Jeff Burr(1961-2023)

Director/writer/producer Jeff Burr was born in 1961 in Aurora, Ohio. He grew up in Dalton, Georgia. Burr avidly watched low-budget independent movies at the local drive-in theater and made Super-8 pictures as a kid. Burr attended the University of Southern California for three years, where he met fellow student and aspiring filmmaker Kevin Meyer. The two of them dropped out of USC to complete Divided We Fall (1982), an acclaimed Civil War drama that wound up winning a plethora of awards at various film festivals all over the world. Burr made his first fright feature in 1987 with the superbly creepy and disturbing horror anthology winner From a Whisper to a Scream (1987). Burr then directed a handful of above average horror sequels: Stepfather II: Make Room for Daddy (1989) (Make Room for Daddy), Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990), Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings (1993), and the fourth and fifth "Puppetmaster" movies (Puppet Master 4 (1993) and Puppet Master 5 (1994)). Burr's more current spate of films have been a decidedly mixed bag. They range from mediocre (1999's Phantom Town (1999)) to awful (2006's "The Devil's Den"), with the strong, gritty and harrowing World War II action drama Straight Into Darkness (2004) rating as a definite recent career highlight. In addition to directing, Jeff Burr has also played small roles in such movies as The Mangler Reborn (2005), Dark Asylum (2001), High Tomb (1995), and Fear of a Black Hat (1993).