Bernard Rose

Music videos for UB40, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Bronski Beat were the training ground, and Bernard Rose has spent the decades since making films that look like nothing else in British horror. Paperhouse, in 1988, is a child's-drawing nightmare carrying more melancholy than fright. Candyman, four years later, is the one everybody knows: a horror picture built out of class and geography rather than gore, with Tony Todd handled as an icon instead of a monster.

Then he changed lanes completely. Immortal Beloved and Anna Karenina are handsome, full-orchestra period pieces, and they demonstrate that his interest in obsession never needed a supernatural excuse. He shot ivans xtc on early digital cameras when that was a statement rather than a default, and it brought him Independent Spirit Award nominations for Best Director and the John Cassavetes Award.

Since then he has worked mostly outside the system, in small independent films with Danny Huston as his regular lead, and the results are wildly uneven: 2 Jacks and Frankenstein are worth an argument, Sx_Tape is worth avoiding. He turns up in front of the camera now and then, including as a Fake Shemp in Army of Darkness, which is a fair summary of how his career has run: serious ambitions, disreputable company, and a considerable amount of fun had along the way.