Mike Hodges, British director of ‘Get Carter,’ ‘Flash Gordon,’ dead at 90
Mike Hodges, the British director of “Get Carter,” “Flash Gordon” and “Croupier,” died Saturday in Dorset, England. He was 90.
Mike Kaplan — Hodges’ longtime friend and producer of “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” — announced the news Tuesday, Variety reported. A cause of death was not revealed.
Hodges had a long career making British gangster crime dramas, including “Get Carter” in 1971; “Pulp” a year later; as well as “Croupier” in 1998; and “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” in 2003.
“Pulp” was named one of the year’s 10 best films by the New York Times and Time magazine.
Hodges’ take on “Flash Gordon” in 1980 gained a cult following, as did the genre spoof “Morons From Outer Space” in 1985.
“Mike Hodges, director of FLASH GORDON, has passed. Finally saw this movie during the pandemic and it brought me such joy. Have watched it a bunch of times since. Nothing else like it. Rest in Peace, sir,” “The Secret Life of Pets” screenwriter Brian Lynch tweeted Tuesday.
Born in Bristol on July 29, 1932, Hodges was an accountant who spent two years serving on a Royal Navy minesweeper around fishing ports in the north of England.
There, as he explained in a letter to The Guardian, is where he “witnessed horrendous poverty and deprivation that I was previously unaware of,” which influenced “Get Carter,” starring Michael Caine.
“I went into the navy as a newly qualified chartered accountant and complacent young Tory and came out an angry, radical young man,” he wrote.
Hodges also published a novel, “Watching the Wheels Come Off,” in 2010.
He is survived by his wife, Carol Laws; his sons, Ben and Jake Hodges; and five grandchildren, Marlon, Honey, Orson, Michael and Gabriel.
The Post reached out to a rep for Hodges for comment.
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