Biografi
David James Schow was born in Marburg, Germany, and was adopted by American parents living in Middlesex, England.
He began his career publishing non-fiction book and film criticism in newspapers and magazines. His first professionally published fiction was a novelette in Galileo Magazine in 1978. Over the next decade, he refined his short fiction skills, earning a Dimension Award from Twilight Zone Magazine in 1985 for the most popular short story and a World Fantasy Award for best short fiction in 1987.
Schow started screenwriting in 1989 with an uncredited dialogue polish on "A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 5: The Dream Child." Following this, his first teleplay and screenplay were both purchased and produced: the "Freddy's Nightmares" episode "Safe Sex" and the feature film "Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III."
In 1977, he coined the term "stalk-and-slash" to describe what would later be known as "slasher films," and in 1986, he introduced the term "splatterpunk." To capture the evolving horror aesthetic of the early 1990s, he wrote 41 installments of his "Raving & Drooling" column for Fangoria Magazine. This and other non-fiction essays were compiled in the book "Wild Hairs" (2000), which won the International Horror Guild Award for best nonfiction in 2001.
Schow is recognized as the leading expert on the 1963-65 television series "The Outer Limits." The updated 1998 edition of his "Outer Limits Companion" contains comprehensive information about this cult classic.
By 2006, Schow's published works included four novels, seven short story collections, five edited volumes (including the three-volume "Lost Bloch" series and John Farris' "Elvisland"), along with several pseudonymous series and tie-in paperbacks from earlier in his career.
He has contributed extensive text supplements for DVDs such as Reservoir Dogs and From Hell, appeared on and off camera in several BBC4 documentaries, and served as an expert commentator on DVD extras for films like "The Dirty Dozen," "The Green Mile," "Incubus," and "Creature from the Black Lagoon." Additionally, he co-produced and filmed much of the on-location bonus material for the DVDs of "I, Robot" and "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe." Schow also makes cameo appearances—both credited and uncredited—in his own films and those of his friends.
