Actor and songwriter David Hess died yesterday at age 69. On his Facebook page, his children wrote: “It is with great sadness that we have said our last goodbyes to our beloved dad and friend to all. David passed away peacefully last night. The Mad Hessian lives on in his family, friends, and all of his devoted fans. Sing a song in celebration of his life.”<\/p>\n
With nearly 40 feature credits spanning as many years, Hess will likely be best remembered from Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left, <\/em>as Krug Stilo, the leader of the gang that kidnaps, rapes, tortures and kills two teenage girls before getting beheaded by one of the parents. Born in New York in 1942, Hess began his career as a musician and a songwriter, who wrote songs for Elvis Presley, Pat Boone, and Sal Mineo. 1972’s Last House<\/em> marked Hess’s acting debut, and throughout his career he divided himself between the two disciplines, often contributing to the soundtracks of the films he worked on.<\/p>\n Hess had a number of other genre credits to his name: Craven’s Swamp Thing<\/em>; Ruggero Deodato’s House at the Edge of the Park <\/em>and Body Count<\/em>, and Ulli Lommel’s Zodiac Killer<\/em> and Zombie Nation.<\/em> His last film was 2009’s Smash Cuts.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Hess was, of course, a regular in European films, starting his Italian career with the excellent Hitch Hike<\/strong>, in which he played a mad hitch-hiker who terrorises a fractious couple played by Corinne Clery and Franco Nero.\u00a0 In Ruggero Deodato’s The House on the Edge of the Park<\/strong> he riffed on playing the same kind of character as he had in the film that had made his name, The Last House on the Left<\/strong>. He also appeared in Deodato’s slasher movie Body Count <\/strong>(87) and TV series Oceano<\/strong>, as well generic productions for the likes of Alfonso Brescia (Omicidio a luci blu <\/strong>(89)), Tonino Ricci (Buck at the Edge of Heaven <\/strong>(91) and Enzo Castellari (Jonathan of the Bears <\/strong>(95)). <\/strong>He might not have been an actor of great range, but he was always a welcome presence who added a little chutzpah to often otherwise mediocre productions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" News is circulating of the sad news that David Hess has died.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[936],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2732"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2732"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2735,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2732\/revisions\/2735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"David](\"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/david_hess.jpg\" "\\"david_hess\\"")
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