Richard Gordon (1925-2011) was a prolific and much respected film producer who was most closely associated with horror and science fiction cinema. Born in London, he moved to America with his brother Alex in 1947 where they both became involved in the genre film industry. Richard Gordon was initially active as a distributor via his company Gordon Films before working with Bela Lugosi on
Mother Riley Meets the Vampire (1952) and Boris Karloff on T
he Haunted Strangler (1958). Meanwhile, Alex Gordon worked with AIP on
The Day the World Ended (1955) whilst developing independent projects like
The Atomic Submarine (1959) and Ed Wood’s
Bride of the Monster (1955).
Richard Gordon stayed close to horror throughout his career as a producer. In the 1970s he worked with Antony Balch on
Secrets of Sex (1969/70) and
Horror Hospital (1973) before producing Norman J. Warren’s
Inseminoid (1981). In his later years, Gordon Films continued as a distribution company and was also active in developing DVD releases. Gordon recorded various commentary tracks, often with writer Tom Weaver who published the book
The Horror Hits of Richard Gordon in 2011.
I first met Richard at the Manchester Festival of Fantastic Films where he was a regular guest. At the 2005 festival he graciously took some time out to conduct the following interview. This was originally intended for a magazine project that never really got off the ground. Thankfully, after some correspondence with Richard and a few adjustments here and there, a version of the text was eventually published in
Scary Monsters Magazine #66 (Spring 2008).
Every Richard Gordon interview and article will tell you what a gentleman he was. Certainly, my conversations and correspondence with him affirmed this. Not least because he patiently fielded my fumbling questions as if he was being asked about his career for the first time. What also struck me was his immense enthusiasm for the horror genre and admiration for the film-makers and actors he had worked with. During the 2005 festival I went along with him to see
Terror in the Tropics (2006), an awful public domain hatchet job that sought to make a ‘new’ film out of films like
The Devil Bat (1940) and
The Most Dangerous Game (1932). For most of the audience this was nothing but an end of festival time-waster. For Richard Gordon this kind of project was somehow… disrespectful.
My thanks to Dennis Druktenis, editor of
Scary Monsters, for permission to reproduce this interview here.
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James Riley: The film I've often heard you associated with is
Fiend Without a Face (1958).
Richard Gordon: Yes, that seems to be the longest living film among the pictures I've made, it’s become a cult movie favourite.
Riley: Alex Cox has said that, for the time, Fiend was considered a relatively gory film, especially in the final attack sequence and the whole idea of a monster that basically sucks out the brains of its victims. Were you intentionally pushing the envelope a bit?
Gordon: Yeah, we were aware of the fact that we were pushing the boundaries somewhat, but we felt that the film needed it in order to have the proper effect. In the event, we didn't really have any problems with it except that when the picture opened in London there was something of an outcry by the press. They said that it was too violent and that some of the scenes in it, like the ones you described, were disgusting. One newspaper actually wrote an article saying that it was time that British films stopped imitating American low budget movies and that somebody should do something about it. An MP, I forget who it was, raised a question about it. Of course, nothing ever happened but all the publicity of all that which helped to promote the movie. We didn't actually have to cut anything out of the movie for the British censor or for that matter the American censor and it did very well right from the beginning.
It was made to go as a co-feature for another film I was making at the time called
Grip of the Strangler with Boris Karloff, which in America was called the
Haunted Strangler. In those days, everything was double feature programming. I had set up the Haunted Strangler with Boris Karloff and had made a deal with a British distribution company called Eros Films. They helped to finance it and were going to distribute it in the UK. However, they said that in order to get the most out of it, they really needed a second picture to go with it. I didn't have anything and they said they could put it with one of their own pictures but that would involve splitting the film rental. So I said that I’d produce another picture and then put them out as a package. They agreed, and so I found the story for
Fiend Without a Face and decided to make that as a second feature. As it turned out over the years it achieved a cult following and ended up being very successful on its own.
Riley: Did you see it as part of your role as producer to actively ‘push the boundaries’ of acceptability?
Gordon: Well, yes but actually Hammer were the ones who started it. When Hammer went into horror films with
Curse of Frankenstein (1958) and
Horror of Dracula (1959), they were the ones who really pushed the envelope, creating a whole new form of horror film with much more explicit blood and violence. They were so successful with it I think it was logical for people like myself to try and follow in their footsteps and keep up so we wouldn't look like we weren't able to achieve the same level of production quality.
Riley: And yet the production quality that your films did achieve was one that seemed still to rely on the unseen despite a general move within the genre towards graphic violence. I mean, the sense of invisibility is right there in the title
Fiend Without a Face and
Horror Hospital, for example, seems to draw heavily an atmosphere of horror just as much as it focuses on visualised horror. Did you consciously try to keep a balance in your films between explicit material and more suggestive, implied elements?
Gordon: Yes, I was always in favour, in all the films I made, of being suggestive about some of the horror elements. It was Hammer who started the wave of making films so explicit with everything flung in your face. I always thought it was much more interesting and much more frightening if you suggest the horror rather than just throw it on the screen, where everybody knows it’s fake anyway. I try to find a balance between the two things.
