News
‘Gremlins’ Voice Actor Mark Dodson Has Passed Away
Best known for his contributions to the iconic Gremlins and Star Wars franchises, actor Mark Dodson has passed away this week at the age of 64, Deadline reports today.
Mark Dodson memorably voiced the character Salacious Crumb in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, and he also did uncredited zombie voice work for George Romero’s Day of the Dead.
Dodson’s unique voice acting skills were put to excellent use in both Joe Dante’s Gremlins and sequel Gremlins 2: The New Batch, with the actor voicing multiple Gremlins characters.
It was Dodson’s voice work as Salacious Crumb in Return of the Jedi that led to him voicing the Gremlins, which were seen as being similar to the Salacious Crumb character.
Speaking of his work in the Gremlins franchise in a 2023 chat with the YouTube channel Diabolic Shrimp (watch the full video below), Mark Dodson explained his contributions:
“I love horror, so it’s fun to me. Gizmo is Howie Mandel and Frank Welker is Stripe, and then I’m pretty much all the rest of the Gremlins. It was all improvised.”
Dodson’s other roles throughout his decades-spanning career include TV shows, movies and video games such as Wishman (1983), Ewoks: The Battle for Endor (1985), Darkwing Duck (1991), Star Trek Online (2010), Painkiller: Hell & Damnation (2012), Arachnicide (2014), Killing Floor 2 (2015), Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), and Ghostrunner (2020).
Stellar Appearances, Dodson’s talent agency, said in a statement, “Mark worked on dozens of movies, video games, commercials and advertisements adding his unique voice and sound to each character and script he touched. Mark truly loved his fans and enjoyed meeting them at conventions around the world. Mark was honored to be inducted into dozens of the local chapters of the Star Wars 501st Legions over the past several decades.”
Mark Dodson is survived by his daughter Ciara and his grandchildren.
All of us here at Bloody Disgusting are deeply saddened to learn that George A. Romero Foundation Founder and President Suzanne Desrocher-Romero has passed away.
GARF shared in a statement on socials, “It is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of Suzanne Desrocher Romero. Suzanne passed away of natural causes on June 24 at her home in Toronto after a prolonged illness.”
The statement continues, “Suzanne was the fierce leader of the George A. Romero Estate and The George A. Romero Foundation. She worked tirelessly to preserve George’s legacy. Her work at the foundation will continue to inspire and live on for generations to come. The family asks for privacy at this time.”
Desrocher-Romero founded GARF in 2018, after her late husband’s passing in 2017, and has been a fierce advocate for his legacy and the arts. It was her mission to “strengthen horror as a serious field of global study,” and she was a tremendous fighter on behalf of Romero’s works and supporting new filmmakers inspired by his legacy.
It was Desrocher-Romero who spearheaded the recovery and restoration of The Amusement Park, and, as the person in charge of the George A. Romero estate, worked closely with author Daniel Kraus on completing unfinished novels like Pay the Piper and The Living Dead. She most recently celebrated the restoration of her favorite of Romero’s zombie films, Day of the Dead, and was hard at work producing the upcoming film Twilight of the Dead.
That passionate advocacy led to Suzanne Desrocher-Romero becoming family to Bloody Disgusting as well.
2023 marked the start of an ongoing partnership between Bloody FM and GARF on The Dead, a scripted audio series spanning multiple seasons that saw Desrocher-Romero working closely with the Bloody FM team and mentoring the series’s contributing writers with GARF. To say her loss will be felt internally is an understatement.
“Anytime George Romero is mentioned is good, because what we are doing is to provide a healthy legacy. We’re uplifting his legacy, we’re supporting the archive, and we’re also supporting the Horror Study Center. So, all of these three things are what the Foundation is striving to do. As far as I’m concerned, the more we say George Romero’s name, the better it is,” Desrocher-Romero recently told BD.
It’s the perfect encapsulation of her unwavering enthusiasm for supporting Romero’s legacy and the horror genre, and just a glimpse at how much she contributed to preserving it. She is, in short, an inspiration.
We send our deepest condolences to Suzanne Desrocher-Romero’s family, friends, and GARF.
You must be logged in to post a comment.