Bert I. Gordon, 100, maker of monster movies
By Harrison Smith (Washington Post)
Bert I. Gordon, 100, who unleashed a parade of cinematic horrors as the filmmaker behind Atomic Age
movies about mutant ants, 60-foot giants, rampaging grasshoppers, and a bloodthirsty spider that
proves too big to squash, died Wednesday at a hospital in Los Angeles.
His death was confirmed by his daughter Christina Gordon, who did not cite a cause.
Mr. Gordon, a B-movie auteur who wrote and produced almost all of his two-dozen films, was known for
working quickly and cheaply — he shot his first feature, King Dinosaur (1955), in a single week for about
$15,000 — while trying to terrify or titillate audiences in an anxious, paranoid age.
Critics called his story lines ludicrous and his special effects schlocky, and highlighted the absurdity of
lines like “You can’t drop an atomic bomb on Chicago!” His film The Food of the Gods (1976), about a
mysterious substance that causes rats, wasps, and chickens to grow into giants, was “unintentionally
hilarious” and “stunningly ridiculous,” wrote New York Times reviewer Vincent Canby.
But many of his films turned a profit and gained a loyal following, attracting later generations of
moviegoers with their imaginative monsters — rendered with the help of miniatures, mattes, and rearprojection effects — and casts that featured actors who were on their way up, like a young Ron Howard,
or seeking a paycheck near the end of their career, like Orson Welles, Ida Lupino, and Zsa Zsa Gabor.
Mr. Gordon “didn’t do much in the way of character development or psychological subtlety,” New Yorker
film critic Richard Brody wrote in 2012, “but he sure knew how to make a visual metaphor — to convey
extravagant emotions, indeed, the mental overdrive of youth itself, in simple images.”
That was especially true for The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), about an Army officer (Glenn Langan)
who is showered with nuclear debris while trying to save a downed pilot near the site of an atomicbomb test. He loses his hair, and his mind, while growing ever taller, and rampages through a cardboard
approximation of the Las Vegas Strip before falling over the Hoover Dam to his doom.
The film capitalized on the success of Universal’s The Incredible Shrinking Man, and its box-office
returns were good enough to revive the character for a sequel, War of the Colossal Beast (1958), which
took the colossus to Los Angeles.
Over the next two decades, Mr. Gordon continued to make movies about larger-than-life characters and
creatures, earning the nickname “Mr. B.I.G.” because of his initials and his preferred subject matter. (One
notable exception: Attack of the Puppet People, a 1958 horror film about a toymaker who shrinks his
enemies to the size of dolls.)
Shooting gargantuan creatures on microscopic budgets, he often turned to rudimentary techniques. For
Beginning of the End (1957), which starred Peter Graves as a scientist trying to stop a swarm of giant
locusts from destroying Chicago, he ordered grasshoppers from Texas, then placed the bugs atop still
photographs of the city’s downtown landmarks. He used a similar approach for Earth vs. the Spider
(1958), employing a real arachnid for some shots and building a single, hairy prop leg for sequences in
which the giant creature picks off members of the cast.
At times he found it more difficult to deal with actors than monsters, as when he filmed Empire of the
Ants (1977), in which Joan Collins is chased through a swamp by a swarm of irradiated ants. “She was
not one of my most cooperative stars,” he recalled, adding in a 2003 interview with Marty McKee that
he resorted to pushing the actress into a Florida river to get her into the water while shooting on
location.
While preparing to shoot Necromancy (1972), which starred Welles as a mysterious cult leader, Mr.
Gordon was warned by colleagues that his leading man would be demanding and uncooperative. Trying
to get on Welles’ good side, he arranged for the actor to have a special grill and refrigerator on the set,
filled with the star’s favorite foods.
"I got ribs from Chicago," he recalled, "and I had a chef with a hat. Honest to God. Really." The actor "was
like a baby the rest of the way," he added. "No problems."
Mr. Gordon also made more realistic horror films like Picture Mommy Dead (1966), which featured Don
Ameche, Martha Hyer, and Gabor, and ventured outside the genre with movies like The Magic Sword
(1962), a fantasy adventure, and How to Succeed With Sex (1970), a raunchy comedy that the Times
called “an occasionally pleasant dirty movie.”
Still, he remained best known for his monster movies, which found new life in the late 20th century
when they were screened as part of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Mr. Gordon was aided on many of his films by his first wife, the former Flora Lang, a production manager
and special effects technician. That marriage ended in divorce, and in 1980 he married Eva Marklstorfer,
with whom he lived in Beverly Hills.
She survives him, as do daughters Patricia, Carol, and Christina Gordon; six grandchildren; and a number
of great-grandchildren. Another daughter, former child actress Susan Gordon Aviner, died in 2011.
Mr. Gordon was still working in recent years, and released his last film, Secrets of a Psychopath, the year
he turned 93.