Bert Ira Gordon Biography
Bert Ira Gordon was born in Kenosha in 1922. He began his career as a producer of television commercials but soon specialized in fantasy films featuring giants or gigantic animals as protagonists. In 1954, he co-directed Serpent Island with Tom Gries. He later began independently directing films such as King Dinosaur and Beginning of the End, which feature giant lizards and locusts, respectively.
One of his most famous films is The Amazing Colossal Man, a hit produced for American International in which a man becomes a giant due to exposure to atomic radiation. Gordon continued to explore similar themes in other films, such as Attack of the Puppet People, about shrinking people to the size of dolls, and The Spider (aka Earth vs the Spider), which tells the story of a giant spider that attacks a small town .
During the 1960s, Gordon tried his hand at other fantasy genres, such as fantasy in The Magic Sword and the supernatural in Tormented. In 1965, he returned to gigantism in the film Village of the Giants, which features young delinquents growing to enormous proportions and features elements of youth culture of the time, such as rock music.
In the 1970s, Gordon made two films loosely based on works by H. G. Wells: Food of the Gods and Empire of the Ants, both of which focused on gigantism. Gordon often created special effects for his films in collaboration with his wife, Flora M. Gordon. His daughter Susan Gordon also appeared in some of his films.
Gordon's output declined during the 1980s and he has directed only one film since 1990, Secrets of a Psychopath in 2014, for which he also wrote the screenplay. Bert Ira Gordon passed away on January 30, 2018 in Los Angeles, California at the age of 96.
