Louise Lasser, star of cult sitcom Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and Woody Allen comedies, dies aged 87

The 1970s soap parody made a household name of Lasser, who was also known for her collaborations with ex-husband Allen and later films including Requiem for a Dream Louise Lasser, star of cult 70s sitcom Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and early films by Woody Allen (to whom she was married for four years), has died aged 87. The New York Times reported she died “at home in Manhattan” . Lasser’s role as a satirically conceived housewife in suburban Ohio in Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, designed as a parody of daytime soap operas, made her a national star, landing her on the cover of People magazine and Rolling Stone. The series lasted a year and a half, between January 1976 and July 1977, but due to its five-days-a-week schedule squeezed more than 300 episodes out of its two season run. Lasser’s Hartman, with her signature pigtails, was preoccupied with domestic minutiae but found herself in unsettling and disturbing situations, including bizarre deaths. The show was intended to explore the ch...

Fear, fangs and frying pans: here’s what I learned by watching 13 horror movies in 48 hours

London’s Frightfest shows everything from slasher flicks to arty experiments, though I wasn’t prepared for the number of deaths by kitchen utensils

I’m not sure at what point I realised I was losing my grip. Perhaps it was the moment in existential French psychodrama Pandemonium where a recently deceased motorist finds himself being introduced to hell by a 7ft-tall mega-demon; or it could have been the copious vomiting scene in Cobwebs, which was the third copious vomiting scene I’d witnessed in 24 hours. Either way, by the time I got to the third day of Frightfest, I realised it was time to go home – even though, for the crowds of gore devotees gathered outside the cinema behind me, this was just the halfway point.

Now in its 24th year, Frightfest offers both new movies (often getting their world premiere) and classic chillers, taking in the whole gamut of the genre from straight-up slasher flicks to bizarre artsy experiments. Over five days more than 70 films are shown on several screens, and there is a wonderful community feel: people dressed in Evil Dead and Cannibal Holocaust T-shirts mix amiably with cos-players decked out as mad scientists and vampires.

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