Biography
The brother of director
Billy Wilder, Austrian-born W. Lee Wilder has worked in a distinctly lower-budget, less-visible manner. After abandoning an industrial career in Europe, Wilder came to New York as the head of William Wilder Productions, and produced
The Great Flamarion (1945), directed by
Anthony Mann and starring
Erich Von Stroheim in a drama about betrayal under the big top. Wilder received his first directing credit in 1946 as director of Republic's
The Glass Alibi, a crime drama about a confidence man who marries a terminally ill woman to secure an alibi, only to learn that she is recovering. Two years later, he produced and directed the thriller
Vicious Circle (1948), a drama about Jewish farmers in Hungary being framed for murder. But his best film--and his best known movie, at least among horror movie buffs--is easily
Killers from Space (1953), a bizarre and compelling science-fiction thriller about an attempted alien invasion of Earth using giant insects and lizards whose low-budget shooting techniques, staccato editing, and cheap special effects combine into a spellbinding whole. From the later '50s onward, Wilder worked in low-budget independent movies such as the British made
The Man Without a Body (1957), starring
Robert Hutton and
George Coulouris--about an attempt to revive the disembodied head of Nostradamus--and Bluebeard's 10 Honeymoons (1960), with
George Sanders. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide