Freddie Francis, the celebrated, Oscar®-winning cinematographer who also became a director of cult horror films in the '60 and '70s, died of a stroke on March 17 in London. He was 89.

He was born in London in Islington, London, England on December 22, 1917. A true worker bee in the film industry, he began in the late '30s working as an apprentice to a stills photographer. His career was interrupted by World War II but by the late 40s, he had become a camera operator. By the '50s, he was much in demand in that role and worked on such major productions as Moulin Rouge (1952), Beat the Devil (1953) and Moby Dick (1956). He became a director of photography for the minor war drama A Hill in Korea (1956), an inauspicious start for one of the finest cinematographers of his generation.

Francis specialized in black and white photography, and had a gift for finding lyricism in what could have been drab or squalid conditions. Films such as the social climbing drama Room at the Top (1959); the unsettling Hammer study of pedophilia; Never Take Sweets from a Stranger; his Oscar® winning, moodily effective period piece Sons and Lovers; the succinct kitchen-sink frustration of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (all three 1960); and of course the brilliantly subtle ghost story The Innocents (1961) clearly placed Francis as a cinematographer of great intuitiveness and ability.

Francis became a director with the mild comedy Two and Two Make Six (1962), but is mostly famous for a string of offbeat horror thrillers that are still cherished by fright-film buffs: Paranoia (1963), The Evil of Frankenstein (1964), Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965), The Psychopath (1966) and Torture Garden (1967). Sadly, even Francis had to realize that such material in this genre would suffer from redundancy, and his last few films in this style were forgettable: They Came from Beyond Space (1967), Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968); and Joan Crawford's last film, the embarrassingly bad Trog (1970). He did, however, have one notable, effective chiller left in him - Tales from the Crypt (1972).

Fortunately for us, Francis returned to cinematography for David Lynch's sumptuous The Elephant Man (1980). He picked up right where he left off, doing fine work as a Director of Photography in The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981); the acclaimed telefilm The Executioner's Song (1982); for Lynch again in Dune (1984); a second, deserved Oscar® for the Civil War epic Glory (1989); the richly saturated photography for Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear (1991); and rounding out his career for Lynch a final time with the lovely, understated The Straight Story (1999).

As a tribute for his contributions to cinema, the American Society of Cinematographers awarded him with the International Achievement Award in 1997. Francis is survived by his wife of 44 years, Pamela; sons, Kevin and Gareth; and a daughter, Suzanna.

by Michael T. Toole