Talent that shone against odds

Mustafa Akkad, who died on Friday, aged 75, as a result of injuries sustained in one of the bomb blasts in Jordan, was the producer of Halloween (1978), the popular spine-chilling film in which a man terrorises a small town by butchering a large number of people in semi-darkness.

Akkad also owned the franchise which spawned seven further variations on the theme, the most recent being Halloween: Resurrection in 2002.

Akkad was making an epic about the Islamic world called The Lion of the Desert when he was approached by the director John Carpenter, who said that he wanted to make a picture for $300,000 (Dh1.1 million).

"I laughed," the producer later recalled. "You get worried when the budget is high or low. I asked him about the story. He told it to me in four words and I grabbed it. He said, 'Babysitter to be killed by the boogie man'.

"The babysitter part grabbed me because every kid in America knows what a babysitter is. I told him, 'Let's do it'. I was spending $300,000 a day on Lion of the Desert."

Good money

Halloween came in on budget, and was a success at the box office. Akkad once asked one of his sons, then aged 17, why people were prepared to pay good money to be scared.

The boy replied: "Dad, I take a girl with me to the cinema. After five minutes, I'm either grabbing her or she's grabbing me."

Born at Aleppo, Syria, in July 1930, Mustafa Akkad was the son of a customs officer, who, when his son secured a place at the University of California at Los Angeles to study film direction and production in the early 1950s, saw him off at the airport with $200 and a copy of the Holy Quran.

Akkad spent a further three years studying for a Master's degree at the University of Southern California.

He met the director Sam Peckinpah, who hired him as a consultant for a film about the Algerian revolution; the film was never made, but Peckinpah encouraged the young man, who found a job as a producer at CBS.

In 1976 Akkad produced and directed The Message.

Originally called Mohammad, Messenger of God, the title had to be changed after cinemas received threatening telephone calls from Muslims who thought that the film offended Islam by portraying the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) himself (it did not).

Origins of Islam

The picture, which starred Anthony Quinn and Irene Papas, was about the origins of Islam, and Akkad had to go outside the United States to raise the money. He later remarked: "Being a Muslim I felt that it was my duty to tell the truth about Islam."

His next big project, The Lion of the Desert (1980), in which Quinn and Irene Papas were joined by Oliver Reed, Rod Steiger and John Gielgud, was about the real-life Bedouin leader Omar Mukhtar (Quinn) who fought Mussolini's troops in the deserts of Libya.

To finance this picture, Akkad had persuaded Libya's President Muammar Gadaffi to invest $35 million (Dh128 million), and he blamed the film's relatively poor performance at the box office on the publicity over this.

For many years he had been trying to raise $80 million (Dh293 million) to make a film about Saladin and the Crusades, starring Sean Connery.

Akkad is survived by three sons. His 34-year-old daughter, Rima, also died in the explosion at the Hyatt hotel in Amman.

Résumé
Mustafa Akkad

Talent: The creativity of Mustafa Akkad came out in such movies as Lion of the Desert (1980) and The Message (1976), where he directed and showed some really creative views on the history of Islam.

As an Arab Muslim it was really hard for him to make it in Hollywood but no one could deny his talent as a director and a producer.

Trademark: Is known as the grandfather of the Halloween movies.

Trivia: He left home at 19 to study theatre arts at University of California at Los Angeles and received his masters from the University of Southern California.

He is the only production participant from the first Halloween film to be credited in every subsequent Halloween sequel.