Obituary: River Phoenix

ADRIAN TURNER's obituary of River Phoenix (1 November) omitted to mention his earlier role in Explorers (1985), a wonderfully funny film directed by Jo Dante, in which Phoenix played a whizz-kid teenage inventor, writes Gareth Williams.

I should know, I spent days painting his bespectacled face for the original film poster in which he gazes up awestruck at a ludicrous alien monster.