gordon hessler: no, he hated the project and he loathed the script. of course, it was a big comedown because he was going to do the biggest picture they had before he got sick, and then he was to do this standard horror picture. when i met with him, he was doing electric shock treatment. i was staggered! i assumed he had some sort of mental health problems of some kind, i don' t know what it was. i never got to know him that well. he was very talented, extremely talented. witchfinder general is a wonderful picture. i didn' t really meet with him that much because gradually, he just couldn' t do the oblong box. eventually i took the whole project over and directed and produced it. aip didn' t care at the time about this picture because they were too involved with all the production problems of de sade. that film, we moved it from munich to berlin to shoot. so i actually went to berlin for two or three works before going to england to do the oblong box .
his last film, journey of honor (1991), was released on laserdisc here in the states. it was also known under the titles of kabuto, mayeda, and shogun warrior. below is a photo of mr. hessler next to douglas dunning and sho kosugi at the world premiere of the film, which was titled shogun mayeda, in january 1991 .
gordon hessler: i really didn' t get to know him because he was put into the picture. that was deke heyward' s idea. deke would try to find some well known actor to dress up the picture - - who at least americans would be familiar with - - which was a good idea. he did the same thing with lilli palmer in murders in the rue morgue. when i was doing the aip pictures, i tried to keep a stable of actors and give them different roles. they were so wonderful, and they had to work for practically nothing. since i was producing and directing, i had to go to the actors and tell them that i could only offer them so much, and that they could take it or leave it. it' s not that i was in a situation to bargain with them. i just didn' t have it in the budget. when you only have £70, 000 and you' re working in a large studio, everybody else got screwed - - these actors. hopefully they get some residuals of some kind, i' m not sure .
when hitchcock went off the air in 1965, hessler was still under contract to universal and left more or less to fend for himself in terms of attaching himself to existing shows or developing new properties and getting the studio to green - light them. (lloyd found himself in a similar limbo, and ended up producing a few early made - for - tv movies and some episodes of
. “i couldn’t put the thing together! ” hessler remembered. “the film looked awful. i went to the optical lab and said, ‘you’ve got to help me. it’s my first picture. ’ they said, ‘jack arnold shot the whole thing incorrectly. he didn’t know what he was doing. ’ all the pieces were facing the wrong way. all i could do to make it work was flip the film. ”
“i was making really a tremendous amount of money at that time for a young guy, and i gave it all up to come to los angeles, ” hessler recalled. “i’d had awards with my documentaries. i thought, ‘god, this is going to be easy, taking these pictures and showing them to [ executives ]. ’ nobody was slightest bit interested in even looking at them! no matter what awards i’d won. ”
in new york, he took a night shift job at an automat (possibly the famous horn and hardart) while looking for movie work during the day. warner - pathe news hired him as a driver, “which was perfect for me, ” hessler said. “i took the film to all the editors, and each editor i met, [ i’d ask ], ‘could you hire me? ’ finally i got hired in the documentary business. ”
“i was so arrogant in those days, ” laughed hessler, who felt keenly the generational divide between himself and the established producers and directors for whom he worked. “i was assigned to paul henreid as sort of a gofer. they’d say to look after him, so i would go over there, take him to lunch, and make sure he had everything. i thought, ‘oh, god, when can i get away from this old duffer? ’
gordon hessler: well, the oblong box was very successful for them. they were in tremendous trouble with de sade. they didn' t get along with cy endfield and all sorts of other problems existed. it was the greatest piece of luck that i was fired from it. when i did the oblong box, they left me alone, there was nobody there. the day i started, nicholson came on the set and said ,
good luck .
that' s it, and he was off. that film was made for £70, 000, which is about $ 250, 000. at shepperton studios, you could shoot from 8 am until about 4 pm because of the union. if you wanted to do overtime, you' d have to let them know by lunchtime that you were going to take it one more hour. and only if all the union leaders agreed would they go along with it. it was a very tough assignment to shoot and get finished. actually, when we were finishing it, i had three or four more days left. they [ aip ] said ,
look, we like what you' re doing, take an extra week. can' t you make this bigger ?
this never happened to me before, so i was happy with the situation and i took an extra week at the studios and built up certain sequences. i can' t remember which, but whatever we were shooting, we elaborated on it. and the film did very well for them .
gordon hessler: he' s a highly intelligent fellow, very witty. he' s a wonderful guy. on scream and scream again, he did extraordinary work on the script. that was really a pulp book, a throwaway book that you read on a train. there was nothing in it, just empty pieces of action. but it was chris who gave it a whole new level by using it as a political process of what might happen in the future. that is what made the picture, he' s the one that came up with all those ideas, yet he still managed to keep the nuances of the sort of pulp fiction novel. he was a fine writer, i thought. he had some very good ideas. it' s funny because we never thought much of those films. they were just formula pictures as far as we were concerned, but we enjoyed making them. the problem was what do you do with a script, how do you solve a problem? cry of the banshee had the same problem. we got the script from aip - - somebody had written it and sent it to us, and we were asked to make it. the film was sold and we had to have it finished by a certain time. chris wicking and i went to scotland to make a whole different picture about witches. the whole of aip got so alarmed because we were changing it so much. they came down on us and said that we could alter it 10 percent, but no more than that. so all of our work went down the drain on cry of the banshee. out of all the films i did for aip, i think it' s the least interesting .
