David J. Skal (1952-2024)

Birthplace:
Cleveland, Ohio, USA

Born:
June 21, 1952

Died:
January 1, 2024

David John Skal was an American cultural historian, critic, writer, and on-camera commentator known for his research and analysis of horror films and horror literature.

Additional information:

The Search Form


Director:
1999  Monster by Moonlight! The Immortal Saga of 'The Wolf Man'
1999  She's Alive! Creating 'The Bride of Frankenstein'
1999  The Road to 'Dracula'
1999  The World of Gods and Monsters: A Journey with James Whale
2000  Abbott and Costello Meet the Monsters!
2000  Back to the Black Lagoon: A Creature Chronicle
2000  Mummy Dearest: A Horror Tradition Unearthed
2000  Now You See Him: 'The Invisible Man' Revealed!
2000  The Opera Ghost: A Phantom Unmasked
2001  Heroes of Horror
2002  The 'Frankenstein' Files: How Hollywood Made a Monster
2002  The Universe According to Universal
2003  Carla Laemmle Remembers: An Interview with David J. Skal

Director of Photography:
1999  Monster by Moonlight! The Immortal Saga of 'The Wolf Man'
1999  She's Alive! Creating 'The Bride of Frankenstein'
1999  The Road to 'Dracula'
1999  The World of Gods and Monsters: A Journey with James Whale
2000  Abbott and Costello Meet the Monsters!
2000  Back to the Black Lagoon: A Creature Chronicle
2000  Mummy Dearest: A Horror Tradition Unearthed
2000  Now You See Him: 'The Invisible Man' Revealed!
2000  The Opera Ghost: A Phantom Unmasked
2001  Heroes of Horror
2002  The 'Frankenstein' Files: How Hollywood Made a Monster
2002  The Universe According to Universal
2003  Carla Laemmle Remembers: An Interview with David J. Skal

Producer:
1999  Monster by Moonlight! The Immortal Saga of 'The Wolf Man'
1999  She's Alive! Creating 'The Bride of Frankenstein'
1999  The Road to 'Dracula'
1999  The World of Gods and Monsters: A Journey with James Whale
2000  Abbott and Costello Meet the Monsters!
2000  Back to the Black Lagoon: A Creature Chronicle
2000  Mummy Dearest: A Horror Tradition Unearthed
2000  Now You See Him: 'The Invisible Man' Revealed!
2000  The Opera Ghost: A Phantom Unmasked
2001  Heroes of Horror
2002  The 'Frankenstein' Files: How Hollywood Made a Monster
2002  The Universe According to Universal
2003  Carla Laemmle Remembers: An Interview with David J. Skal

Screenplay:
1999  Monster by Moonlight! The Immortal Saga of 'The Wolf Man'
1999  She's Alive! Creating 'The Bride of Frankenstein'
1999  The Road to 'Dracula'
1999  The World of Gods and Monsters: A Journey with James Whale
2000  Abbott and Costello Meet the Monsters!
2000  Back to the Black Lagoon: A Creature Chronicle
2000  Mummy Dearest: A Horror Tradition Unearthed
2000  Now You See Him: 'The Invisible Man' Revealed!
2000  The Opera Ghost: A Phantom Unmasked
2001  Heroes of Horror
2002  The 'Frankenstein' Files: How Hollywood Made a Monster
2002  The Universe According to Universal
2003  Carla Laemmle Remembers: An Interview with David J. Skal

Writer:
1995  Lon Chaney: Son of a Thousand Faces
1999  Monster by Moonlight! The Immortal Saga of 'The Wolf Man'
1999  She's Alive! Creating 'The Bride of Frankenstein'
1999  The Road to 'Dracula'
1999  The World of Gods and Monsters: A Journey with James Whale
2000  Abbott and Costello Meet the Monsters!
2000  Back to the Black Lagoon: A Creature Chronicle
2000  Mummy Dearest: A Horror Tradition Unearthed
2000  Now You See Him: 'The Invisible Man' Revealed!
2000  The Opera Ghost: A Phantom Unmasked
2001  Heroes of Horror
2002  The 'Frankenstein' Files: How Hollywood Made a Monster
2002  The Universe According to Universal
2003  Carla Laemmle Remembers: An Interview with David J. Skal

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Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).

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Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)

While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:

  • I added "runners up" to Top 10 lists, treating them as ties where applicable and numbering them accordingly at the bottom of each list.
  • Regarding those polls wherein "franchise" movies were submitted as one project until BFI's policy changed to regard them separately, I treated them as ties and renumbered the affected lists accordingly (e.g. the Godfather films).

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Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).

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Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.