Jeff Burr, Director of ‘Texas Chainsaw Bloodbath III,’ Dies at 60

Jeff Burr, the horror specialist who directed Vincent Value in certainly one of his final motion pictures and entries within the Texas Chainsaw Bloodbath, Puppet Grasp, Pumpkinhead and Stepfather franchises, has died. He was 60.

Burr died Tuesday in his sleep in Dalton, Georgia, of obvious problems from a stroke, his longtime good friend, actor Eric Spudic, instructed The Hollywood Reporter.

After a number of different administrators had dropped out, Burr got here aboard on the final minute to helm New Line’s Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Bloodbath III (1990), this installment starring former professional wrestler R.A. Mihailoff because the villain.

He stated it took 11 tries earlier than the MPAA would log off on an ‘R’ score for the movie, which grossed $5.8 million on a $2 million finances.

Burr went on to direct Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings (1993) and Puppet Grasp 4 (1993), Puppet Grasp 5 (1994) and Puppet Grasp: Blitzkrieg Bloodbath (2018).

Exterior of the horror realm, he helmed Eddie Presley (1992), a movie about an Elvis impersonator that has Quentin Tarantino and Bruce Campbell enjoying asylum attendants, and co-wrote and directed the World Struggle II drama Straight Into Darkness (2004).

The latter, shot in Romania, was Burr’s “dream challenge,” Spudic stated. “He cherished that yet one more than the others.”

Born in Aurora, Ohio, on July 18, 1963, Jeffrey Burr was raised in Dalton, the place he turned a fan of film monsters and made his personal Tremendous-8 footage whereas in junior highschool.

He attended USC however left after three years to complete a brief movie, Divided We Fall (1982), about two brothers on opposing sides of the Civil Struggle who meet on the battlefield. (Mihailoff was an actor in that.)

For the low-budget anthology movie From a Whisper to a Scream (1987), Burr and a producer discovered Value via a celeb deal with service, went to his dwelling unannounced with a bottle of wine and have been invited in. The horror legend “sat and talked with us for about quarter-hour, took the script, and that’s how it began,” he recalled in 2012.

Value “was an ideal man to work with,” Burr famous within the Joel Eisner’s 2021 e-book, The Value of Concern: The Movie Profession of Vincent Value, In His Personal Phrases. “He had no purpose to hearken to me. He knew he was the largest star there and he might have simply have run roughshod over me. However he was an unbelievable gentleman, and it was an ideal thrill simply to have Vincent Value hearken to my path.”

Value, who performed a Tennessee librarian who saved information of his city’s horrible historical past in blood — and on pages constructed from human flesh, no much less! — loved a reunion with Roger Corman throughout his two days of labor on the movie. (Burr had interned for the B-movie maestro and invited him to the set).

To finance From a Whisper to a Scream, Burr and co-writer/producer Darin Scott bought shares within the film to native businessmen in Dalton. They needed to pause halfway via filming when the cash ran out.

After that, Burr directed Stepfather II: Make Room for Daddy (1989), starring Terry O’Quinn as serial killer Jerry Blake.

Burr additionally helmed episodes of Sid and Marty Krofft’s Land of the Misplaced ABC present in 1992 and movies together with Night time of the Scarecrow (1995), Spoiler (1998), The Boy With the X-Ray Eyes (1999), Frankenstein & the Werewolf Reborn! (2005) and Tales of the Incredible (2023).

“I do love horror movies, style movies, however they aren’t the one varieties I need to make,” he stated in a 2018 interview. “I’m a lover of movie and need to do all types of films, however within the mainstream Hollywood world, fairly often filmmakers are typecast like actors.”

Spudic famous that Burr had returned to Dalton to care for his mom, Jeanne, who for a decade had hosted an area radio present known as Espresso Time from a lunch counter. She died in Could 2020. His brother, Invoice, who produced a few of his movies, died in 2012.

Rhett Bartlett contributed to this report.