Spanish horror director Jesus "Jess" Franco is dead at age 82 following complications from a stroke.
Kike Mesa, director of the 2007 documentary "Jess Franco: Way of Life," announced Franco's death yesterday on his Facebook page.
Franco, who made his first film in 1959, is said to have made close to 200 movies in a career that spanned nearly six decades.
He became renowned for low-budget cult films like “Necronomicon,” (1967), “Count Dracula” (1969), “Vampyros Lesbos” (1970), “Dracula vs. Frankenstein” (1971), and “Oasis of the Zombies” (1983).
Many, like "Succubus" (1968), were a mix of horror and eroticism.
Franco also worked with Orson Welles on a never-completed Don Quixote feature and snagged an honorary Goya award in 2009.
His final work, “Al Pereira vs The Alligator Women,” opened last month in Spain.