Image Credit: David Jones/PA/AP Images Death Wish
In 2012, Winner told Britain’s Big Issue magazine, “When I die, it’s going to be ‘Death Wish director dies.’” Certainly, the filmmaker was best known for directing 1974′s notorious Charles Bronson revenge thriller. But the prolific Winner also made a number of other notable films in an impressive array of genres, including the 1969 war movie Hannibal Brooks, the Western Lawman and the Marlon-Brando-starring horror tale The Nightcomers (both from 1971), and a 1978 remake of The Big Sleep, in which Robert Mitchum played Raymond Chandler’s iconic shamus, Philip Marlowe.
Winner’s last movie was 1999′s comedy-thriller Parting Shots, but the larger-than-life filmmaker continued to loom large in the culture of his homeland, thanks to “Winner’s Dinners,” his long-running restaurant column for The Sunday Times.
Both Piers Morgan and Winner’s fellow British filmmaker Edgar Wright have paid tribute to him on Twitter. Morgan described him as a “hilarious, often preposterous, always generous, highly intelligent man. And terrific writer.” Meanwhile, Wright, who introduced Winner’s Death Wish 3 at a special London screening three years ago, hailed him as a “crazy genius.”
