Curtis Harrington

Curtis Harrington was an excellent and shamefully underrated writer and director who specialized in marvelously offbeat and atmospheric low-budget independent horror pictures. Harrington was born on September 17, 1926, in Los Angeles and grew up in Beaumont, California. A hardcore film buff from a very young age, Harrington worked as a movie theater usher, a messenger at Paramount and a stagehand during his younger days. He made his first 8mm effort at age 14 and attended UCLA. In the 1940s and 1950s Harrington made a string of experimental avant-garde underground shorts, such as Picnic (1949), Fragment of Seeking (1946), "The Assignation" and "Wormwood Star". He was the cinematographer on Kenneth Anger's Puce Moment (1949) and acted in Anger's Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954). Harrington also was involved with fellow avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren. He began working for Jerry Wald Productions at 20th Century-Fox in 1957 and served as a producer's assistant on several big-bud