R.I.P. Dan O’Bannon
by Chris Eaton- Source: Aintitcool
A very sad day indeed.
Aintitcool just got word that legendary screenwriter, effects technician, and director Dan O’Bannon has died at the age of 63. No word yet on what felled the legend, but apparently he had been sick for a while now. A great loss in this holiday season.
For those of you not in the know, O’Bannon wrote and did the effects for John Carpenter’s first film, Dark Star. He then went on to do FX work on a small film called Star Wars. After that, he went back to screen writing. One of his first major screenplays he wrote with Ronald Shusett went on to become one of the most iconic movies of all time - Ridley Scott’s 1979 film, Alien. With this film, O’Bannon re wrote the landscape for how sci-fi films were made. To this day, the Alien is one of the most recognized movie monsters of the modern century. After Alien, he wrote a wonderful little stab at the zombie genre called Dead and Buried. He also wrote a segment in Heavy Metal. He gave us the Roy Scheider uber-cool helicopter film, Blue Thunder.
In 1985, he stepped into the directors chair to give us what is possibly one of the greatest zombie films ever, with a satirical take on George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead called Return of the Living Dead. ROTLD would be known for infusing comedic elements with awesome zombies (just check out the Tar Man if you don’t believe me), which would become a standard for zombie fare for years. He then wrote the remake to Invaders from Mars, and gave Arnold his lines and a little freak parasitic brother named Kuato in the 1990 film Total Recall, directed by Paul Verhoven. He then directed a film called The Ressurected and wrote the screenplay for the 1995 film Screamers. After that, he kinda took a step away from the spotlight for a while. He would be credited with every Alien film that came out, even though he made it public about his dislike for AVP. Unfortunately, he never got back into the swing of things, and now, he’s gone.
We lost a great in the realm of sci-fi/fantasy today, and the world will morn the loss of a great writer.
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- Jane Goldman is writing X-MEN FIRST CLASS
- George A. Romero’s SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD
- New WALKING DEAD Set Picture.
- WALKING DEAD Casting News.
Tags: Alien, Dan O'Bannon, Dark Star, Return of the Living Dead, Star Wars, Total Recall