James Landis
2 credits on HibingeTV
American film director and writer, born 1926. He wrote and directed The Sadist (1963), a low-budget thriller that has been reappraised as a effective exploitation picture. He directed only a handful of films. He died in 1991.
Directed
Drama, War
A 1962 American drama film written and directed by James Landis, starring Bobby Diamond. Eddie Slocum, a young Indiana farm boy, volunteers for the Army's Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, inspired by his uncle's World War II paratrooper service. During jump school training, he clashes with Rocky, a bullying recruit jealous of the attention Eddie gets from local beauty Jenny May. During their first parachute jump, Rocky's chute becomes entangled in Eddie's lines, and Eddie must hold onto his former enemy as they descend to the ground — a brush with death that transforms Rocky and bonds the platoon.
Drama · War
Airborne
1962 - Drama
Thriller, Horror
The Sadist is a 1963 American thriller written and directed by James Landis, starring Arch Hall Jr. as a psychopathic spree killer patterned after Charles Starkweather. Three teachers driving into Los Angeles for a Dodgers game break down at a remote gas station and find themselves held hostage by Charlie Tibbs, a cheerful, remorseless killer, and his girlfriend Judy, who toys with the captives while Charlie torments them. Made for about sixty-nine thousand dollars and distributed by Fairway International Pictures, the film is a lean, genuinely unsettling piece of exploitation that benefits from the feature debut of the future Academy Award-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, whose handheld 35mm work gives the picture a queasy you-are-there immediacy. The film is in the public domain.
Thriller · Horror · Crime
The Sadist
1963 - Thriller