Director Jimmy T. Murakami, 80

Animator and director Jimmy T Murakami died yesterday at the age of 80.

Along with animator Fred Wolf, Murakami founded Murakami-Wolf Films, an animation house that supplied animated sequences for the 1973 comedy The Naked Ape and Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels. Murakami also directed the opening segment of 1981’s Heavy Metal titled “Soft Landing.” Murakami served as the supervising director on two adaptations of Raymond Brigg’s children’s books When The Wind Blows and The Snowman, the latter of which was nominated for an Academy Award for Animated Short Film in 1982.

Murakami had an association with Roger Corman, which started when he worked as an associate producer on the low budget director/producer’s film Von Richtofen And Brown. Murakami later worked at Corman’s New World Pictures, first directing uncredited some additional material for Humanoids Of The Deep before helming Battle Beyond The Stars, which reset The Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven into a science-fiction setting.