Take Three: Michael Biehn

Craig from Dark Eye Socket here with Take Three.  

The 1980s. Male. Character actor. Sci-fi. Aliens from deep, dark space and the deep blue sea and robots from the future. All under the tutelage of James Cameron. Today: It's Mr. Michael Biehn

Take One: The Terminator (1984)
It’s a good thing the T-800 didn’t find Sarah Connor any sooner than he did. He would’ve consequently deprived us of all that full-throttle Biehn action and indeed made The Terminator a very short movie, nay, franchise. (Found her! The end.) As the main man from future times, resistance fighter Sgt. Kyle Reese is electrically plonked down butt-naked from post-apocalyptic LA, circa 2029, to present-day 1984 to protect poor baffled Linda Hamilton. Biehn delivers a sturdy yet tender supporting turn. The Austrian Oak was obviously the big draw but this film triggered Biehn's signature part: the slightly wracked, occasionally cracked and often knackered hero.

Looking like a conspiracy-expounding tramp and armed with only a raincoat-concealed shotgun and an advantageous prescience, Biehn wastes no time finding his quarry. Hamilton and Biehn exerted sudden panic and impromptu connectivity believably together, making for an endearing sci-fi pairing. Of course this closeness stretched only nearly to the end of the first film, but their legacy reached further. As in Aliens, Biehn is particularly chivalrous with his female co-star. Of course his role dictates as such, but it appears to come from an uncommon aspect of Biehn’s own screen persona: it’s in the way he furtively expresses himself in the film’s calmer moments as much as when, elsewhere, he’s as blisteringly kick-ass as we’ve seen of him over the years. He’s a generous almost-leading man and a physically astute presence.  

Take Two: Aliens (1986)
Next to Reese, Corporal Dwayne Hicks in Aliens is the part Biehn will likely be most fondly remembered for. He emerges from the hyper-snoozing throng of grunts aboard the Sulaco to be the chief military man to aid and abet our Ripley. Immediately he’s an amiable presence with his wry, room-pleasing comments

Looks like the new lieutenant's too good to eat with the rest of us grunts.

He's easy to warm to amid the nefariously hard marine banter. And when it comes to Ripley, he shoots downright puppyish looks her way at opportune moments throughout the film: he bats his eyelids at her.

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Take Three: Melissa McCarthy

Craig from Dark Eye Socket here with Take Three. Today: Melissa McCarthy

Take One: The Nines (2007)
The three things that struck me most about the twisty-turny Ryan Reynolds sci-fi drama were Melissa McCarthy. (Reynolds’ much-bared torso came a close fourth). In the film’s three loose-linked segments she plays: Margaret, a perky PR handler; Melissa, a TV actress version of ‘Melissa McCarthy’; and Mary, a housewife. There’s plenty of mystical musings about 9s being everywhere and meaning everything – though thankfully not as much number mumbling as there was in The Number 23 – but it sort of makes its own kind of brain-beaten logic by the end.

The second and third sections give McCarthy lengthy scenes  opposite Reynolds:  She aces “Melissa”'s cringe inducing pissed off moment where she’s told she’s being dropped from a TV show by this narrative’s version of Reynolds, and in the is-it-a-show-or-is-it-reality? final segment "Mary" gets an emotional scene which nicely shows off McCarthy's vulnerable side; in both segments she’s quietly phenomenal, often showing Reynolds, and everybody else, up. 

But the actress really excels in the first section, as the troublingly bubbly PR keeping Reynolds’ fire-starting actor under house arrest with knowingly witty pleasantries.

I didn’t mean to eat my way into a ten-year shame spiral, but I did! 

There’s an unsettling Truman Show-esque weirdness to this Melissa incarnation that the giggly sarcasm she uses can’t hide. With three roles, McCarthy gets to display triple the versatile character work in one decent movie.

Take Two: The Back-Up Plan (2010)
There’s only one good reason to watch The Back-Up Plan and it’s McCarthy.

