Biography
David Hess is most known for playing psychotic killers in graphic horror movies. He is less known for his career as a songwriter, penning tunes for such country and pop stars as Sal Mineo, Pat Boone, and Conway Twitty. Hess' most infamous acting role in the horror genre, by far, was Krug Stillo, the merciless rapist-killer in Wes Craven's "The Last House on the Left"; it remains one of cinema's most brutal slasher movies, despite the fact that it was adapted from Ingmar Bergman's "The Virgin Spring" and significantly edited to make it less "hardcore." Hess also wrote and performed on the film's soundtrack, which was employed as a stark contrast to the onscreen action: comic, upbeat musical themes in the midst of rape, mutilation, and murder. He collaborated with the Italian director of "Cannibal Holocaust" fame, Ruggero Deodato, two times, most notably in "House on the Edge of the Park," playing a Krug Stillo-like maniac and committing sexual violence wherever he goes. A few years later, Hess worked again with Wes Craven, for the adaptation "Swamp Thing," once again playing the villain, Ferret. For Eli Roth's 2002 gore-ridden horror film "Cabin Fever," Hess both wrote and performed several songs, and he played a slasher film director looking for inspiration in the gory meta-horror "Smash Cut" (2009). Hess died of a heart attack in 2011, aged 75.
