Who is Ted V. Mikels?

American filmmaker Ted V. Mikels holds a unique position as one of the most unconventional directors of exploitation cinema. Famous for his eccentric home life (he once lived with a harem in a castle with secret passageways) and promotional gimmicks (he was known for having nurses and ambulances on hand to assist "scared-to-death" moviegoers), Mikels is now considered a pioneering master of low-budget movie making.

Examples of Mikels' influence can be seen everywhere: from music (punk band The Misfits wrote a tribute song called "The Astro-Zombies"), to Mikels' film The Doll Squad being the template for the television series Charlie's Angels, to inspiring the look of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill.

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About Ted V. Mikels

Cult Filmmakers You Should Know #9: Ted V. Mikels
by Michael Varrati, October 19th, 2010
(Excerpts)

When it comes to pure, unadulterated drive-in era entertainment, I’d venture to say that few do it better than legendary cult icon Ted V. Mikels.

. . . For Ted V. Mikels, filmmaking has been a decades long odyssey of achievements and setbacks, crafting glorious low budget epics in the shadow of Hollywood’s golden era. Undaunted, Mikels has always forged forward, making movies his way, plowing ahead with an uncompromised vision of the films he sought to create. For a whole new generation of cult cinema fans just discovering who Ted V. Mikels is as an artist and individual, I feel it is important to know that this man has never stopped making movies, but more importantly, has never stopped believing in them.

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Further reading

Official website
IMDB listing
Wikipedia entry

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