Richard E. Cunha, 83, sci-fi filmmaker
LOS ANGELES -- Richard E. Cunha, a cinematographer and director who directed a quartet of low-budget movies in the late 1950s that have achieved cult status among horror and sci-fi film aficionados, including ''Giant From the Unknown" and ''She Demons," has died. He was 83.
Mr. Cunha died of heart failure Sept. 18 at his home in Oceanside, Calif., said his family.
The Honolulu-born Mr. Cunha, who served as an Army Air Forces cameraman during World War II, had a decade of industrial films, commercials, and television work behind him when he moved into low-budget feature filmmaking in 1957.
He directed only a handful of films, with his four best-known ones released in 1958: ''Giant From the Unknown," ''She Demons," ''Missile to the Moon" and ''Frankenstein's Daughter."
Aimed at the drive-in and neighborhood movie-house market, they were made on shoestring budgets of $65,000 or less with six-day shooting schedules.
''Monsters from the Vault" magazine writer Steve Kronenberg once wrote that Mr. Cunha ''made a lasting contribution to low-budget genre filmmaking" and deemed all four films ''genuine genre gems" that are ''tinged with an edgy nastiness and political incorrectness."
Critically, however, Mr. Cunha's films were a bust.
''Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide" dismisses ''Missile to the Moon," starring Richard Travis and Cathy Downs, as: ''Preposterous, low-budget sci-fi [film] about lunar expedition finding sinister female presiding over race of moon-women. Lots of laughs, for all the wrong reasons."
''Too boring to be funny," Maltin's book says of ''She Demons," in which three men and a sexy woman ''are stranded on an island inhabited by Nazi criminals, a mad scientist, and the title creatures." It starred Irish McCalla and Tod Griffin.
For his part, Mr. Cunha had no illusions about his films, especially about what they'd do for the careers of the actors who appeared in them.
Born in 1922, Mr. Cunha attended Art Center School in Los Angeles and briefly ran a photo studio in Hollywood.
But the day after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, he enlisted in the Army Air Forces.
As part of the photographic division, he shot reconnaissance missions over Africa, India, China, South America, and the Aleutian Islands. Later, as a member of the Army Air Force's First Motion Picture Unit, he shot military training films.
After the war, Mr. Cunha formed his own company, which produced industrial films and TV commercials.
Mr. Cunha leaves his wife of 62 years, Kathryn Cunha; sons Rick, Michael, and Anthony; a daughter, Kathryn; a sister, Mae Cunha Ross; seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. His son Steven died in 1972.