gordon hessler: i' m amazed that mgm had the instinct to do this version of it after so many years. i was appalled when i originally saw the theatrically released version. i wrote a five - page letter to arkoff. i knew it was his picture and he could do what he wanted with it, but i asked him to do certain things so it would at least make more sense. but by that time, it was already out and released. there' s another film that i did - - which i feel very strongly about - - called girl on a swing that was terribly mauled. it' s awful what miramax did. they spliced ten or 15 minutes out of it, and it didn' t make any sense. we all wanted to take our name off of that picture. in my contract, they had to give me a 35mm print of the original version - - it' s the only one in existence. but as far as murders in the rue morgue, it seems that someone at mgm is doing some researching or something, releasing my cut of the film. this cable tv version - - which i haven' t yet seen - - is apparently the original. i remember the flashbacks were originally never tinted, but aip tinted them for the theatrical release. the whole idea was not to tint them so that you wouldn' t know when you' re more or less in a dream sequence or just being puzzled by it. the whole trick in that was instead of it being a flashback, this would be a flash - forward, which people really hadn' t done before at that time. it was a premonition of what was going to happen. when it' s tinted, it' s just so obvious. audiences picked up on it immediately .
gordon hessler: i was asked to produce a film, de sade, for aip while i was in los angeles that was taking place in munich, germany. i flew into london and met the writer, and the director was supposed to be there, but he never showed up. he didn' t come to the meeting; he was sick or something like that. having met the writer, i flew to munich to set up the film about eight weeks before they were going to start shooting. i was there preparing the production and then i was told that the original director was not going to make the picture. so we waited for a while, and finally the american director who did zulu, cy endfield, came in to do it. this was a big picture for aip, which usually made very cheap pictures, and i was an outsider. i was not an employee, just a freelance director. my position got very shaky there, even though i was very friendly with everybody. i was actually fired from the job because the local people employed by aip wanted to produce the picture rather than have an outsider like me. but they did give me a consolation. they said ,
look, we want to put you on another picture in ireland and you can produce that .
so, i thought that was fine as it was going to be a horror picture shot in ireland. they sent me to ireland, i looked at the facilities, and decided to bring the production to london, at shepperton studios. i had a pretty free hand because everybody was concentrating on de sade at the time. and michael reeves, who was supposed to direct that picture, was to direct this one, the oblong box. he was on it for a short while, but then he got sick. he must have been already sick with some mental health problems .
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although he was born and raised in england, he and his family moved to the united states during his adolescence. he got behind the camera for a series of short films and then progressed to documentaries before working for universal studios as a story reader and story editor on alfred hitchcock presents .
he got into feature filmmaking with the woman who wouldn’t die (1965), the last shot you hear (1969), and a series of well - known horror films: the oblong box (1968), scream and scream again (1970), cry of the banshee (1970), and murders in the rue morgue (1971). the golden voyage of sinbad followed in 1974, along with much television work such as the strange possession of mrs. oliver (1977) and the infamous kiss meets the phantom of the park (1978) .
arguably considered to be his best work (yours truly agrees) is his often maligned 1988 film adaptation of richard adam’s 1980 novel the girl in a swing, a romantic ghost story which stars meg tilly in the title role and rupert frazier as the man who falls for her. the film was released unrated here in the states by millimeter films, a subsidiary of miramax, and received a vhs and laserdisc release. truncated and marred by the addition of a voiceover by actor frazer in an effort to fill in the blanks, the uncut version has remained largely unseen. it is my hope that it finds its way to blu - ray and is rediscovered by a new generation of fans who have never heard of it because it deserves to be seen .
can anyone provide a uk release date for the oblong box. cheers, rob
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himself / himself - director,' scream and scream again' / himself - director / ...
[ talking about working with actor hugh griffith ] hugh was a terrific guy, and he was in a number of big pictures, too, like
tom jones
. but at the time (of filming
cry of the banshee
), he was an alcoholic, and a person would have to assist him on the set and make sure that he didn' t receive any alcohol, otherwise he' d be drinking the whole time. a great shame .
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- / / w3c / / dtd xhtml 1. 0 transitional / / en
urltoken
) and tasked with coming up with ideas for series to pitch to the networks .
– which meant that he had to start binge - reading novels instead of short stories .
, twenty - some years later) but to various other studio producers who were assigned batches of hitchcock episodes during the final two seasons .
( “the spanish moss murders”) that is routinely cited as the best of its twenty episodes. but he directed more for
i had the great pleasure of watching “the spanish moss murders” the night of its original broadcast, which along with the original abc movie of the week “don’t be afraid of the dark” turned me into a lifelong horror junkie .
