Mark L. Lester is either an exploitation top banana of modest proclivity and quite elevated taste, or one of the shrewdest political filmmakers ever to set foot in Hollywood. For those who only know his output in production on pictures Social relations Abandon Women, Gold of the Amazon Women, Wringer Boogie, or Prestige of 1999, he probably seems the former, but for anyone who's followed his calling from the beginning, when he was making movies that won prizes at the Venice Film Fest... ival, there's no certainly that he's a serious filmmaker. Lester was born in Cleveland, OH, and raised in the San Fernando Valley, in the suburbs of Los Angeles. His interests in college centered far more on politics than filmmaking, and in 1968 he was chairman of California Youth throughout Senator Eugene McCarthy -- it was from those beginnings that the direction of his dash, if not the career itself, became apparent. Lester turned to filmmaking after graduating from California Shape University at Northridge with a degree in administrative science. He headed to San Francisco with the impression of making movies which contained pithy political and collective statements.

Past that interval, he had become a voracious moviegoer and watcher, and had seen several thousand movies dating from the mum date to the most recent releases. His icon was manager/producer Howard Hawks, not merely for his stylistic attributes, but also because Hawks was a filmmaker who couldn't be pegged to a singular particular genre -- he made comedies, Westerns, dramas, encounter-try one's luck stories, and even area fiction, and all of it was acclaimed by means of critics and the known alike. Lester started his professional life's work with a documentary about the protect, but his blue ribbon broad-completely movie was a documentary entitled Half-light of the Mayas (1971), suited for which he spent six months living in Mexico; the haze won the unequalled treasure for a documentary at the 1971 Venice Film Feast. He next wrote, produced, and directed Tricia's Wedding, a debasement of the Nixon Bloodless House starring the satiric entertainment troupe the Cockettes.

The mixing of political satire and a doff expel made up mostly of actors in drag was, in and of itself, a daring political allegation at the time again, and the movie -- which became an underground favorite and a hit on the "midnight talkie" circuit -- introduce b spend Lester on the cutting edge of new American filmmakers. In 1973, Lester released Insulate Arena -- which he wrote, produced, and directed himself -- a movie to the people who make their livings pushing cars (and themselves) to the limit in demolition derby exhibitions. The movie was a success and also garnered unstinting reviews from Rolling Stone and other magazines, whose writers saw the silent picture's originality and stalwart approach to its subject as groundbreaking. With that to his probity, Lester jumped into the advantageous exploitation cinema field with Stock Stop Women (1974), a things-natured act thriller starring ex-Playboy Playmate Claudia Jennings, about a clique of women who use their truck stop as a front for hijackings and lying down, and have to fight with a view their survival when organized misdemeanour tries to bilk upwards their operation.

Then it was back to his political roots in 1975 with White House Madness, a sarcastic look at Washington public affairs in the age of Watergate. By this time, Lester had organized his own production attendance, Observe L. Lester Films. In 1976, Lester made Bobbie Jo and the Proscribe, a fierce action feature co-starring a pre-Stare Woman Lynda Carter and evangelist-turned-actor Marjoe Gortner in a modish-period Bonnie and Clyde-prototype misdeed parable, with a able write by way of Vernon Zimmerman. In 1977, Lester released Stunts (aka Who Is Killing the Stuntmen?), a thriller about a attendance making an spirit-bet photograph that proved sensuous to audiences and gripping to mainstream critics, who were without delay acknowledging Lester as anecdote of the most talented and daring low-budget filmmakers in America. Ironically, despite the praise that he received in behalf of the get the better of of these movies during the 1970s, he never moved up to the top rank of new directors, mostly because his work was confined to more quiet-budget productions and to genres that didn't go along the full attention of film slice editors or frisk very hunger in theaters. Instead, it was the contemporaries of Lester's, including George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, who emerged to swelling behind movies like Jaws, American Graffiti, and Star Wars, with the backing of major studios. Lester might not have had a Close Encounters of the Third Kind in him, but at the point where Spielberg was doing The Sugarland Well-defined or Duel, he and Lester were peers and a virtuous match to each other. Lester did move up a rung in industry commercial "legitimacy" when he graduated to made-in the service of-TV features, with Gold of the Amazon Women, starring Anita Ekberg, Bo Svenson, and Donald Pleasence. In 1979, he returned to histrionic exploitation fare with Billow Boogie, a quickie feature intended to cash in on the (very) quick-lived roller-disco phenomenon, starring Linda Blair. By the early '80s, Lester had begun producing as well-head as directing, most notably on Tobe Hooper's chiller The Funhouse (1981). He was struggling against odds directing again on Classification of 1984 (1982), a sort of update of Blackboard Jungle about violence and delinquency in American acme schools; that talkie was Lester's most questionable of his ensemble career, capturing onscreen the worst fears of parents and politicians and perturbing critics, even as it enjoyed a renowned delivery at the Cannes Film Festivities.

It also elicited a strongly unmistakeable review from Roger Ebert at the yet, who waxed fervid about both the movie and the filmmaker in the Chicago Sun-Times. The movie subsequently became a theatrical knock and has endured as a popular feature on guy television. Then came Firestarter, a Dino de Laurentiis performance based on Stephen King's register, which Lester directed in 1984, with an all-star company and a big-hearted budget. He followed this in 1985 with Commando, a more conventional action-adventure anecdote starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rae Dawn Chong, which he made instead of 20th Century Fox.

And, recompense a silver of pace, Lester tried his dispense at comedy with Armed and Dangerous (1986), which came as a sort of unsatisfactory humankind's Police Academy, starring John Sweets. The following year, Lester went into partnership with in John Davis on the collective financing of his movies. He returned to non-fiction and producing as okay as directing with Group of 1999 (1990), a formal follow-up to Year of 1984 with a more satiric edge and a system-fiction twist. Lester continued as a involved director-producer of action-adventure films, both theatrical (Extreme Justice, Blowback, etc.

) and from time to time for boob tube (Penitent As Charged).