Herbert L. Strock, a pioneer television producer and director who also directed the 1950s B-movie creature-features “I Was a Teenage Frankenstein,” “How to Make a Monster” and “The Crawling Hand,” has died. He was 87.
Mr. Strock died of heart failure Wednesday in Moreno Valley, Calif., following a car accident, said his daughter, Leslie Mitchner.
Mr. Strock launched his television directing career in the late 1940s and worked on countless TV series, including directing the first 10 episodes of “Highway Patrol” and episodes of “Sky King,” “Sea Hunt,” “Maverick” and “77 Sunset Strip.”
But he is best remembered for his drive-in movie fare, which included “Blood of Dracula” and “Gog” (shot in 3-D).
“I think he was often hired more for his speed than the quality of the finished product,” said horror and science fiction film expert Tom Weaver, who interviewed Strock for Fangoria magazine. “He was just a real old-time type of get-it-down Hollywood moviemaker, who’d just go in knowing what needed to be done and very efficiently handling everything.”
A 1941 graduate of the University of Southern California, where he studied journalism and film, Mr. Strock served a brief stint in the Army’s Ordnance Motion Picture Division before landing a job at MGM as an assistant editor on the 1944 film “Gaslight.”
A few years later, he became a television pioneer as the producer and director of 13 episodes of “The Cases of Eddie Drake.”
Mr. Strock made his transition to feature film directing when, as associate producer and film editor, he took over as the uncredited director of the 1953 science-fiction thriller “The Magnetic Monster.” He also took over as the uncredited director of the 1953 science-fiction horror film “Donovan’s Brain,” whose cast included Nancy Davis Reagan.
