Hilary Heath, Horror Film Actress and Producer, Dies of

Hilary Heath, an actress and producer who starred reverse Vincent Price in horror films within the late 1960s and early ’70s, has died of the coronavirus. She was 74.

Heath appeared in three British horror movies with Price, which had been launched by Amerian International Pictures — 1968’s “Witchfinder General,” 1969’s “The Oblong Box” and 1970’s “Cry of the Banshee.”

Her dying was confirmed by her godson, Alex Williams, in a put up on Facebook.

“We lost my wonderful Godmother Hilary Heath to Covid-19 last week,” Williams wrote. “Hilary had many careers, starting out as a screen and stage actress in the 1960s and 1970s, and then re-inventing herself as a producer in the 1990s, making films like Nil by Mouth (Gary Oldman) and An Awfully Big Adventure (Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman). Her most remarkable re-invention came in her mid-60s, when she won a master’s degree from Oxford in psychology and became an addiction counsellor, specialising [sic] in CBT. She worked at clinics all over the world, often for free, often with very deprived and distressed individuals, and she regarded this as her most valuable work by far. She was a force of nature, and I can’t bear it that she is no longer with us.”

In “Witchfinder General” (titled “The Conqueror Worm” within the U.S.), in regards to the witch-hunting exploits of Matthew Hopkins (Price), Heath, who then glided by her maiden identify of Dwyer, performed Sara, an English soldier’s fiancée who’s preyed on by Hopkins.

In “The Oblong Box,” which will get its title from the coffin concerned in the principle character’s plot to pretend his personal dying, Heath performs the fiance pf Price’s character. In 1970’s “Cry of the Banshee,” which additionally revolves round a coven of witches, she performs the free-spirited Maureen Whitman.

She additionally appeared in 1969’s “Two Gentlemen Sharing” and 1970 adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” starring Timothy Dalton.