Peter Medak, the director behind the Canadian haunted house classic The Changeling, has died at the age of 88. Variety reported that Medak died Tuesday in Los Angeles; further details on the circumstances have not been made public.
Born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1937, Medak spent part of his childhood in hiding during the Nazi occupation, and later saw his father imprisoned under the country’s Communist regime, which barred the young Medak from finishing school. He fled during the 1956 uprising, resettling in England, where he worked his way up from clapper boy to director.
His feature debut, Negatives, arrived in 1968, with Glenda Jackson starring in a psychosexual drama about a couple who act out fantasies as Jack the Ripper and a vampire, a fittingly macabre start for a filmmaker who’d spend six decades moving between horror, black comedy, and crime pictures. His follow-up, The Ruling Class (1972), competed for the Palme d’Or at Cannes and earned star Peter O’Toole a Best Actor Oscar nomination.
It’s The Changeling (1980), however, that looms largest for genre fans. Shot in Toronto and starring George C. Scott as a grieving composer who moves into a mansion haunted by the ghost of a murdered child, the film is widely regarded as one of the most effective haunted house movies ever made, and swept Canada’s Genie Awards with eight wins, including Best Motion Picture.
Medak kept close ties to genre work throughout his career, directing episodes of The Twilight Zone, Tales from the Crypt, Hannibal, and Masters of Horror, along with the 1998 creature sequel Species II. His crime drama The Krays (1990) brought him the Evening Standard Award for Best Director, and his other credits include Let Him Have It, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, and Romeo Is Bleeding, starring Gary Oldman. On television, he also directed episodes of Homicide: Life on the Street, The Wire, Breaking Bad, and House.
In 2018, Medak turned the camera on himself for the documentary The Ghost of Peter Sellers, revisiting the disastrous production of his 1970s comedy Ghost in the Noonday Sun and his complicated friendship with its star. He is survived by four children and five grandchildren.
