Mike Hodges Death, Obituary – Mike Hodges, a British director who is most known for directing the films “Get Carter,” “Croupier,” and “Flash Gordon,” passed away on December 17 in Dorset, England. He was 90. Mike Kaplan, a longtime friend of the deceased and the producer of “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead,” revealed the news of his passing. His first two crime dramas, “Get Carter” (1971) and “Pulp” (1972), came out at the beginning of his career, and his last two, Croupier (1999) and “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead,” came out towards the conclusion (2003). In addition to his work in crime dramas, he was famous for his over-the-top, exaggerated interpretation of the character Flash Gordon.
Director Mike Hodges has become one of the most under-appreciated and totally unknown masters of the medium over the last 30 years,” Andrew Sarris stated in the Observer in the year 2000. “Mr. Hodges has been acclaimed by everyone from Martin Scorsese to Pauline Kael as a stylist of the first order.” The film was described as “startlingly gloomy” by The Guardian. They said that it was “a no-frills existential gangster tale that, at its finest, emanates the same reptilian dread” that Hodges shown in “Get Carter.” Undoubtedly, it deals with topics that are analogous, such as honor, vengeance, and masculine brutality.
The Terminal Man (1974), which was Hodges’ third feature and his first as a producer on a major studio film, was a loose adaptation of the best-selling novel written by Michael Crichton. It was described as “a chilling warning of technology gone amok in the name of benefiting humanity” by Mike Kaplan in a post that was published in the Huffington Post in 2013. As part of the process, (Hodges) provided a scathing critique of the hubris displayed by the medical and scientific communities. The movie was a big hit at the London Film Festival, but the executives at the studio didn’t get it and didn’t appreciate it as much as they should have.
After Hodges received a letter of appreciation from Terrence Malick, who wrote, “I have just come from seeing ‘The Terminal Man’ and want you to know what a magnificent, overwhelming picture it is….,” Kaplan attempted to elicit the assistance of Stanley Kubrick, who had said of Hodges, “Any actor who sees ‘Get Carter’ will want to work with him’ and called “The Terminal Man” “terrific.” However, Kubrick was unable to change the minds Your pictures help me to comprehend what it means to see something. It was decided to create an advertisement that would publish the entire Malick letter.