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Douglas McKeown (born January 14, 1947) was an American filmmaker, actor, and writer, best known as the screenwriter and director of the sci-fi horror film, The Deadly Spawn (1983). He died in New York City on September 9, 2022. [1]
McKeown was born in New York City and raised in Metuchen, New Jersey. As a child he taught himself the art of horror makeup, gaining notoriety by terrorizing local neighborhoods. He graduated from Emerson College in 1968 with high honors, having studied cinematography and theater in addition to English literature.
After a brief stint as an Editorial Coordinator at ABC-TV in New York City, he spent six years as a high school teacher, numbering among his students the future writer and movie director Richard Wenk, stage director Lonnie Price, magician-illusionist David Copperfield, and animation producer Tom Ruegger. During this period he directed a series of musicals and straight plays for school, community theatre, and summer stock.
In 1976, McKeown left teaching to join the Jean Cocteau Repertory in New York as an actor. He quickly moved on to other challenges, creating designs for many plays there, including sets and costumes for the Cocteau’s world premiere of Tennessee Williams’ Something Cloudy, Something Clear, and staging a number of productions, notably poet Robert Lowell’s adaptation of The Oresteia of Aeschylus.
Following the release of "The Deadly Spawn" in 1983, McKeown shot a number of short video documentaries in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and New York. One of these, a promotional video for New York’s LGBT Center, ultimately led him to his ongoing role as facilitator of the storytelling workshop, Queer Stories. He compiled and edited Queer Stories for Boys (Thunder's Mouth Press, 2004), an anthology of writings by members of the workshop.
Beginning in 2004, he returned to the stage as an actor after a hiatus of twenty-four years, joining the Phoenix Theatre Ensemble for their productions of Kafka’s The Trial and Anouilh’s Antigone.
Dandelion Wine is a 1957 novel by Ray Bradbury set in the summer of 1928 in the fictional town of Green Town, Illinois, based upon Bradbury's childhood home of Waukegan, Illinois, and serving as the first novel in his Green Town Trilogy. The novel developed from the short story "Dandelion Wine", which appeared in the June 1953 issue of Gourmet magazine.
John Kapelos is a Canadian actor from London, Ontario. He is best known for his portrayals of janitor Carl Reed in The Breakfast Club and Detective Donald Schanke in Forever Knight.
Jeffrey Weissman is an American actor. He has appeared in dozens of motion pictures and TV shows, most notably as George McFly in Back to the Future Part II and III and as Teddy Conway in Pale Rider. He has guest starred spots on Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Max Headroom, Dallas, The Man Show, and with Dick Van Dyke on Diagnosis: Murder and as Screech's Guru on Saved by the Bell.
David Kennedy is a British actor, known for his role as Dirk Savage in the Channel 4 soap opera Hollyoaks.
Osgood Robert "Oz" Perkins II is an American actor, screenwriter, and director.
Deadly Eyes is a 1982 Canadian horror film directed by Robert Clouse, very loosely based on the 1974 horror novel The Rats by James Herbert. The story revolves around giant black rats who begin eating the residents of Toronto after ingesting contaminated grain.
Scott Turner Schofield is an American actor, writer, producer, and speaker. He is a transgender activist, and uses he/him and they/them pronouns. He was the first out transgender actor in Daytime television, and the first out trans man to earn an Emmy nomination for acting.
Martin Pousson is an American novelist, poet, and professor.
Sean Gerard Mathias is a Welsh actor, director, and writer. He is known for directing the film Bent and for directing highly acclaimed theatre productions in London, New York City, Cape Town, Los Angeles and Sydney.
The Deadly Spawn is a 1983 American science fiction horror film written and directed by Douglas McKeown, and produced by Ted A. Bohus. The film's plot centers on an meteor that lands on Earth, which unleashes a carnivorous alien that finds refuge in the basement of a house. As it grows larger, a young monster movie fan named Charles and group of others try to survive against the creature and its offspring.
Ted A. Bohus is an American film director, producer, actor and writer. He is best known for his work in low-budget independent films, most often in the horror genre.
Timothy Michael Sullivan is an American film director, producer, actor, and screenwriter.
Charles "Chuck" McKibben is an American voice actor, broadcast producer/director, voice-over coach, audiobook narrator and author. McKibben uses the proper name of "Charles" for his more serious readings.
Charles Atlas is a video artist and film director who also does lighting and set design.
Blaxploitation horror films are a genre of horror films involving mostly black actors. In 1972, William Crain directed what is considered to be the first blaxploitation horror film, Blacula.
The Hangar Theatre is a non-profit, regional theatre located at 801 Taughannock Boulevard in Ithaca, NY. Its mainstage season and children's shows occur during the summer, but the Hangar, and other organizations, utilize the space year-round for special events. The tenets of the Hangar's mission statement are to enrich, enlighten, educate and entertain.
Rathna Shekar Reddy is an Indian actor. He is the co-founder of the prominent Hyderabad-based theatre group Samahaara, along with writer-director Anjali Parvati Koda. He starred in the National Award-winning Telugu film, Na Bangaaru Talli.
A Chronicle of Corpses is a 2000 gothic art-house film directed by Andrew Repasky McElhinney.