Horror Hospital was of course intended as a tongue in cheek movie but in
Tower of Evil (1972) which was far more explicit than most other horror pictures of its time, I tried to also to make the unseen horror and the suggestiveness of it more effective that it would have been otherwise. I didn't want to be labelled a copycat of Hammer and be seen to be going exactly the same route as they were going.
Riley: I’m guessing that the Universal atmospherics and the suggestiveness of something like the Browning / Lugosi
Dracula (1931) had an influence on your work?
Gordon: I was always a great admirer as a kid of the Universal horror films from the 1930s:
Dracula,
Frankenstein (1931),
The Mummy (1932),
The Old Dark House (1932) those kind of pictures, all of which were more suggestive and I thought that was what makes these kind of pictures really interesting.
Riley: Could you speak a little about your own association with Lugosi?
Gordon: My association with Lugosi came about when I first emigrated to the United States in 1947 with my brother. In my most early days in New York we had been asked by British fan magazines to write some articles and interviews with American actors and send then back to England. We weren't getting paid much for it and so couldn't afford to get to Hollywood and get hold of any of the major stars, but whenever some interesting actor was in New York either promoting a film or appearing on-stage we would try and get and interview and do something. Lugosi was touring in a revival of
Arsenic and Old Lace, which is in a way funny because Karloff created that character on Broadway and was a huge success with it.
Lugosi was appearing just after I arrived in New York in a small town outside the city called Seacliff, Long Island. My brother and I went out there to see it and managed to see him backstage for an interview. He was extremely friendly, very co-operative, very helpful and we got to be friends. He was living in New York at the time having given up on Hollywood and we kept in touch. A year or two later he was without an agent. He had a manger but he didn't do anything much for him. He asked me if I could possibly do something for him and he would be glad to have me as his manager. He was interested in doing a stage revival of
Dracula he acknowledged that there was no Broadway interest and he suggested that that I could maybe set up a revival tour in England. If it was a success in England, Broadway would then be interested and the show could come back to perform there. I tried my best to do it and eventually succeeded in setting up the tour which was to begin in Brighton and eventually perform in the West End of London.
Unfortunately, it wasn't a success. Firstly it was a very cheap production and Bela was already really too old for the part and wasn't in the best of health. It closed before it came to the West End which meant that there was no chance of playing on Broadway. When the tour closed and Bela was more or less stranded in England with his wife, I put together a deal for him to appear in the movie
Mother Riley Meets the Vampire (1952), which seemed to be the only thing available where I could get him some money quickly which would enable him to return to the United States. And that was my association with him, managing his affairs for two, two and a half years. After
Mother Riley he returned to Hollywood and I never really saw him again, but my brother who was by then working in Hollywood producing pictures for American International, kept up the relationship and was more or less friends with him until he died.
Riley: I believe your brother, Alex, was also involved with Ed Wood during this period.
Gordon: Yes, Alex was involved with Ed Wood. When he went out to Hollywood he was trying to put together some productions before his AIP work. Sam Arkoff (who was to become head of AIP) had Ed Wood as a client and suggested to Alex that they should meet and they could maybe do something together. Alex and Ed became friends and it was Alex who introduced Ed Wood to Lugosi and that was how that whole thing came about. My brother wrote the story for
Bride of the Monster and also another picture, not with Lugosi but one that Ed Wood directed, called
Jailbait, (1954) in which Steve Reeves made his screen debut in a small supporting role.
Riley: After your period of management with Lugosi did you then concentrate on mainly British based films?
Gordon: Yes, all the films I ever made were made in England. I set up a British Production company called Producer’s Associates Limited. I came back to England on trips to make the pictures. Previous to this I had done co-productions on behalf of other people but the first two I made on my own were
Grip of the Strangler/Haunted Strangler and
Fiend Without a Face. I then had an agreement with Karloff that we had an option on his services for a second feature. After we had made
Haunted Strangler which was a very good experience, everyone was happy, I exercised the option and we looked for another subject. We only had a certain period of time for which his services were available as he was due for work in Hollywood. That second picture became
Corridors of Blood (1958).
Riley: When you were making films in response to these kinds of contractual windows, did you find that it was easy to develop a horror film because of your familiarity with the genre?
Gordon: Well, I was always interested in horror and science fiction films and of course with Karloff it was the logical thing to do anyway. But quite frankly horror films, it wasn't so much science fiction films, but horror films seemed to be the easiest projects to put together. They didn't require elaborate production, locations etc and they could be made on a relatively low budget as long as you've got the horror elements, the shock elements. Also, you didn't necessarily need big stars, because it was the horror element that sold the picture more so than the stars, except in the case of Karloff and Lugosi. So I always tried to concentrate on that area of film-making and also I was very successful with
The Haunted Strangler and
Fiend Without a Face which I got MGM to distribute in the rest of the world outside the Eros distribution in the UK. MGM indicated that they would be very happy to come on in the production of the second Karloff film. That’s the route I chose to go. In fact the second Karloff film,
Corridors of Blood which cost substantially more than
The Haunted Strangler was shot at MGM studios in England and partially financed by MGM and partially distributed by MGM in the whole world. There we made as a picture that was originally intended to go with it,
First Man into Space (1959) which also starred Marshall Thompson who was in
Fiend Without a Face. The idea was that it could be a double bill, but by the time the pictures were finished, space travel had started coming into everyday life. There was talk about putting a man on the moon and MGM wanted to put
First Man into Space out on its own to cash in on the trend and decided to release
Corridors of Blood later on with something else.
