Monte Hellman, cult director and Reservoir Dogs executive producer, dies aged 91

Monte Hellman, the director behind 1970s cult classics Two Lane Blacktop and Cockfighter, as well as being instrumental in getting Quentin Tarantino’s directorial debut Reservoir Dogs off the ground, has died aged 91. His daughter Melissa, who produced his 2010 film

Road to Nowhere, confirmed the news to the Hollywood Reporter, saying Hellman had died in hospital after a fall at his home.

Hellman was born Monte Himmelman in 1929, and after studying theatre at Stanford University set up a theatre company in Los Angeles. Like many directors of his generation, Hellman gained early experience working for Roger Corman’s low-budget exploitation-movie factory. Corman hired him to make Beast from Haunted Cave, shot simultaneously with the same cast and crew as another Corman film, Ski Troop Attack. (“It wasn’t fun to make at all,” he said.) Along with contemporaries such as Francis Ford Coppola and Jack Nicholson, Hellman became a regular Corman collaborator, at first helping to rework and reshoot material. According to Hellman: “Corman was great because he really gave you a lot of freedom. All he cared about was that you came in on budget and that he had a product he could sell.”

After directing Nicholson in two Corman-produced films in the Philippines – Flight to Fury and Back Door to Hell – Hellman persuaded Corman to back a pair of US-set westerns, The Shooting and Ride in the Whirlwind, both featuring Nicholson. Neither film was released in the US, but attracted cult and critical followings: the influential French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema named Ride in the Whirlwind in its Top 10 films of 1968.