Ryan Marshall

Jeff Lieberman may be one of the unsung masters of late 20th-century terror, in spite of only having a handful of directorial credits to his name. Born Oct. 16, 1947, the Brooklyn native’s career spans over 40 years, and each outing is marked with the same utterly entrancing concoction of splatter, psychedelia, and satire that has allowed the filmmaker’s oeuvre to far withstand the oh-so-important Test of Time with ease, surpassing many of his peers in both brains and looks alike.

Lieberman’s feature debut was 1976’s “Squirm,” a wonderful marriage of acid-tongued hixploitation and the “nature-runs-amok” cinema that was all the rage at the time featuring early work by acclaimed makeup artist Rick Baker. (The image of man-eating worms crawling under a man’s face is an unsettling one, to say the least.) “Blue Sunshine,” a decidedly unsubtle critique of ‘60s and ‘70s drug culture that’s as devilishly funny as it is genuinely poignant, followed two years later, and remains a fan favorite to this day.

The next decade brought another double dose of Lieberman, though it would unfortunately be the director’s last for some time. Nevertheless, 1981’s “Just Before Dawn” is a marvelous subversion and celebration of slasher-film formula, a twisty tale with a sort of elegant naturalism that might make Terrence Malick blush. 1988 brought perhaps the most underseen entry in the director’s modest collection, “Remote Control,” which once again entertains notions of science fiction and horror and broad comic strokes.

All was quiet on the Lieberman front, save for some work in television and documentary filmmaking, until he marked his territory yet again in 2004 with the delightfully demented “Satan’s Little Helper,” which further proved the director’s resourcefulness when working under tight budgetary constraints.

Lieberman has yet to make another move since, unfortunately, but has been active in allowing his legacy to live on by actively participating in restorations and revivals. If nothing else, the man seems to know his worth, and with such a unique mastery of an admittedly difficult tone, it’s hard not to see a little bit of Lieberman in his successors.