Jack Hill

Jack Hill (born January 28, 1933) is an American film director in the exploitation film genre. Several of Hill's later films have been characterized as feminist works.

Early life

Hill was born in Los Angeles, California. His mother, Mildred (née Pannill, b. February 1, 1907; death date n.a.), was a music teacher. His father, Roland Everett Hill (February 5, 1895 – November 10, 1986),Stone (1995),
Roland Everett Hill
. Retrieved November 1, 2014

from the original on November 1, 2014. worked as a set designer and art director for First National Pictures and Warner Bros.Jack Hill interview, on films including ''The Jazz Singer'', '' Captain Blood'', ''Action in the North Atlantic'', and ''Captain Horatio Hornblower'', and as well was an architect who designed the centerpiece Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland in California.

Hill attended UCLA, which he attended, he said, for "a couple of years" before leaving to get married and then returning to earn a degree in music. While a student, he played in a symphony orchestra that performed for the soundtracks of ''Doctor Zhivago'' and ''The Brothers Karamazov'', and he arranged music for burlesque performers; through this he met comedian Lenny Bruce, whose daughter Kitty Bruce would act in Hill's 1975 film ''Switchblade Sisters''. He went on to postgraduate studies at UCLA Film School, where instructor and former movie director Dorothy Arzner encouraged Hill and his classmate and friend Francis Ford Coppola. Hill worked as a cameraman, a sound recorder (including on Coppola's student short ''Ayamonn the Terrible''), and an editor on student films. His short ''The Host'' starred Sid Haig, an acting student at the Pasadena Playhouse under teacher Arzner, who introduced them; this marked the first of several films together.

Career

Hill went on to work with Coppola on several of Coppola's early movies, including producer Roger Corman's 1963 movie ''The Terror''. He added 20 minutes to 1960's '' Wasp Woman'' for its eventual television syndication release, shooting without access to any original cast-member.

Legacy

Quentin Tarantino's company Rolling Thunder Pictures re-released ''Switchblade Sisters'' theatrically in 1996. In the introduction to the film's DVD release, Tarantino calls Hill " “the Howard Hawks of exploitation filmmaking”.

Hill's discoveries include Pam Grier, who starred in four of his films from ''The Big Doll House'' through '' Foxy Brown''; Sid Haig, who acts in most of Hill's films, beginning with ''Spider Baby''; and Ellen Burstyn, who starred in ''Pit Stop''.

His student film ''The Host'' was a partial influence on former classmate Francis Ford Coppola's ''Apocalypse Now''. Hill recalled in a 2000s interview that when he made ''The Host'',

Film scholar Wheeler Winston Dixon believed that for Hill and fellow low-budget auteur Monte Hellman, film was primarily a means of personal expression while remaining a "deeply financially dependent medium". Dixon wrote that Hill and Hellman's movies often were sufficiently successful while remaining true to their personal vision.

Archive

The moving image collection of Jack Hill is held at the Academy Film Archive. The Academy Film Archive preserved ''Spider Baby'' in 2013.

Filmography

Film crew
*''Battle Beyond the Sun'' (1962) - additional cinematography
* ''The Wasp Woman'' (1962) (uncredited) - 20-minute introduction for TV syndication, shot in 1962
* '' The Bellboy and the Playgirls'' (1963) - editor
* ''The Terror'' (1963) - uncredited director and co-writer
* '' City on Fire'' (1979) - writer
* '' Death Ship'' (1980) - writer

As director
* ''The Host'' (short; made 1960-61) - directorWaddell, p. 9, which notes "The Host" received a public release in 2000 as an extra on the ''Switchblade Sisters'' DVD, with new titles, sound recording and music. Waddell calls "The Host" a 1961 film on page 9, but then asks, "Why was 'The Host' not finished back in 1960?" on page 10.
* ''Mondo Keyhole'' (1966) - director
* ''Blood Bath'' (a.k.a. ''Track of the Vampire'') (1966) - co-director
* ''Spider Baby'' (a.k.a. ''The Maddest Story Ever Told'') (1967) - writer, director
* ''House of Evil'' (1968) (US scenes) - director
* ''Fear Chamber'' (1968) (US scenes) - director
* ''Pit Stop'' (1969) - director
* ''Ich, ein Groupie'' (a.k.a. ''Higher and Higher'') (1970) (uncredited) - co-director
* '' The Snake People'' (1971) (US scenes) - director
* ''The Incredible Invasion'' (a.k.a. ''Alien Terror'') (1971) (US scenes) - director
* ''The Big Doll House'' (1971) - director
* ''The Big Bird Cage'' (1972) - director
* ''Coffy'' (1973) - writer, director
* '' Foxy Brown'' (1974) - director
* '' The Swinging Cheerleaders'' (1974) - writer, director
* ''Switchblade Sisters'' (1975) - writer, director
* '' Sorceress'' (1982) - writer, director (as Brian Stuart)

References

External links

*
Interview with Jack Hill

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hill, Jack
1933 births

Living people
Girls with guns films

Film directors from Texas
Blaxploitation film directors