Jeff Burr
Jeff Burr (July 18, 1963) is an American film director, writer, and producer best known for his work in horror sequels, such as "Stepfather II", "", "Puppet Master 4" and "", and "". Early life. Jeff Burr was born in Aurora, Ohio, in 1963. He grew up in rural Dalton, Georgia, where he avidly read horror fanzines like "Castle of Frankenstein", "The Monster Times", and "Famous Monsters", and eventually began making his own Super-8 films. Burr attended the University of Southern California (USC) (with R. A. Mihailoff who played Leatherface in "Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III"). He and fellow director  Kevin Meyer dropped out of USC after his third year to finish their American civil war drama "Divided We Fall", which premiered in 1982 and won some acclaim at festivals around the world. Though "Divided We Fall" was a drama, Burr would spend most of his subsequent film career working in the Horror genre. Career. For his second feature film, alternately titled "From a Whisper to a Scream" or "The Offspring", Burr approached veteran horror actor Vincent Price. Burr recalled in 2012, After "From a Whisper to a Scream" premiered in 1987, Burr directed his first studio film, a sequel  to the 1987 horror/thriller "The Stepfather", entitled "Stepfather II". The film was poorly received, and Burr balked at studio executives Bob and Harvey Weinstien's post-production re-shoots with another director. Still, Burr was subsequently contacted by New Line Cinema with an offer to direct the second sequel to Tobe Hooper's 1974 classic "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" after the studio's first choices—including directors Jonathan Betuel and Peter Jackson—dropped out. Burr was hired only two weeks before shooting began, and consequently had little time to prepare and little creative control over the final product . The resulting film, 1990's "" encountered problems with the MPAA, requiring 11 different submissions before receiving an R Rating, which New Line required in order to effectively distribute the film. After test audiences responded positively to Ken Foree's character, the studio brought editor Michael Knue in to shoot a new ending which focused on the character. Burr, frustrated by the changes, asked that his name be removed from the final film, but was denied on the basis that film prints had already been struck which listed him as director. "Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III" was not well received  by critics, but nevertheless went on gross $5,765,562 on a $2,000,000 budget, making the studio a profit. Burr would go on to direct sequels to "Pumpkinhead" and "Puppet Master", among many others. Though most of his subsequent work has been in the horror genre "(Night of the Scarecrow", "Devil's Den"), Burr has also worked in dramedy ("Eddie Presley"), Science-Fiction ("Spoiler", "The Boy with the X-Ray Eyes") and war films ("Straight into Darkness"). Throughout his career, Burr has expressed frustration over studio interference, budget limitations, and other unfortunate circumstances, leading him to claim in an interview  in 2012 that there were only three films which he considered to be his own: "From a Whisper to a Scream", 1992's "Eddie Presley", and 2004's "Straight into Darkness". The others, he claimed, had, "decisions that were made, in my estimation, that weren't the best. So, those are the three I stand behind without a mountain of qualifications."