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Take Three: Michael Shannon

Craig from Dark Eye Socket here with Take Three. Today: Michael Shannon

Take One: Shotgun Stories (2007)
Shannon looks to be getting the best raves of his career for the ominous apocalyptic mystery Take Shelter, which stunned critics at Sundance and Cannes. It’s the second feature from Jeff Nichols whose debut, Shotgun Stories, also starred Shannon. In that film he plays Son Hayes, the eldest of three brothers along with Kid (Barlow Jacobs) and Boy (Tim Blackwood)  who alternately avoid and pursues conflict with their recently-deceased father’s other family. (Maybe the conflict was originally over the father’s terrible child-naming skills, who knows?) Son is a quiet, intense guy. It seems like fortuitous casting: Shannon, in shape and presence, and with his innate ability to show us exactly what his characters are thinking whilst doing very little, is ideally suited to the role. He brings perceptive silent intelligence to this role of an unlucky man who keeps his cards, and all else, close to his chest. (Son has numerous shotgun-bullet scars on his back and only late in the film do we discover their origins.)

Although outwardly Shannon doesn’t appear to transmit much emotionally, there are many minor moments when he imparts a great deal with shuffling body movements and facial expressions. He turns a scene in which he hears devastating news in a hospital into a painful, sincere display of grief. His face turns red, crumples and then empties out in vacant disbelief. Even when Shannon is filmed working at the fishery or wandering his quiet house he never lets one minor aspect of his character slip.

Take Two: Revolutionary Road (2008)

Shannon’s most high-profile role to date is undoubtedly John Givings in Sam Mendes’ Richard Yates adaptation Revolutionary Road.

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Take Three: Carla Gugino

Craig here with Take Three. Today: Carla Gugino

Take One: Snake Eyes (1998)
Gugino was underused as the social worker in The Lookout, underdressed and all too briefly seen as the parole officer in Sin City, and under De Niro as a delectable detective in Righteous Kill. But one of her earlier roles as the mysterious ringside blonde in Brian De Palma’s Vegas boxing noir Snake Eyes gave her plenty of room to make a dent. There’s a killing about to happen at a big boxing match but is she in on the missile-based murder conspiracy? She’s certainly the focus of maniacally charged Nicolas Cage’s attention – and, by association, ours. Snake’s tricky structure and multiple viewpoints (especially the famous opening tracking shots) allow Gugino to play fast and loose with her character, Julia Costello, who ultimately, like all desperate women of noir, isn’t quite who we think she is.

Gugino’s evasive vixen is a ‘90s variant on the femme fatale or the ‘mysterious blonde’ (aroused via De Palma’s acknowledged love for Hitchcock). Julia Costello should perhaps be filed alongside the likes of Melanie Griffith in Body Double, Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct and Annette Bening in The Grifters as revisionist takes on old noir staples. Gugino brings  sly, slinky qualities and a perfectly deceptive approach to the part. Later on in the film she offers nicely-conveyed and unguarded emotion. It’s a key role in the movie, and she has the ideal voluptuous physique and versatile acting skill to carry it off. Outside of Cage’s OTT presence and De Palma’s bravura camerawork, Gugino was the one to keep your (snake) eyes on.

See also this 8-minute 2010 short, Tell-Tale, where she does actually play ‘Femme Fatale’.

Take two: Sucker Punch (2011)
Outside of its central gang of delusional madhouse girls, Sucker Punch had a few notable faces peppering the supporting cast list.

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Take Three: Boris Karloff

Craig from Dark Eye Socket here with Take Three. Today: Boris Karloff

Take One: The Mummy (1931)

Always the consummate character actor, Karloff gave us the most splendidly memorable characters. Famously one of the world’s biggest and best horror icons (along with Lugosi, Chaney Jr., Price and Lee, the frightful five), he played his beasts, ghouls and undead wanderers in exemplary fashion. Take his Imhotep/Ardath Bey, the titular bandaged one in director-cinematographer Karl Freund’s 1931 classic The Mummy. Ten years after being awakened by a group of foolhardy archaeologists Imhotep intends to revive his ancient Egyptian love Princess Ankh-es-en-amon with the help of reluctant modern-day babe Zita Johann.

