David R Ellis obituary

The brazenly trashy, cheap-and-cheerful B-movie is more or less defunct in modern cinema. One of its few authentic latter-day practitioners was the film-maker David R Ellis, who has been found dead at the age of 60 in a hotel in South Africa, where he was preparing to make a live-action version of the violent anime Kite.

Ellis came to widespread attention in 2006 when he directed Snakes on a Plane, the exploitation action thriller with a title that doubled as its own synopsis. Samuel L Jackson played an FBI agent on board a flight packed with venomous snakes planted to kill the witness who is in his care. There have been dumber and more precarious murder plots in the movies, but not many.

Ellis was brought in as a replacement for the original director, Ronny Yu. When word circulated online of a proposed title change (to the humdrum Pacific Air Flight 121), the blogosphere protested as one and the movie, still unmade at that point, became a phenomenon. Online enthusiasts concocted their own poster images and speculated on the contents of the script; the studio, New Line Cinema, incorporated some of these suggestions, turning Snakes on a Plane into the first movie shaped directly by its prospective fans.

"It was really about halfway during the film when I saw how big the buzz was becoming," said Ellis. "That's when I started following it, interacting with [fans] and thinking about what I could do to make the movie more of a fanbase movie." He believed the picture worked "because it's fresh and unusual and also taps into people's two biggest phobias: fear of flying and snakes. Also we have the balls to call the movie what it is." Critics were less kind.

Ellis was born in California, where he developed a passion for surfing and became a junior professional surfer. He began acting in his teens, and had minor roles in films and on television, including the family comedy The Strongest Man in the World (1975), starring Kurt Russell. His aptitude for surfing led to stunt work the following year, and he remained active in stunts and stunt co-ordination for most of his career.

Car chases dominated mainstream US cinema in the 1970s, and Ellis had a hand in some of the most popular examples, such as the Burt Reynolds action-comedies Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and Hooper (1978). He landed his first job as a stunt co-ordinator on Philip Kaufman's 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Subsequent work in this capacity included Fatal Attraction (1987), Misery (1990), Patriot Games (1992) and a stint on the 1990s television series Baywatch. Ellis also served as a stunt performer on films including Scarface (1983), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Lethal Weapon (1987) and Days of Thunder (1990).

From 1986, he also began getting work as a second unit director. "Being a good second unit director is duplicating the style of the first unit director so that it's a seamless piece of photography," he explained. He was in charge of second unit on movies such as The Devil's Own (1997), Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001) and The Matrix Reloaded (2003). He specialised in shooting in and around water, with all the difficulties that entailed, in films including Waterworld (1995), Deep Blue Sea (1999), The Perfect Storm (2000) and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003). Among the sequences of which he was proudest was the ambush on vehicles trapped in a narrow alley in Clear and Present Danger (1994) and the complex and protracted freeway chase in The Matrix Reloaded.

Ellis made his directing debut in 1996 with Homeward Bound 2: Lost in San Francisco, a live-action animal adventure featuring the voices of Michael J Fox and Sally Field. His next film was another sequel, but this one, Final Destination 2 (2003), was far more representative of his taste for unpretentious, titillating thrills. The Final Destination films are essentially disaster movies with horror trimmings, featuring photogenic young actors being dispatched in increasingly gory and ingenious ways by fate itself. Ellis made two instalments in the series – he later directed the fourth film, The Final Destination (2009), which was shot in 3D.

His other movies were Cellular (2004), a tense kidnapping story starring Kim Basinger, Jason Statham and the Captain America star Chris Evans, and the horror film Asylum (2008). Shark Night (2011), his last completed picture, was a distant 3D cousin of the likes of Jaws and Piranha.

At the time of his death, Ellis had completed second unit work on several films due for release this year: the martial arts adventure 47 Ronin, starring Keanu Reeves; R.I.P.D. with Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds in a fantasy thriller about undead cops; and Winter's Tale, a historical fable with Will Smith and Russell Crowe.

He is survived by his wife, Cindy, and three children.