Mike Hodges was born on July 29, 1932 in Bristol, England. He is a director and producer, known for Flash Gordon (1980), Get Carter (1971) and Black Rainbow (1989). He was previously married to Jean.He was the original director of Damien: Omen II (1978). During three weeks of shooting, Hodges left the film as a result of creative differences. His replacement was Don Taylor. Hodges directed the military scenes and the factory scenes. Received an honorary degree from the University of the West of England in Bristol, his home city, on 7th November 2005. Among the various directors in the frame to helm To the Devil a Daughter (1976). His first feature film, Get Carter (1971), is regarded by many film critics and historians as one of the two greatest British gangster films ever made, along with John Mackenzie's The Long Good Friday (1980).A film is alive. You shouldn't stifle it. You should never over art-direct, over conceive, over research, or walk in with an exact idea of how things should be done. [on Flash Gordon (1980)] The only improvised $27-million movie ever made. I really want to take the audience by the hand and take them somewhere they haven't been before. America puzzled me from the moment I went there in the mid-1960s. Its motivation was totally different from that in the UK of those days (but sadly no longer). But what was it? I began to realize it was a culture based heavily on addiction. The object of every manufacturer was to make people become addicted to something, anything. We don't seem to realize that our lives are already gripped in the steely, dehumanizing equivalent of a totalitarian state. At the moment, we see it as benign, but it won't always be like that. I don't really have anything "to say", I'd just like to eke out the comic side of the human predicament.