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Wolf Rilla

Best remembered today for his seminal 1960 horror film "Village Of The Damned," Wolf Rilla's extensive career saw him flourish in multiple fields. His father, Walter Rilla, was a well-known half-Jewish actor who feared for his family's safety when Hitler came to power. In 1934, the family moved to London and Walter joined the BBC in 1939. After graduating from St. Catherine's College in Cambridge, Wolf followed his father and entered the BBC World Service in 1942. When World War II ended, he moved from the radio division to television, acting as a producer on many plays in both mediums. Restless, he left the BBC in 1952 to pursue a career in feature films, directing four movies in 1953 alone. After a series of undistinguished B-movies and thrillers, Rilla had massive success with the supernatural saga "Village of the Damned," a creepy tale about telepathic children. His subsequent career failed to live up to his biggest success and after directing two softcore exploitation films in the 1970s, he retired from behind the camera. Instead, he became a film professor, as well as writing 1970's self-explanatory "A-Z of Movie Making" and helping co-found the Directors' Guild of Great Britain in 1983. In his final years, Rilla and his wife moved to France and took charge of a hotel in Provence until his death in 2005.