Stuart Gordon

Gordon was born in 1947 in Chicago. At university he founded a theatre group called Screw Theater and they caused a major fuss by putting on a production of Peter Pan which was a thinly disguised protest about the Vietnam War. He continued in theatre for a number of years before joining Empire Pictures where he turned his hand to directing films.

In 1985 his first feature as director was the fantastic Re-Animator which was an instant hit and is now considered a horror classic. Gordon is clearly a big fan of Lovecraft and after Re-Animator, which was based on the Lovecraft story of the same name, he made another film adaptation of one of his short stories, the 1986 release From Beyond. The poorly received Dolls followed in 1987 and after a couple of made for television productions he returned in 1990 with Robot Jox, a big sci-fi film, which had the biggest budget yet and sent Empire Pictures into bankruptcy.

In 1991 Gordon returned to horror with a low budget production of The Pit and the Pendulum then it was sci-fi again with Fortress in 1993. Another Lovecraft short story adaptation called Castle Freak followed in 1995 and then Space Truckers in 1996.

In 2001 Gordon made yet another Lovecraft inspired film called Dagon then he turned out two thrillers, King of the Ants in 2003 and Edmond in 2005. The suspenseful horror/thriller Stuck followed in 2007.

Gordon has also done a fair bit of writing for movies over the years, he penned the hugely successful Honey, I Shrunk the Kids in 1989 and he also wrote the screenplay for the 1993 remake of Body Snatchers and the gruesome 1996 horror The Dentist.

Gordon is currently working on House of Re-Animator which is slated for a 2010 release and is supposed to be set in the Whitehouse taking a satirical swipe at the Bush administration. It is rumoured to be struggling for funding so it may never happen, we can only hope it does eventually hit our screens.

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