Fred Olen Ray, a one-time engineering student at Brown University, fell into a filmmaking niche as a low-budget horror director in the early '80s that he now dominates along with Sam Raimi and a handful of others. From his first film, The Alien Dead (1981), which he financed himself in the mid '70s (and released after several years of supporting himself as a make-up effects specialist in other peoples' movies), he has attracted an enthusiastic audience with his lively, clever, low-rent chillers.