Skip Martin was an actor with dwarfism who built a successful horror film career in the 1960s and 70s, starring alongside genre legends, writes DAVID TURNBULL
Long before actors like Warwick Davis, David Rappaport, and Peter Dinklage found fame as actors with dwarfism, there was Skip Martin – a South London performer who carved out a distinctive career in British horror films during the 1960s and 70s, starring alongside some of the genre’s most iconic names.
Warwick Davis (Star Wars, Willow, and Harry Potter) was the recipient of this year’s BAFTA Lifetime Achievement Award. Davis, who stands at three feet six inches tall, founded the charity Little People UK with his wife Samantha in 2012. The organisation promotes the positive portrayal of people with dwarfism in the media.
Amongst other actors with dwarfism who, like Davis and Martin, had notable careers are David Rappaport (Time Bandits, The Bride) and Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones, X-Men: Days of Future Past).
Who was Skip Martin?
Born Derek George Horowitz on the 28 March 1928 in Sydenham, in Lewisham, South London, he earned the childhood nickname ‘Skip’ because of his tendency to skip classes in school. His early walk on roles include parts in Corridors of Blood (1958), starring Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee and The Hellfire Club (1961) starring Peter Cushing.
His breakthrough talking role came in Roger Corman’s acclaimed 1964 big screen adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death. Martin plays Hop-Toad, jester at the court of Prince Prospero, played by Vincent Price.
The Hop-Toad character was lifted from another Edgar Allan Poe story, Hop Frog, and spliced into the plot of the movie. Martin’s climatic scene has him seeking revenge against Alfredo who earlier struck the jester’s diminutive lover, Esmeralda.
Hop-Toad has him dress as an ape for Prince Prospero’s masked ball before exacting his revenge by hoisting him up onto a chandelier, setting him alight and watching him burn to death. He and Esmeralda then make their escape from the castle before the arrival of the Red Death.
Circus of Fear, aka Psycho Circus (1966), based on an Edgar Wallace novel, followed, in which he starred once more alongside Christopher Lee and also Klaus Kinski. An early example of what would later may have be called a slasher movie, but probably much closer to a who-dun-it, Martin plays a midget called Mr Big working for Barberini’s Circus who is engaged in a blackmail plot against Christopher Lee’s facial disfigured and black masked Drago.
Another circus themed role was as Michael the Dwarf in Hammer’s cult 1972 film Vampire Circus which also starred future Doctor Who companion Lalla Ward in her first film role.
Horror Hospital followed in 1973. Written and directed by Anthony Balch the plot centres on a health farm where a jaded songwriter, played by Confessions of a Window Cleaner actor, Robin Asquith, uncovers secret experiments by a mad surgeon to lobotomise hippies.
Martin plays Frederick, the sadistic assistant to Michael Gough’s deranged Doctor, Christian Storm. In the opening scenes Frederick is seen in the company of the doctor hunting down and decapitating a patient who is desperately attempting an escape from the health farm grounds. He later redeems himself at the end of the movie by actually helping Asquith’s character to escape.
1974 saw Martin landing a role in Son of Dracula, a tongue in cheek musical horror, produced by Beatle Ringo Starr and featuring Harry Neilson in the lead role of Count Downe, the son of the recently departed Dracula.
Martin plays Igor, assistant to Freddie Jones’s Baron Frankenstein, who is secretly out to stop the son of Dracula assuming the mantle of King of the Netherworld.
Martin also had roles in the Italian giallo film Col Cuoro In Gola (1966), directed by Tinto Brass and released in English as ‘Deadly Sweet’ and the German historical fantasy Die Nibelungen, Teil 2 – Kreimhilds Rache (1967) (Whom the Gods Wished to Destroy).
His television roles included appearances in episodes of The Avengers, Adam Adamant Lives and The Goodies. He also played an alien in an advert for Birds Eye Beef-burgers.
Despite his film and television career he spend all of his life in Lewisham, occasionally working in a local tobacconists between roles. He died aged only 56 on 4 November 1984 in the Hither Green area of Lewisham and is buried in the Hither Green cemetery.
What’s your favourite Skip Martin film? Tell us in the comments section below!