Bert I. Gordon
Bert Ira Gordon (born September 24, 1922) is an American film director most famous for such science fiction and horror B-movies as The Amazing Colossal Man and Village of the Giants. Most of Gordon's work is in the idiom of giant monster films, for which he used rear-projection to create the special effects. His nickname "Mister B.I.G." is a reference both to his initials and to his preferred technique for making super-sized creatures.
Early life and career
He is the son of Charles Abraham Gordon and Sadeline Barnett, who were married June 27, 1916 in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
He began making home movies in 16mm after his aunt gave him a camera for his thirteenth birthday. He dropped out of college to join the Air Corps in World War II. After the war, he married and he and his wife began making television commercials. He later edited British feature films to fit half hour time slots and became a production assistant on Racket Squad and camera man on Serpent Island (1954).
In 1955, Gordon made his first feature, King Dinosaur, followed by The Cyclops in 1957, which co-starred Lon Chaney Jr. In 1957, he began his prolific association with American International Pictures, beginning with The Amazing Colossal Man and its 1958 sequel, War of the Colossal Beast. AIP also distributed some of his other late-50s opuses, such as Earth vs the Spider, Beginning of the End, and Attack of the Puppet People.