When it came to hiring a movie bad guy on a budget you couldn't do better than Richard Lynch. Through the 70s and 80s he seemed to turn up a the 'villain of the week' on dozens of genre television shows and cheap action adventure films. I lost count of the number of times I have seen The Sword And The Sorcerer. It would show up several times a week at the dawn of cable television and still holds up after all these years. It's no worse or stupid than any of the army of copycats it inspired.
Lynch's distinct look made him the perfect bad guy and Hollywood utilized him in genre television and film for over 40 years. The actor consistently found work after breaking out in the 1973 Gene Hackman film Scarecrow. He won a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor in The Sword and the Sorcerer, appeared in both the 1976 and 1980 incarnations of Battlestar Galactica, and was courted by Rob Zombie to appear in the musician-turned-director's 2007 remake of Halloween and the upcoming Lords of Salem. Roles on The A-Team, Six Feet Under, and Star Trek: The Next Generation turned Lynch into a TV-buff favorite.
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10 comments:
I remember him from a movie in the 80's, Bad Dreams I think, and a couple of episodes of Murder, She Wrote. He played an excellent villian.
Sorry about the multi-comments, google was acting weird for me!
I would just add that I think he gave a brilliant performance in the less than great film THE PREMONITION (1976) along with his fantastic work in other, better known films. He will be missed as a great screen presence.
He stood next to me in line to see The Empire Strikes Back on the day it opened: Hollywood Blvd. The Egyptian Theatre: May 21, 1980... a Wednesday, i think... He was with his family, but it was so obviously him... Didn't know his name then, but recognized him from TV. Had a chance once to mention this to him at Dragon*Con (i think it was Dragon*Con).. Must have been like 30 years or so later.. he didn't recall the event but he said it was likely I was right.. he probably took his kids to see it... He was a very nice man. Seeing that movie that day was a big damn deal. He will always be a part of it, so in a way, to me at least, he will always be around...
That is such a cool celebrity story. Anyone can see someone from behind a rope barrier but to be next to him at an iconic movie is very cool. I remember liking his performances a lot when I was a kid in the 70s. He brought goofy stuff like Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica up a notch because he always comitted himself to every role, no matter how campy the script.
I've seen him in a lot of things. I didn't know he died.
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