Jeff Lieberman(I)

Writer-director Jeff Lieberman has crafted a handful of highly quirky, creative, and distinctive horror movies that are much enjoyed and appreciated by fans of offbeat and imaginative fright-film fare. His pictures are distinguished by their novel oddball plots and an amusingly eccentric sense of off-center humor.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1947, Lieberman attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Lieberman's first film credit was co-writing the script for the gritty police action thriller Blade (1973), which was directed by his mentor Ernest Pintoff. Lieberman made his debut as a writer-director with the excellent and inspired revolt-of-nature killer-worm outing Squirm (1976). He followed this substantial drive-in hit with his best and most beloved film to date, Blue Sunshine (1977), which tells the extremely absorbing and original tale of a bunch of hippies who take a lethal form of LSD that causes them to lose their hair and become insane psychotics 10 years afterward. Lieberman's entry in the popular early-1980s wackos-in-the-woods slasher sub-genre was the potent and harrowing "Deliverance" (1972) variant Just Before Dawn (1981). Remote Control (1988) was a hugely entertaining science-fiction alien invasion romp.

After a regrettably lengthy absence from directing, Lieberman made a triumphant return to fabulously freaky form with the enormously fun-n-funky psycho hoot Satan's Little Helper (2004). In addition to his own pictures, he also penned the screenplays for the TV movie Doctor Franken (1980)--which he also co-directed--and The NeverEnding Story III: Return to Fantasia (1994). He also produced and directed TV commercials throughout his career.