R.I.P. Juan Piquer Simón

Bit late off the newsdesk with this one, but Spanish director Juan Piquer Simón died on the 7th January of lung cancer.  After growing up with a love of American cinema in Franco’s Spain, Simón started working in the industry in the 1960s, often working for (or learning from) the famous international directors who were working in the time; it’s reputed, for instance, that he spent some time observing Sergio Leone while he was shooting The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.  He started out by making documentaries, before being the named director of Journey to the Center of the Earth in 1976, which he also scripted (although some sources credit John Hough as director instead).

He went on to make roughly a dozen films films throughout the eighties, mostly in either the horror (Slugs, Pieces, The Rift) or science fiction (Supersonic Man, Monster Island) genres.  His films weren’t all that great, in all honesty, but they do have a loopy charm and were almost always entertaining.  They also featured great casts, including the likes of Terence Stamp, Kenneth More, Christopher George and Frank Finlay, as well as an array of likeable Spanish performers such as Frank Brana and Ian Sera.

About Matt Blake 890 Articles
The WildEye is a blog dedicated to the wild world of Italian cinema (and, ok, sometimes I digress into discussing films from other countries as well). Peplums, comedies, dramas, spaghetti westerns... they're all covered here.

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