Colorado-born Herk Harvey majored in theater at Kansas University,
directing and acting in stage productions and later returning to the
school in a teaching capacity. He broke into the film business as an
actor in some of the movies being made by Centron Corporation of
Lawrence, Kansas, an educational and industrial film production company
for which he subsequently went to work as a director. In 1961 he took a
working vacation from Centron to try his hand at feature filmmaking,
producing, directing and co-starring in the creepy horror film
Tanz der toten Seelen (1962), shot
in Kansas and Utah.
