Richard E. Cunha, 83; Directed Cult-Status ’50s Horror Movies
LA Times
Richard E. Cunha, a cinematographer and the director of a quartet of low-budget movies in the late 1950s that have achieved cult status among horror and sci-fi film aficionados, including “Giant From the Unknown” and “She Demons,” has died. He was 83.
Cunha died of heart failure Sept. 18 at his home in Oceanside, Calif., his family said.
Cunha, who was born in Honolulu, served as an Army Air Forces cameraman during World War II. He had a decade of industrial films, commercials and television work behind him when he moved into low-budget feature filmmaking in 1957.
Cunha directed only a handful of films, with his four best-known ones released in 1958-59: “Giant From the Unknown,” “She Demons,” “Missile to the Moon” and “Frankenstein’s Daughter.”
Aimed at the drive-in and neighborhood movie-house market, they were made on shoestring budgets of $65,000 or less with six-day shooting schedules.
Steve Kronenberg, a writer for Monsters From the Vault magazine, once wrote that Cunha “made a lasting contribution to low-budget genre filmmaking.” Kronenberg deemed all four films “genuine genre gems” that are “tinged with an edgy nastiness and political incorrectness.”
Critically, however, Cunha’s films were a bust.
