It can be heartbreaking to see how many genre stars and icons we lose over the course of a year. Way too often we have to pay tribute to a genre contributor with an R.I.P. article here on Arrow in the Head, and the fact is that we lose so many notable contributors in a year that it’s impossible to keep up with all of them. Thankfully, drive-in movie critic / host Joe Bob Briggs and the crew from his Shudder series The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs have started compiling “In Memoriam” videos in an effort to pay tribute to as many fallen genre contributors as possible.
The In Memoriam 2021 video can be seen below, if you’re prepared to spend a teary-eyed 8 and a half minutes paying tribute to people we lost in 2021. In some cases, I hadn’t heard that the person had passed away and was sad to see them on the list. Even sadder is the fact that such a long list isn’t even complete – for example, Freddy vs. Jason makeup artist Bill Terezakis surely would have been included if the Last Drive-In folks had been aware of his passing, and the great Betty White – who visited horror territory with her memorable performance in the “nature run amok” movie Lake Placid – passed away after the video had already been posted on YouTube.
It should be noted that not all of the people in the video actually passed away in 2021. The In Memoriam 2020 video was posted in May of that year, so Joe Bob also pays tribute to those we lost later in 2020, like Kelly Preston and Ben Cross. Rutger Hauer and his Split Second co-star Michael J. Pollard also made the list despite the fact that they passed away in 2019… So it’s not perfect, but it’s heartfelt, and that’s what matters.
Check out In Memoriam 2021, and if there are any genre contributors you would like to pay tribute to who didn’t make it into the video, let us know by leaving a comment below.