Richard Elfman

Richard Elfman is an American director, actor, musician and author who began in theater in Paris, performing with Jérôme Savary's Le Grand Magic Circus on tours of Europe. He moved back to Los Angeles in 1972 and formed the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, leading the troupe as creative director and percussionist. The troupe won the first prize on The Gong Show in 1976. A staging of Stravinsky's L'Histoire du soldat that he directed and appeared in brought him a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award. His first feature as director was the cult musical Forbidden Zone (1980), followed by the horror film Shrunken Heads (1994) and the horror comedy Modern Vampires (1998). He wrote for Buzzine magazine, rising to editor-in-chief, published a vampire novel, The Schlimazel of Sebreim, in 2023, and wrote and directed the musical horror film Bloody Bridget in 2024.