Director made his name with shock theatre in
Chicago before turning to gory screen horror – and creating
Disney classic Honey I Shrunk the Kids
Stuart Gordon, the film-maker who shot to prominence with the mid-80s cult horror film Re-Animator before co-creating the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids series, has died aged 72. His family confirmed the news to Variety magazine; the cause was not released.
Gordon, who was born and grew up in Chicago, began producing radical theatre shows as a student, setting up a company in 1968 called Screw Theater. He staged an anti-war adaptation of Peter Pan (inspired by the
Democratic convention riots of that year) which got him and his then girlfriend (and later wife) Carolyn Purdy arrested for obscenity; the case received national attention but the charges were later dropped. He then set up shop as the Organic Theater – described as a “take-off-your-clothes, scream and bleed theater” – which he ran for 16 years: among its successes was the Gordon-directed premiere production of David Mamet’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago in 1974.