Riley: Could you tell me a little bit about your involvement with Antony Balch?
Gordon: I made two pictures with Antony Balch. That was sometime later after I made
First Man into Space and
Corridors of Blood. I also made
Devil Doll (1964) with Brian Haliday and another picture with him called
Curse of the Voodoo (1965). Then I met Antony Balch during one of my visits to the Cannes Film Festival. I liked him very much. He was a film distributor at the time in the UK. He also had a great personal interest in horror films. I discovered quite by chance that Bela Lugosi had been his favourite actor as a kid and
The Devil Bat (1940) had been a particular favourite of his. He had a 16 mm print and would show it for his friends and so on. Anyway, we got to be good friends and he was working towards becoming a director in films and making his own films. He had done a couple of shorts with William Burroughs with whom he was on very friendly terms, one called
Towers Open Fire (1963) which is kind of a classic of the Beat Generation. Antony and I got along very well together, he knew what I was doing and he was a distributor in the UK also and we decided to try and make a picture together.
We came up with the idea of doing an omnibus picture which we called
Secrets of Sex which he directed and I produced. He was really getting his feet wet as a director and it turned out very well and was certainly very successful at the box office. Then we decided to do a real horror picture as a second film and we came up with the idea to do
Horror Hospital. We decided to it tongue in cheek as we thought that would be more fun. We made that picture together with Robin Askwith who we got to play the lead and we also got Michael Gough. I think for a low budget and Antony’s first experience at directing a real feature film it turned out rather well.
I would certainly have gone on producing pictures with him but unfortunately shortly after
Horror Hospital he got ill. It turned out he had cancer and he really wasn't able to continue working. He was at that time preparing to make a film of Burroughs’s
Naked Lunch (1959). Because of his friendship with Burroughs who lived in the same building as Antony in London, he had given him an option to do it. They had become very close friends. If we had gone on and been able to go on in production, it was very likely that the third film we’d have done together would have been
Naked Lunch. But Antony got too ill and died in 1980. He was only 42 years old and I think he would have had a brilliant career if he’d lived. He was the kind of interesting young director that England was producing at the time like Michael Reeves who made
Witchfinder General (1968). I met him and also felt that I may have been able to do a film with him but he died also at an even younger age, 27. I think of either an overdose or suicide. There were several of these young up and coming directors at the time who seemed to be ready to do something more interesting than the run of the mill second features and so on.
Gordon: Oh yes, absolutely, I mean I always got myself involved in it in every step of the way. Once you put a picture together, I would first of all be involved in the creation of the script or the acquisition of the property and getting the director and the cast and the technicians together, raising the money. On the day you start shooting, you turn the picture over to the director. The producer’s job after that is merely to be there and to supervise it and to be on hand in case there are any problems: budgets and so on. During the making of the film that is really the producer’s role. I couldn't put creative input in on a day-to-day basis, as that’s the director’s job.
When I made
The Projected Man (1967) with Tony Tenser, for instance there was a problem. We had a young director, Ian Curteis who had done a lot of television. The picture got into trouble and went over budget and Curteis, who had never really done a feature film before started to flounder and panic. I had to step in and we had to actually remove him from the production and I had to put somebody else in the role. That’s the sort of thing a producer has to do. But I couldn't have stepped in and done it myself; my job was to find somebody else who could do it, who had the necessary experience.
But I do always try to have creative input. I liked to have input in the editing, deciding what to leave in and what to leave out and also in the distribution: negotiating the foreign sales. That’s something I still do. I handle the international sales of my pictures, mostly for television which keeps me very busy. I have no intention of retiring, not while I’m still enjoying it. People say why don’t you retire, you don’t need to be doing this anymore, and I say, why should I retire? I’m having as much fun as I had when I was making the pictures. So when it stops being fun, and becomes a drag, then I’ll shut it down.
Riley: Ok, inevitable question: What’s your favourite film, and which is your favourite of your own films?
Gordon: I can answer you right away and say, the original
King Kong (1933). It has always been my favourite. It made such an impression on me as a kid, I think that that’s how I got interested in this whole idea of following this particular route with my own production.
As far as my own films are concerned, I think I had the most fun with
Horror Hospital. First of all it was tongue in cheek and secondly, Robin was such a fantastic individual. We had so much fun on that picture and he kept everyone in stitches all the way through the production. I give him more credit, more so than anybody else, for the success of that film because he infected everybody in the cast with that spirit of enthusiasm.
Creatively, artistically, I suppose
The Haunted Strangler and maybe
The Cat and the Canary were the best films from an objective standpoint. With
Cat and the Canary I was lucky enough to get such a wonderful cast, Wendy Miller, Wilfred White, Carol Linley. The whole idea for that came from the success
