Above, David J. Skal. |
Nothing like waking up to shocking news.
Horror film historian David J. Skal was killed on New Years Day in an automobile accident in Glendale. He was 71.
It was a head-on collision caused by an alleged drunk driver. ABC 7 News has a surveillance video of the accident.
Although we were Facebook friends, I mainly knew him through his featurettes in Universal Pictures' horror movies DVDs.
It was this post from Don Glut of a few hours ago that gave me the news:
By now most of you who knew David J. Skal -- a scholar, historian and a friend -- was killed tragically in an auto collision. I directed David once in a cameo scene in a short film THE VAMPIRE HUNTERS CLUB. But I'll always remember a magical moment I had with him. We were in a recording studio up at Universal. At the time he was working on a restoration of FRANKENSTEIN and knew that I had an audio tape made from the original sound discs that included Colin Clive's later-censored line, "In the name of God, now I know what it feels like to be God." He wanted to restore that line into the film, a place that had been a jump cut since it was removed decades ago by the censors. The tape, which I had since the late 1960s, had to be played from the beginning; we couldn't skip ahead to that line. David and I were sitting on a couch. I watched him as the tape played from the beginning ... and the growing look of anticipation on his face as the soundtrack progressed ... and the final look of near-ecstasy as he finally heard, for the first time in his life, those legendary lines. I'll never forget that moment! Ironically, the accident occurred on January 1st -- the anniversary of the first publication of Mary Shelley's classic novel FRANKENSTEIN. To see and hear the scene as restored by David, click ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqF28KiD-Hc
This is a big loss to the horror movie fan family.
UPDATE (2/14.24):
David Skal’s partner, Robert Postawko, who was in the car with Mr. Skal when Mr. Skal was killed in a traffic accident, died on Feb. 6 from the injuries he had sustained. He had been expected to survive despite the seriousness of his injuries.
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