Dalton filmmaker Jeff Burr dies

Oct. 13—One of the most famous — and beloved — residents of Dalton has died.

Jeff Burr, 62, was found deceased at his residence on Tuesday.

To the entertainment world, Burr was known primarily as a director of horror films, many of which have attained a cult following status. Among his credits include "Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III," "Stepfather II" and several of the "Puppet Master" movies.

His career saw him brushing elbows with some of the biggest genre stars of all-time, including Hollywood icon Vincent Price.

But the Ohio-born Burr got his start in Whitfield County.

Longtime Dalton resident Mark Hannah first met Burr in middle school.

"Jeff helped so many people get started, either through just being a cheerleader or being a conduit to 'this person needs to meet this person,'" Hannah said. "Jeff was the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) before there was an IMDB — Jeff, he read credits and he retained them."

Hannah said he has always been impressed by Burr's encyclopedic knowledge of cinema.

"Time after time, we'd be in a group and somebody would say 'There was this movie and it had this thing in it,'" he recollected. "And Jeff would go 'Oh, that was 1973, that was directed by so and so."

The Burr Performing Arts Park in Dalton is named after his mother, Jeanne Burr.

"His mother and his father came here from Buffalo, the mother had done live television," Hannah said. "Then she got into radio here and some cable television, but also theater and they were very active in that — he and his brother grew up in this and from a very early age were helping out at the (Dalton) Little Theatre."

Burr and Hannah shared the same mutual love for filmmaking.

"He did the first feature film in Dalton, which was 'From a Whisper to a Scream,'" Hannah said, referencing a 1987 anthology movie that starred — among others — veteran character actors Clu Galager and Terry Kiser.

After attending Dalton High School, Burr was a student in the prestigious University of Southern California Film School.

Over the course of three decades, Burr's filmmaking career took him not only across the United States, but across the globe.

"He started working on films in the '80s and that's right when the home video craze hit," Hannah said. "So you had this whole level of movies that could be made inexpensively, and make their money back, by going straight to home video without ever playing in a theater."

The films directed by Burr — with titles like "Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings" and "Night of the Scarecrow" — may not have been household names. But they nonetheless found an audience, with his work routinely airing on national cable broadcasts.

"In the '90s, they were sending Jeff to Romania to make movies, because they could make them for nothing, hardly, over there," Hannah said.

Hannah served as a producer for Burr's 2004 film "Straight Into Darkness," a genre-fusing World War II drama.

"He was so open to other people and viewed them in a positive light unless you proved him otherwise," Hannah said. "He always started off with a positive relationship, interested in you ... he was very outwardly focused towards others."

On social media, fans of Burr's films mourned his death and shared recollections of his work.

And so did some of the actors and actresses he directed.

"He was one of the greats, despite the industry's lack of recognition," tweeted Caroline Williams, a "scream queen" featured in several of Burr's movies. "Those of us who knew, knew. My heart is broken."

Also paying tribute to Burr was actress Tiffany Shepis-Tretta.

"The horror community weeps today at the loss of Jeff Burr," she stated on social media. "Never met somebody who didn't love him."

Former Dalton Daily Citizen editor Jimmy Espy first met Burr in 2000.

"I heard that he was in town from California so I came up with some excuse to meet him," said Espy, a long-time horror fan already familiar with the director's body of work. "He came by the office and what should've been a 15-minute conversation turned into about a two-and-a-half hour conversation."

Espy recalled Burr as an extremely empathetic individual.

"On a personal level, his loss is devastating to me," he said. "Jeff worked with a lot of people behind the scenes in the creative arts and he never asked for applause, he never asked for a thank you, he never asked for recognition. Jeff just did stuff."

Espy said Burr was no Hollywood prima donna. Rather, he said he was often self-deprecating and critical of his own movies.

"Jeff was a perfectionist and if you showed him his movies, he also tried to tell you what was wrong with them or talk about what they could have been," he said. "He didn't have much studio support — in fact, there were times I think the studios almost sabotaged some of Jeff's best work."

Espy summed up Burr with a single word — inspirational.

"A lot of us talked about making movies one day, a lot of us fell in love with movies at an early age, but Jeff did it," he said. "This young kid from Dalton, Georgia, is making movies on the streets of Dalton and the next thing you know he's making movies in Los Angeles."

There's no doubt, Espy said, that Burr's oeuvre inspired an entire generation of filmmakers.

"It was hard to get Jeff to say anything good about Jeff, but I think he would be really proud of anybody he worked with early on who went on to be successful," Espy said, "I think Jeff would be thrilled for them."

Burr's death is a devastating loss, said longtime friend Jan Bramlett, also of Dalton.

"He was a mentor to many young filmmakers in the area," she said. "I just saw him do nothing but encourage and uplift them, support them by attending their events ... he meant so much to them, that someone of his stature, that with the career that he made, that someone like him would take time to spend with them."

Bramlett helped produce a documentary that accompanied a Blu-ray release of one of Burr's films.

"We spent a lot of time talking about what Dalton meant to him and the arts and just how unique this community was," she said. "That passion came a lot from all of the people that moved to Dalton and gave all the kids in that area the opportunity to learn about dance and art and theater — and even back in his time, when he was in high school, the Creative Arts Guild sponsored a young filmmakers club and funded them when they were in high school and middle school."

Bramlett recalled Burr as personable and approachable.

"The reach he had, just by being himself and so encouraging and supportive to everybody he met," she said, "would just spin this web across the world, of fans and people he worked with."

Tommy Kaye, another lifelong friend of Burr, described the late director as "a force" — and his hero.

"He is the reason so many of us got into filmmaking for our careers," he said. "Even as a teenager, he was a trailblazer and leader in the creative arts in '70s-era Dalton."

In his youth, he recalled participating in one of Burr's Super 8 mm productions — a James Bond-inspired parody.

"Like his mom, who bequeathed Burr Park to Dalton, Dalton held a special place in his heart," he said. "He made sure it was the setting for his first feature film."

Simply put, Kaye said Burr was born to make movies.

"He had creative vision and he knew how to lead a team to realize it," he said. "Everyone knew Jeff could take charge."

Kaye said the thing he loved most about Burr was his curiosity. "He was genuinely interested in listening to people's stories, learning all about people," he said. "He prioritized loved ones and friends above his own needs. and not least of all, he was a good man."