Home arrow Home arrow John Landis
John Landis PDF Print E-mail
Written by Michael Davidson   
Monday, 05 December 2005

To state the obvious: John Landis is one of the most commercially successful directors of all time, and without a doubt one of the quirkiest, most daring and downright brilliant filmmakers to have ever stepped upon a set. A genuine lover of horror and exploitation movies - as showcased in his excellent anthology movies "The Kentucky Fried Movie" (1977), "Coming Soon" (1982) and "Amazon Women on the Moon" (1987) - Landis is also behind the incredible "An American Werewolf in London" (1981, and still arguably the benchmark of all modern horror movies) and "Innocent Blood" (1992). In a career with so many high points, it is hard to know where to begin - but the filmmaker's 1980 hit "The Blues Brothers" is rightly revered as a work of pure genius, whilst 1978's "Animal House" gave birth to the teen comedy genre. Landis also grabbed the attention of the MTV generation with his videos to Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and "Black and White", whilst his many blockbuster comedies - which include 1982's "Trading Places", 1985's "Spies Like Us" and 1988's "Coming to America" are without fault.

Buy Tickets Now for Innocent Blood!
Buy Tickets Now for An American Werewolf in London!

John Landis Biography

John Landis is the award winning director (and often writer or co-writer) of many acclaimed motion pictures including ANIMAL HOUSE, THE BLUES BROTHERS, AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, TRADING PLACES, THREE AMIGOS, INTO THE NIGHT, SPIES LIKE US, COMING TO AMERICA and INNOCENT BLOOD among others. In 2004 the Independent Film Channel broadcast his feature length documentary on a car salesman, SLASHER, to great acclaim.

So impressed was Michael Jackson with the lycanthropic masterpiece, AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, he asked Landis to write and direct the groundbreaking music video Michael Jackson’s THRILLER. Landis and Jackson later collaborated on the classic Michael Jackson’s BLACK OR WHITE.

John Landis has been active in television as the Executive Producer (and often director) of the Emmy award-winning series DREAM ON. Other TV shows produced by his company St. Clare Entertainment (St. Clare is the patron saint of television) include WEIRD SCIENCE, SLIDERS, HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS, CAMPUS COPS and SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE’S THE LOST WORLD. He has acted in films as diverse as DEATH RACE 2000 and MUPPETS TAKE MANHATTAN!

His many honors include several People’s Choice Awards, the prestigious W.C. Handy Award, several Cable Ace Awards and NAACP Image Awards, and various international film and television festival awards, He was made a Chevalier dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government in 1985, and was awarded the Fredrico Fellini Prize by Rimini Cinema in Italy in the nineties. The Eastman House in Rochester, New York has named him a George Eastman Scholar.

A Retrospective of all his films was held at the Torrino Film Festival in Italy in 2004 and he was given the prestigious TIME MACHINE CAREER ACHIEVEMENT AWARD at the Sitges Film Festival in Spain.

He begins shooting his part of the MASTERS OF HORROR series this April from an original screenplay, DEER WOMAN, written by him and his son Max Landis. Other directors involved with Landis on this project include John Carpenter, Roger Corman, George Romero, Tobe Hooper, Don Coscarelli, Mick Garris, Dario Argento, and Larry Cohen

Buy Tickets Now for Innocent Blood!
Buy Tickets Now for An American Werewolf in London!
Last Updated ( Monday, 12 December 2005 )
 
< Prev   Next >
[ Back ]

Fearless News

Design by JamboWorks - November 2005 JWTC