Adrian Hoven

Adrian Hoven, a prolific film and television actor, producer, and director, was born and raised in a small town in Austria. After earning a degree in mechanical engineering and serving as a student pilot, his war injuries led him to seek less strenuous work as a film extra. He appeared in numerous plays and productions in Berlin before being discovered by director Helmut Weiss. Hoven's first film role came in the 1947 comedy "Quax in Africa," and was soon followed by roles in numerous domestic dramas, war films, and crime thrillers. Hoven worked steadily through the 1950s, most notably appearing in "Canarsis," a 1954 biopic about WWII military intelligence leader Admiral Wilhelm Canarsis. In 1965 Hoven partnered with film producer Pier Caminneci to form a production company, Aqua Film Enterprises. The following year he wrote, produced, and directed his first film, the psychological thriller "The Killer with the Silk Scarf." Hoven soon developed a reputation as a successful horror and erotic melodrama film director on the strength of films like "The Long Swift Sword of Siegfried" and "Sadist Erotica." Hoven also appeared in several of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's films, most notably in "Fear of Fear" and the TV miniseries adaptation "Berlin Alexanderplatz." During the late '60s and early '70s he produced classic horror films like Jesus Franco's hallucinatory "Succubus" and the witch-hunter thriller "Mark of the Devil." Hoven often used the pseudonym Percy Parker when writing and directing his own work.