http://www.joblo.com/horror-movies/news/rip-robert-fuest-director-of-abominable-dr-phibes-and-the-devils-rain

Always a sad day when we lose a genre legend; that's the case today as we learn that Robert Fuest has passed away at the age of 84.

Fuest directed the great Vincent Price horror-comedy THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES and its sequel DR. PHIBES RISES AGAIN. In addition, he helmed AND SOON THE DARKNESS (which was remade a few years ago with Amber Heard), REVENGE OF THE STEPFORD WIVES, and the wild 1975 horror freakout THE DEVIL'S RAIN, which stars Ernest Borgnine, Tom Skerritt and William Shatner. (Seriously, check that one out if you've never experiences it.)

He also worked on several TV shows and specials. Fuest grew up in
London and served time in the Royal Air Force. He eventually moved into
copywriting, with an eye towards getting into the movie business. In the late
1950s he joined the art department of Associated British Television, and became
the art director for the legendary TV series "The Avengers" (1961). After two
producers of the series, Brian Clemens and Albert Fennell, wanted to move into
movies themselves, and chose Fuest to direct their debut effort, AND SOON THE
DARKNESS... The rest, as they say, is history. (Must give credit to IMDB for
that information.)

R.I.P. Robert Fuest.

Former wrestler Joe Blanchard dead at 83 Posted on 03/22/2012 by lkosub

Former wrestler and promoter Joe Blanchard died Thursday at the age of 83, according to his son Tully.Blanchard was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma a little more than a year ago and passed away in hospice at approximately 8 a.m.He was born in Haskell, Okla., on Dec. 7, 1928.

He played football at Kansas State and won the Big 7 wrestling championship in
1950. After playing three seasons for the Canadian Football League’s Edmonton
Eskimos, he began his professional wrestling career in 1953 and moved to San
Antonio in 1964 to get into the promotion end of the business. Blanchard
promoted matches at The Wrestlethon Arena and at The Junction. In the 1970s, he
founded Southwest Championship Wrestling, which became known throughout San Antonio when it hit cable TV as a weekly wrestling show in the early
’80s.

While working as a promoter, Blanchard also was the first sportscaster on KSAT 12 in the mid-1960s, Tully Blanchard said, including serving as the first host of the station’s High School Football Highlights show.

Blanchard’s SCW roster featured Tully (one of wrestling’s Four Horsemen), Jose Lothario and Seigfred Steinke, whose real name was Bill Lehman.

Lehman went on to be an assistant football coach at area high schools and at
Texas Lutheran.“Joe Blanchard gave me one of my first big breaks here in
1984,” said Bobby Fulton, one-half of the tag-team Fantastics, in 1990. Sean
Michaels, a 1983 Randolph graduate who went on to star with the World Wrestling
Federation, credited Blanchard’s SCW cable show for feeding his obsession with
wrestling.Southwest Championship Wrestling folded in the mid-80s after a
nasty battle over local wrestling promotions with a former colleague of
Blanchard’s, bail bondsman Fred Behrend, who pled guilty to tax evasion in 1998
and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.Blanchard went on to work with
the Cornerstone Church prayer line from 1987 until early last summer.The
promoter continued to help Tully, who worked for most of the pro wrestling
groups over his career. Tully, who has been an evangelist for 23 years, will be
inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame on March 31 during Wrestlemania.“My
dad is one of the very, very few people that I know of that nobody ever had
anything bad to say about,” Tully said. “My dad was always the nice guy. He had
some people take advantage of him, but at the end of the day, he could always
put his head down and know that he had done things just about as right as he
could do them.”Blanchard is survived by his wife, Jackie; Tully; and
four grandchildren, Taylor, Tanner, Tessa and Tally. Another son, Taylor, was
killed in a car crash in 1978.Services will be held at Cornerstone at 2
p.m. Monday.http://blog.mysanantonio.com/the-local-scene/2012/03/former-wrestler-joe-blanchard-dead-at-84/