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george reis: there are often rumors that you actually directed parts of de sade. is that true ?
george reis: most critics say that about cry of the banshee, but i quite enjoy it .
george reis: when you say that they didn' t want the script altered, who did you report to, louis m .
deke
heyward ?
george reis: obviously they were happy with you, as you continued to wor k with them .
george reis: you often used the same actors and actresses in your aip films, such as hilary dwyer .
george reis: i' m sure you' re aware that your director' s cut of murders in the rue morgue has been restored and remastered by mgm and recently aired on u. s. cable tv .
george reis: aip also removed a lot of lilli palmer' s scenes .
george reis: murders in the rue morgue was shot in spain. why did aip decide to do it there rather than england ?
george reis: scream and scream again is an extraordinary film, very different from the typical poe / price cycle. was aip happy with it ?
george reis: you had christopher lee in small parts in the oblong box and scream and scream again. how did you get along with him ?
george reis: you also worked with peter cushing in scream and scream again .
george reis: in cry of the banshee, you had elisabeth bergner who was a silent film star .
george reis: did you know that the american version of cry of the banshee was severely altered? for instance, terry gilliam' s opening animation sequence was removed and the wilfred josephs score was replaced with one by les baxter. mgm home video thankfully released the uncut british version on vhs and i take it they will eventually do the same on dvd .
george reis: was banshee lower - budgeted that the other aip films you did? i always heard that they re - used costumes from another film .
george reis: the films you did in england had an authentic look to them .
george reis: in victoria price' s book about her father, you were quoted as saying that you didn' t think vincent understood the films you did with him. what did you mean by that ?
george reis: when your aip films come out on dvd, they will be presented in the 1. 85: 1 aspect ratio. is this the true ratio you were shooting in ?
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gordon hessler ( 12 december 1925 – 19 january 2014 ) was a british film and television director , screenwriter , and producer . born in berlin , germany , he was raised in england and studied at the university of reading . while a teenager , he moved to the united states and directed a series of short films and documentaries . universal studios hired hessler as a story reader for the alfred hitchcock presents television series . he became story editor for two seasons ( 1960 – 1962 ) for that series , then served as the associate producer for the alfred hitchcock hour from 1962 until its cancellation in 1965 . he directed episodes of that series and several other shows , including hawaii five-o and sara . in 1969 , he directed his debut feature film , the oblong box , starring vincent price . it was the first of three horror films hessler would direct with the veteran horror star , the other two being cry of the banshee ( 1970 ) and scream and scream again ( 1970 ) . hessler 's other films include murders in the rue morgue ( 1971 ) , the golden voyage of sinbad ( 1974 ) , kiss meets the phantom of the park ( 1978 ) , pray for death ( 1985 ) and the girl in a swing ( 1988 ) starring meg tilly , an adaptation of richard adams 's ghost story novel . the majority of hessler 's directorial work from the late 1970s on was in television . hessler died in his sleep on 19 january 2014 . 
gordon hessler (12 december 1925 – 19 january 2014) was a british film and television director, screenwriter, and producer. born in berlin, germany, he was raised in england and studied at the university of reading. while a teenager, he moved to the united states and directed a series of short films and documentaries. universal studios hired hessler as a story reader for the alfred hitchcock presents television series. he became story editor for two seasons (1960 – 1962) for that series, then served as the associate producer for the alfred hitchcock hour from 1962 until its cancellation in 1965. he directed episodes of that series and several other shows, including hawaii five-o and sara. in 1969, he directed his debut feature film, the oblong box, starring vincent price. it was the first of three horror films hessler would direct with the veteran horror star, the other two being cry of the banshee (1970) and scream and scream again (1970). hessler's other films include murders in the rue morgue (1971), the golden voyage of sinbad (1974), kiss meets the phantom of the park (1978), pray for death (1985) and the girl in a swing (1988) starring meg tilly, an adaptation of richard adams's ghost story novel. the majority of hessler's directorial work from the late 1970s on was in television. hessler died in his sleep on 19 january 2014.
gordon hessler (12 december 1925 – 19 january 2014) was a british film and television director, screenwriter, and producer. born in berlin, germany, he was raised in england and studied at the university of reading. while a teenager, he moved to the united states and directed a series of short films and documentaries. universal studios hired hessler as a story reader for the alfred hitchcock presents television series. he became story editor for two seasons (1960 – 1962) for that series, then served as the associate producer for the alfred hitchcock hour from 1962 until its cancellation in 1965. he directed episodes of that series and several other shows, including hawaii five-o and sara. in 1969, he directed his debut feature film, the oblong box, starring vincent price. it was the first of three horror films hessler would direct with the veteran horror star, the other two being cry of the banshee (1970) and scream and scream again (1970). hessler's other films include murders in the rue morgue (1971), the golden voyage of sinbad (1974), kiss meets the phantom of the park (1978), pray for death (1985) and the girl in a swing (1988) starring meg tilly, an adaptation of richard adams's ghost story novel. the majority of hessler's directorial work from the late 1970s on was in television. hessler died in his sleep on 19 january 2014.