Anthony Hickox, the British director known for horrors such as Waxwork and Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth, has died aged 64.
Hickox had spent his recent years in Romania, where police found him dead last week at his house in Bucharest after friends had reported not seeing him for some time, according to close friend and InterTalent Rights Group CEO Jonathan Shalit.
Best known for his work in the comedy-horror genre, Hickox’s best known work was 1988’s Waxwork, which starred the likes of Zach Gilligan, Deborah Foreman and Michelle Johnson and was inspired by a 1920s German silent film. It is claimed Hickox wrote the script for Waxwork after driving into the back of Staffan Ahrenberg’s car and persuading the producer to let him pay for the damage by writing the script for just $3,000.
Hickox also directed a sequel and films such as Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat and Warlock: The Armageddon.
Hickox had spent his recent years in Romania, where police found him dead last week at his house in Bucharest after friends had reported not seeing him for some time, according to close friend and InterTalent Rights Group CEO Jonathan Shalit.
Best known for his work in the comedy-horror genre, Hickox’s best known work was 1988’s Waxwork, which starred the likes of Zach Gilligan, Deborah Foreman and Michelle Johnson and was inspired by a 1920s German silent film. It is claimed Hickox wrote the script for Waxwork after driving into the back of Staffan Ahrenberg’s car and persuading the producer to let him pay for the damage by writing the script for just $3,000.
Hickox also directed a sequel and films such as Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat and Warlock: The Armageddon.
- 10/10/2023
- by Jesse Whittock
- Deadline Film + TV
When The Quiet American, Graham Greene's tale of political intrigue and waning colonialism in French Indochina, was made into a film in 1958 by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, much of the novel's political insights and "ugly Americanism" were eliminated. Before U.S. involvement in Vietnam, there was little point. A new version by director Phillip Noyce, more than a quarter-century after the fall of Saigon, restores the political context, but it's nearly as pointless. Years of movies, books, memoirs and TV shows about the war have made Greene's revelations about U.S. subterfuge in that country during the 1950s yesteryear's news.
Michael Caine delivers a tone-perfect performance as the story's narrator, a cynical and aloof British reporter grown accustomed to the privileges of a colonial lifestyle. Brendan Fraser achieves the creepy self-righteousness of the title character but not quite his stunning political naivete. Cinematographer Christopher Doyle and designer Roger Ford marvelously evoke the decadent pleasures of a decaying, sensual Saigon where boozing and whoring can obliterate the existence of jungle warfare. But the film feels dated both in its message and style.
Christopher Hampton and Robert Schenkkan's script follows Greene's story to the letter. Indeed, the book itself feels like a novelization of a screenplay with its swiftly delineated characters, set pieces and exotic milieu. Caine's Thomas Fowler is one of Greene's Englishmen gone soft in a dangerous tropical clime. His cozy life gets upset by the arrival of Fraser's idealistic and, initially, fawning American, an aid worker who wants to do good and save people in the Third World.
Trouble is, one of the people Alden Pyle most wants to save is Phuong (Hai Yen Do), an ethereal beauty who is Fowler's mistress. On top of this sexual rivalry, the Times wants to recall the indolent Fowler to London. This energizes his journalism, if only to stave off the recall and continue his opium-induced existence. But an investigation into corruption and massacres in the field leads him to the revelation that Pyle is not as "quiet" as he lets on.
Noyce paces the film well and makes good use of his Vietnam locations, but the script does not strengthen the thin narration nor deepen the superficial characterizations that plague the novel. This is essentially a three-character melodrama with a colorful wartime backdrop.
