Fernando Hilbeck

Fernando Hilbeck was a Spanish character actor whose gaunt looks suited a long run of Westerns, thrillers, horror pictures and comedies. Born in Madrid in 1933, he studied in Peru and graduated in Humanities at the University of Lima, then spent two years with the Prandello y De Servi theater. He moved to Rome, and his first screen role came in 1961, in Michael Curtiz's Francis of Assisi. Back in Spain, he built a career that lasted more than thirty years and took in a part in Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight. The writer and director Sidney W. Pink cast him repeatedly, in Pyro, The Tall Woman, The Christmas Kid and Madigan's Millions, and he was best remembered as the zombie Guthrie in The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue, as the survivor Arthur in Refuge of Fear, and as Father Damian in Howl of the Devil. Hilbeck died in 2009.