Saturday, August 1, 2009

Character Cool


Over at 'Hero Press' I was reading some reviews of 'Supernatural' when famous character actor Billy Drago was mentioned for playing an evil doctor. I gots me some mad love for the Drago. There was a time when me and my mates would go to three or more movies a week when they only cost $2.50 for a ticket. In those days its seemed like Drago was in every third movie portraying some murderous bad guy. This didn't include all the TV shows he was in or, in later years, the direct to video features. He was great as Bly in Bruce Campbell's 'Adventures of Brisco County Jr'. He was your go-to bastard if you didn't have the funding to hire an A-lister. Now the man does not have movie star good looks so he would never be the good guy/romantic lead but his skill at playing creepy menance was always top notch. Like Henry Silva (another favorite bad guy of mine)you knew what you were getting when either of them went up against the protagonist. Drago's few mainstream roles saw him portraying Frank Nitti (Al Capone's right hand man) in the big screen version of the 'Untouchables'. Check out his filmography and fan club by following the links below.


http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0236711/

http://www.billy-drago.de.vu/

3 comments:

Wings1295 said...

He was also super-creepy in that episode of "The X-Files", "Theef". UGH, scary dude!

Cal's Canadian Cave of Coolness said...

Its hard to pull off creepy and create totally unlikable characters. Billy fills that roll perfectly and is often the best thing in a movie. He is never over the top but is smarmy/oily in his evilness.

Michael May said...

Man, I LOVE him in The Untouchables. The way he delivers that line about Sean Connery's dying like a stuck Irish pig is burned into my memory.

Coincidentally, I've been getting Brisco County from Netflix lately and watching it for the first time. I don't quite like him as much in that as in The Untouchables, but he's still awesome.