Celebrity Biographies
Juan Piquer Simon
The Valencian Juan Piquer Simón made an effort to shoot fantastic films in Spain. Passionate about the genre, he shot very worthy films considering the difficulties to carry out his ambitious films, in a country where films that required many special effects were barely made at that time. The filmmaker has died at the age of 74 from lung cancer.
Born in Valencia on February 16, 1935, Juan Piquer Simón studied Fine Arts and Decoration. Later he was a student at the Film Research Institute of Madrid. He started out in the field of advertising, and although he entertained the idea of taking the classic legends of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer to the movies, he failed to bring the project to fruition.
In 1964 he shot two documentaries, violent Spain and life and peace . Passionate about the work of Jules Verne , he filmed a trilogy of adaptations of the French writer’s books. He began with Viaje al centro de la Tierra (1976) , which despite its modesty, was a fairly decent production, taking into account that in Spain in 1976 it was not easy to carry out a project of these characteristics. It was followed by Mystery on Monster Island -inspired by the book “School for Robinsons”-, with Peter Cushing and Terence Stamp , and Los diablos del mar , adaptation of “A fifteen-year-old captain”.
He competed with the famous Superman , by Richard Donner , with the much cheaper but with a certain charm Supersonic Man . Piquer Simón managed to succeed in the field of gore cinema with films like Más allá del terror , A thousand cries has the night , Slugs, viscous death , The crack and Cthulhu’s mansion .
“There is a mentality, here in Spain, that we can only shoot films with guys with berets or committed cinema. We are prohibited from shooting adventure, horror or other genre films, a land reserved exclusively for Anglo-Saxon filmmakers”, commented Piquer Simón.