Pietro Luca Cassarino · CC BY-SA 4.0

Landis directed some of the most quoted comedies of their era — National Lampoon's Animal House, The Blues Brothers, Trading Places, and Coming to America — while also making An American Werewolf in London, a horror-comedy that won the first Academy Award ever given for makeup. He directed the music video for Michael Jackson's "Thriller," which helped establish the music video as its own art form. In 1982, three actors, including two children, died during the filming of his segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie; Landis and several colleagues were tried for involuntary manslaughter and acquitted, though the accident permanently changed film-set safety practices.