Mike Hodges is dead: director of »Flash Gordon«, »Get Carter«

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Mike Hodges (1932-2022)

Photo: Carlo Allegri/Getty Images/MLS

His directing career hasn't been very linear, as Mike Hodges didn't want to commit himself to a single genre.

And so he is remembered for a gangster film, a science fiction comic adaptation, a gambling drama: Mike Hodges died in the English county of Dorset on Saturday, according to US trade journals and the British Guardian.

Hodges was 90 years old.

According to his friend and film producer Mike Kaplan, the cause of death was heart failure.

Michael Hodges, born in Bristol, England, in 1932, came to television in the early 1950s.

He worked his way up from teleprompter operator to writer, producer and director of documentaries.

In 1969 he was able to stage his first TV feature film »Suspect«, which was also released in cinemas in some countries.

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Scene from »Get Carter« with Michael Caine

Photo: Snap Photo / ddp

In 1971, Hodges adapted a Ted Lewis novel, Get Carter, into a film.

It tells the story of a London pro gangster who travels to his hometown of Newcastle to find out more about his brother's death.

»Get Carter« is violent and staged in a stylized way, the theme music by jazz pianist Roy Budd became a classic, Michael Caine's portrayal of the gangster Jack Carter (the film was shown in German cinemas under the title »JackCalculates«) was often imitated.

Caine also played one of the leading roles in Mike Hodges' next film, the crime comedy See Malta and Die, whose original title Pulp already indicates the plot: Michael Caine plays a dime novelist who ghostwrites the autobiography of an aging Hollywood star (Mickey Rooney ) should write.

Underrated master of the medium

As a result, Mike Hodges worked mainly in the USA, filmed the 1974 science fiction horror »The Terminal Man« with George Segal, was then fired as director of the »The Omen« sequel (based on his screenplay), and finally retired the film adaptation of the comic »Flash Gordon« on land, for which George Lucas, Federico Fellini and Nicolas Roeg had previously been traded as directors.

Produced by Italian-American upscale trash expert Dino de Laurentiis, 1980's »Flash Gordon« received mixed reviews and quickly slipped out of US theaters.

In the UK - possibly because of Queen's theme song - and Italy - possibly because Ornella Muti starred - the film was more successful.

Over the years it gained a reputation as a cult film, which may have helped that there was a new series adaptation of the comic series in 2007.

In any case, Hodges' directing career didn't do Flash Gordon any good at first;

little came out, apart from the British sci-fi comedy Morons from Outer Space (1985) and the IRA film On the Wings of Death (1987) starring Mickey Rourke, both of which were critically panned.

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Scene from "Croupier"

Photo: ddp images / ddp

After several television jobs, Mike Hodges made a comeback in 1998 with the gambling drama »Croupier« (1998), which was largely filmed in Düsseldorf.

Clive Owen, the lead actor in Croupier, then returned in Mike Hodges' last film, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, a 2003 gangster film produced by Mike Kaplan.

The Observer called Hodges "one of the most underrated and almost unknown masters of the medium of the last 30 years" in a 2000 remake of "Get Carter" (starring Sylvester Stallone).

Retrospectives were dedicated to him in Munich and most recently at the British Film Institute in London.