Museum-based murder and an ancient parchment (the Scroll of Thoth!) cause all the the mummified mysticism. Karloff even has his own Pool of Fate (essentially a steamy bath/psychic porthole), into which he can see anyone and anything, anywhere; and via which he causes the remote heart failure of any old duffer who happens to get in his way. It’s all in the seeing here, all about the Mummy’s eyes. Karloff is given three intermittent extreme close-ups where he glowers into the camera, hypnotising us with his devilish ways. His eye sockets appear as black, lifeless voids into which his bright white pupils emerge through a trick of the light (director Freund was also a celebrated cinematographer). Imhotep is unnervingly memorable.

Take Two: Black Sabbath (1963)

Black Sabbath (AKA I Tre volti della paura or The Three Faces of Fear) was one of Karloff’s key later roles – and a horror-fan favourite. This second segment, The Wurdalak, of Mario Bava's 1963 horror triptych* sees a Russian nobleman seeking shelter in a cottage run by a family awaiting the return of their father Gorca (Karloff). The family fears he may be the titular vampiric creature come back to damn them all to hell or condemn them to a life of blood-lusting misery, whichever comes first. With ashen face and oversized follicle accompaniments (his curly wig, moustache and eyebrows deserve their own end-titles credit), Karloff stands out. And I mean that literally, as well as performance-wise; the star is seen standing outside peering in on the action much of the time. Karloff is also lit by horror-versed cinematographer Ubaldo Terzano in a different, far more singular way than the other actors are. The giddy weight of his presence perhaps aroused nostalgic creativity in Bava. Karloff, so familiar from classic creature features, appears like an ornery flickering wraith from a beloved bygone era.

Bava, like Freund, makes effectively chilling use of Karloff’s penetrating eyes. He knew that all it took to match Boris’ unique ability to transfix an audience with great, creepy eye-work was the requisite camerawork to capture it.

*Karloff’s performance is also notable for the fact that he appears as himself in the interludes, where he introduces the scary stories to follow.

Take Three: Frankenstein (1931) 
and Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

In James Whale’s germinal horror film Frankenstein Karloff is introduced to us simply as ‘?’. He’s a mystery, an enigma: a monster! He’s a confused soul, a man made out of bits of other men, bad men. Karloff comes alive halfway through this epoch-defining original mutant anti-hero movie. He’s first shown via a shot of his hands (as he similarly was in The Mummy and, indeed, in Bride of Frankenstein – it seems to be a recurring trope); he twitches his fingers then rises to meet a world of fear and epic paranoia. It was simply a way of being and walking: arms aloft, that angular, towering body – matched with the bolt-necked, flat-topped patchwork head, fronted by that memorably permanent crestfallen expression. Karloff delivers a beautiful performance, inventively clumsy and expertly physical.

In the first film he was quicker, more erratic. In Bride – with nearly five years' worth of living with the Frankenstein legend surrounding him – Karloff appeared more at home, looser and familiar with the moaning and groaning through fields and ruins, but no less energetically committed. It’s like he dusted off the monster’s clothes four minutes, not four years, after first wearing them so well. As a result, one of Karloff’s monstrous turns can’t truly be judged higher than the other. They’re a complementary couplet, both eminently watchable and always fascinating. But Bride reveals more about the man within the monster. It's evident in the three instances where he sheds a tear. You see that those tears are born of loneliness: he craves companionship. You can feel nothing but vicarious sorrow when the third of his tears works its way down his scarred, sunken cheek.

We belong dead.

...the monster forlornly admits in a last, generous close-up from James Whale. Boris Karloff made this famous monster indelibly his own.

Three more films for the taking: The Black Cat (1934), The Body Snatcher (1945), The Sorcerers (1967)