Movie Bad Guys

Hooked!

Buster Crabbe and Johnny Weissmuller were often portrayed as competitors for the same acting jobs but were privately best of friends. They were Olympic swimmers, and both portrayed grunting and monosyllabic varieties of Tarzan in the movies.

While watching Buster Crabbe swim out into a crocodile infested river and fight a rubber crocodile who was about to consume the female lead, I began to wonder about the character actors, the bad guys.

In that particular film, Matthew Betz showed up. I remembered him from the western movies, always a sneering bad guy, always a number two bad guy, never the boss.

We had some wonderful bad guys such as Jack Elam, Lee Marvin, Jack Nicholson.

Anthony Perkins played Norman Bates in “Psycho,” switching between meek and crazy. Nobody, but “NO-body,” played the lovable sicko as well as Anthony Hopkins, who could smile like your grandfather while sizing you up like a python as Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

Manipulating bad characters was not limited to male actors. Bette Davis jumped roles by playing a former child star who tortures her more talented paraplegic sister played by Joan Crawford in “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.”

Crawford’s daughter, Christina, wrote a biographical book, “Mommie Dearest,” which became the film by the same name. Christina portrayed Crawford as manipulating and abusive, illustrated by the scene, “No wire hangers.”

Nurse Ratched has her last nerve stomped to smithereens by the Jack Nicholson character in “One Flew Over The Cuckcoo’s Nest.” In the end, the tyrannical nurse wins but loses. She was a bad one.

The protagonist in the Stanley Kubrick film “2001: A Space Odyssey” is a benevolent, compassionate but sentient talking computer “HAL” with AI. HAL is never fully seen, but even with a comforting voice, he has ice water in his chips. His remembered line was, “I’m sorry, Dave, but I can’t do that.”

Lyle Bettger was a clean cut bad guy, always a two-faced scum. If I could show you an image of him, you would immediately recognize him, but placing him in a particular film would be tough.

When the story needed a Hispanic outlaw to get shot, Alfonso Bedoya could do the “turning, twisting, shaking” gunshot victim better than most. Of the 100 most famous movie quotes, his “stinkin’ badges” remark was number 36.

There are other character actors I wonder about, such as the nervous, stuttering, rotund guy who was always a store clerk or bartender. I never knew his name.

joenphillips@yahoo.com