House of One Corpse

Irwin Keyes, Richard Kiel’s mini-me, has died of complications of acromegaly at the age of 63. Keyes put his acromegalic appearance to good use as a character actor playing the heavy in a range of low-budget horror and sci-fi movies, such as The House of 1,000 Corpses, Evil Bong 3-D and The Exterminator, as well as played the archetype for laughs in films and TV shows like The Naked Gun and The Flintstones. He had a recurring role as George’s bodyguard Hugo Mojelewski on The Jeffersons, and his repeated line "Hi! Remember Me?" became a bit of a national catchphrase, back before catchphrases were more tightly regulated.

Vlad Tidings

(Props to Don)

Or

Stop Hammer Time

Or 

The Man Who Could Cheat Death (for Awhile, Anyway)

Christopher Lee, best remembered as the Russian commandant in Police Academy: Mission to Moscow, has died at the age of 93. On screen, he took on James Bond (as Scaramanga in The Man with the Golden Gun), Professor Van Helsing (in the Brides of Dracula), Yoda (as Count Dooku/Darth Tyranus in the prequel trilogy best left forgotten), Dennis Nayland Smith (as Fu Manchu in 5 films, including the MST3K’ed The Castle of Fu Manchu) and Gandalf (as Saruman in about 157 hours of Peter Jackson’s Tolkien sesquicentennialogy), not to mention countless riled up villagers as Dracula and Frankenstein’s Creature in various Hammer Films creations. All of which paled in comparison to his real life badassery as a member of Britain's Special Operations Executive, a crack commando unit tasked by Winston Churchill himself to "set Europe ablaze," whose actions remain classified to this day. Holding the Guinness World Record for Tallest Leading Actor at 6 foot-5, Lee appeared in more than 260 films, in which he used some of the seven languages in which he was fluent, and scored a knighthood. He parodied his persona as a mad scientist in Gremlins 2: The Next Batch, and paid homage to Hugh Hefner in his role as the free loving, public nudity and human sacrifice endorsing hedonistic pagan leader Lord Summerisle, he played an expert scuba diver who drowned within minutes of entering the water in Airport ’77 and played a Nazi U-boat commander in 1941. At the age of 87, he then recorded a metal album, in which he played his great-great-ancestor Charlemagne. 

Betsy to Heavens

Betsy Palmer, best remembered for playing a woman with overly developed maternal instincts, has died at the age of 88. In another life, she had tangential contact with greatness, appearing in the tour company of South Pacific, and creating the role of Virginia in Paddy Chayefsky's teleplay of Marty, garnering her just enough fame to be a regular panelist on I’ve Got a Secret. By the late 1970s, she was largely forgotten and down on her luck. Her need for a new car led her to appear in Friday the 13th (despite thinking the script was “a piece of shit.”) as Pamela Voorhees, former cook at Camp Crystal Lake whose freak show of a son drowned because the counselors weren’t watching him swim. The middle-aged matron then became a killing machine, combining stealth, resourcefulness and strength to become Liam Neeson in a cable-knit sweater, slaughtering horny pot-smoking counselors by the busload before ending up on the wrong end of a machete.

Partain is such sweet sorrow

Paul Partain, portrayer of one of the most annoying characters in film history, has died of cancer at the age of 58. As wheelchair-bound Franklin Hardesty, he was stabbed by a hitchhiker, then ends up on the wrong end of a power tool in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but really, who wasn’t rooting for Leatherface to finish off this whiny inaction hero?

Tale from the Crypt

Legendary schlock horror director and producer Max Rosenberg, best known for such films as Tales From the Crypt and Dr. Terror's House of Horrors as well as the early rock 'n' roll movies Jamboree and Rock, Rock, Rock! has died at the age of 89. Rosenberg played a big role in bringing the Hammer films from England to the U.S., as their collaboration on the $500,000 film The Curse of Frankenstein netted a $7 million payoff and kicked off a revival of gothic horror films. Other hits included The Deadly Bees, They Came From Beyond Space, Dr Who and the Daleks, Daleks Invasion Earth: 2150 A D, Scream and Scream Again and The House That Dripped Blood.