THE QUIET AMERICAN
Miramax Films
Intermedia Film Equities USA/Mirage Enterprises/Saga Pictures
Credits:
Director: Phillip Noyce
Screenwriters: Christopher Hampton, Robert Schenkkan
Based on the novel by: Graham Greene
Producers: Staffan Ahrenberg, William Horberg
Executive producers: Moritz Borman, Guy East, Sydney Pollack, Anthony Minghella, Chris Sievernich, Nigel Sinclair
Director of photography: Christopher Doyle
Production designer: Roger Ford
Music: Craig Armstrong
Editor: John Scott
Cast:
Thomas Fowler: Michael Caine
Alden Pyle: Brendan Fraser
Phuong: Hai Yen Do
Inspector: Rade Serbedzija
Hinh: Tzi Ma
Running time -- 101 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Michael Caine delivers a tone-perfect performance as the story's narrator, a cynical and aloof British reporter grown accustomed to the privileges of a colonial lifestyle. Brendan Fraser achieves the creepy self-righteousness of the title character but not quite his stunning political naivete. Cinematographer Christopher Doyle and designer Roger Ford marvelously evoke the decadent pleasures of a decaying, sensual Saigon where boozing and whoring can obliterate the existence of jungle warfare. But the film feels dated both in its message and style.
Christopher Hampton and Robert Schenkkan's script follows Greene's story to the letter. Indeed, the book itself feels like a novelization of a screenplay with its swiftly delineated characters, set pieces and exotic milieu. Caine's Thomas Fowler is one of Greene's Englishmen gone soft in a dangerous tropical clime. His cozy life gets upset by the arrival of Fraser's idealistic and, initially, fawning American, an aid worker who wants to do good and save people in the Third World.
Trouble is, one of the people Alden Pyle most wants to save is Phuong (Hai Yen Do), an ethereal beauty who is Fowler's mistress. On top of this sexual rivalry, the Times wants to recall the indolent Fowler to London. This energizes his journalism, if only to stave off the recall and continue his opium-induced existence. But an investigation into corruption and massacres in the field leads him to the revelation that Pyle is not as "quiet" as he lets on.
Noyce paces the film well and makes good use of his Vietnam locations, but the script does not strengthen the thin narration nor deepen the superficial characterizations that plague the novel. This is essentially a three-character melodrama with a colorful wartime backdrop.
THE QUIET AMERICAN
Miramax Films
Intermedia Film Equities USA/Mirage Enterprises/Saga Pictures
Credits:
Director: Phillip Noyce
Screenwriters: Christopher Hampton, Robert Schenkkan
Based on the novel by: Graham Greene
Producers: Staffan Ahrenberg, William Horberg
Executive producers: Moritz Borman, Guy East, Sydney Pollack, Anthony Minghella, Chris Sievernich, Nigel Sinclair
Director of photography: Christopher Doyle
Production designer: Roger Ford
Music: Craig Armstrong
Editor: John Scott
Cast:
Thomas Fowler: Michael Caine
Alden Pyle: Brendan Fraser
Phuong: Hai Yen Do
Inspector: Rade Serbedzija
Hinh: Tzi Ma
Running time -- 101 minutes
No MPAA rating...
In this lazily titled sequel, Mickey Rourke returns for more sexual fun and games, but Kim Basinger had better things to do. In her place is Angie Everhart, who shows an equal willingness to get down and dirty.
This cynical effort, for which theatrical prospects are dim, was recently showcased at the Montreal World Film Festival, where it provided a trashy respite from the more serious international cinema on display.
Actually, "Another 91Ú2 Weeks," directed by longtime film editor Anne Goursaud ("Ironweed", "Bram Stoker's Dracula"), isn't nearly the trashy fun it should have been. Michael Davis' screenplay is solemn and lugubrious, and the entire enterprise has an air of pretentiousness. Even worse, it isn't for one minute remotely sexy.
Rourke reprises his role as John, the businessman who, for all his success, seems to have unlimited free time. He spends most of it here pining away for Elizabeth, Basinger's character in the 1986 film, whose abandonment has apparently affected him so deeply that he is reduced to mechanical sex with prostitutes.
He decides to flee to Paris, where an auction of Elizabeth's artwork is taking place. There, he meets her beautiful assistant Lea (Everhart). John is desperate to find out Elizabeth's whereabouts, but, as anyone who has watched the credits can predict, she cannot be found. Instead, he and Lea begin a cat-and-mouse game in which John learns to once again express his dominant side.
The dialogue is filled with howlers -- "You're American, you should know better," John is advised at one point after a particularly graphic display of affection at a museum -- and the sex scenes don't resemble physical coupling so much as interpretive dance. John and Lea don't bother to make love in a comfortable apartment if there's a convenient highway underpass handy.
Like the original, the sex scenes become increasingly messy with hot wax, various food substances, etc.; no doubt they're saving tar and feathers for the next installment.
The film at least offers a stunning pictorial travelogue of Paris and an entertaining performance by Steven Berkoff, clearly in need of a paycheck, as a flamboyant fashion designer.
The two leads are another problem. Everhart offers beauty but a wooden presence, while Rourke, so charismatic in the first film, is a sad case indeed. It's not pleasant to comment on a performer's physical appearance, but here it's unavoidable; the actor's face is alarmingly changed, completely devoid of expression and puffed up nearly beyond recognition. Whatever the cause, it has the effect of making the character's supposed sexual magnetism less than credible.
ANOTHER 91Ú2 WEEKS
MDP Worldwide
Director-editor Anne Goursaud
Screenplay Michael Davis
Producers Staffan Ahrenberg, Yannick Bernard
Executive producer Don Carmody
Cinematography Robert Alazraki
Music Steven W. Parsons
Color/stereo
Cast:
John Mickey Rourke
Lea Angie Everhart
Veronique Agathe de la Fontaine
Vittorio Steven Berkoff
Running time -- 105 minutes
No MPAA rating...
This cynical effort, for which theatrical prospects are dim, was recently showcased at the Montreal World Film Festival, where it provided a trashy respite from the more serious international cinema on display.
Actually, "Another 91Ú2 Weeks," directed by longtime film editor Anne Goursaud ("Ironweed", "Bram Stoker's Dracula"), isn't nearly the trashy fun it should have been. Michael Davis' screenplay is solemn and lugubrious, and the entire enterprise has an air of pretentiousness. Even worse, it isn't for one minute remotely sexy.
Rourke reprises his role as John, the businessman who, for all his success, seems to have unlimited free time. He spends most of it here pining away for Elizabeth, Basinger's character in the 1986 film, whose abandonment has apparently affected him so deeply that he is reduced to mechanical sex with prostitutes.
He decides to flee to Paris, where an auction of Elizabeth's artwork is taking place. There, he meets her beautiful assistant Lea (Everhart). John is desperate to find out Elizabeth's whereabouts, but, as anyone who has watched the credits can predict, she cannot be found. Instead, he and Lea begin a cat-and-mouse game in which John learns to once again express his dominant side.
The dialogue is filled with howlers -- "You're American, you should know better," John is advised at one point after a particularly graphic display of affection at a museum -- and the sex scenes don't resemble physical coupling so much as interpretive dance. John and Lea don't bother to make love in a comfortable apartment if there's a convenient highway underpass handy.
Like the original, the sex scenes become increasingly messy with hot wax, various food substances, etc.; no doubt they're saving tar and feathers for the next installment.
The film at least offers a stunning pictorial travelogue of Paris and an entertaining performance by Steven Berkoff, clearly in need of a paycheck, as a flamboyant fashion designer.
The two leads are another problem. Everhart offers beauty but a wooden presence, while Rourke, so charismatic in the first film, is a sad case indeed. It's not pleasant to comment on a performer's physical appearance, but here it's unavoidable; the actor's face is alarmingly changed, completely devoid of expression and puffed up nearly beyond recognition. Whatever the cause, it has the effect of making the character's supposed sexual magnetism less than credible.
ANOTHER 91Ú2 WEEKS
MDP Worldwide
Director-editor Anne Goursaud
Screenplay Michael Davis
Producers Staffan Ahrenberg, Yannick Bernard
Executive producer Don Carmody
Cinematography Robert Alazraki
Music Steven W. Parsons
Color/stereo
Cast:
John Mickey Rourke
Lea Angie Everhart
Veronique Agathe de la Fontaine
Vittorio Steven Berkoff
Running time -- 105 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 9/11/1997
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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