Actor George Kennedy died Sunday at age 91. I remember him from such movies as The Eiger Sanction, Cool Hand Luke, and Naked Gun.
‘Airport’ Star George Kennedy Dies at 91
Actor George Kennedy died Sunday at age 91. I remember him from such movies as The Eiger Sanction, Cool Hand Luke, and Naked Gun.
‘Airport’ Star George Kennedy Dies at 91
We're trying to build a monument to show that we were here
It won't be visible through the air
And there won't be any shade to cool the monument to prove that we were here. - Gene Parsons, 1973
I forgot all about him being in the Naked Gun. RIP.
Loved him in the Airport movies. I love the scene in the first one where he enthusiastically describes what will happen if Van Heflin manages to detonate the bomb he's carrying. And then in the fourth movie he has this great line:
"I'm going to put on some music, but I'd appreciate it if there was no dancing in the aisles!".
Brilliant in Cool Hand Luke.
RIP George
He was in one of my favorite movies, "Mirage" (1965).
Heh, yes, but a terrible film!Originally Posted by GuitarGeek
Stewardess: "You pilots are such men!"
Kennedy "They don't call it the cockpit for nothing, honey!"
Great, great actor. He was in so many of the movies I saw on TV growing up in the 70's.
Naked Gun, Just Before Dawn, The Dirty Dozen, Charade and many other movies.
Maybe he didn't have the most consistent resume, the same can be said about Balsam, Pleasence, Borgnine and many others, but I even like some of the lower budget stuff he did.
I suppose it depends on your definition of "terrible". If you ask me, Concorde: Airport '79, was actually the best of the four Airport movies. Why? Because they were no longer playing it with a straight face. They knew how ridiculous the movies were, so that one they played it tongue-in-cheek. So to me, that one was the most enjoyable.
You mention Ernest Borgnine. Would you believe the first two movies I saw him in were The Black Hole and Superfuzz (the latter a ridiculous comedy about a cop who gains super powers after being exposed to a nuclear radiation).
Borgnine really could act. I just watched "Marty" the other day for about the umpteenth time. What a sweet, touching movie. After it ended, I turned to my wife and stated that that is one of those movies you just cannot remake. There's no need to. He beat out some heavyweights for that best actor Oscar back in '55.
"The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"
And equally adept at playing the other end of the spectrum. From Here To Eternity and Bad Day At Black Rock come to mind.
One of my favorite G Kennedy roles, Herman in Charade.
I've seen both of those. Superfuzz was more of a Terrence Hill vehicle, one of those in which he wasn't together with Bud Spencer. I thought it was watchable.
The same about The Black Hole - I think the score is fantastic, the models and designs great, some good actors, the idea is interesting. It's just that it lacks focus.
There is a film with a title "Top Line" from 1988 where Franco Nero plays a journalist who investigates the possibility of aliens living on Earth. This really has to be seen to believe. Kennedy is there as well, he plays some kind of a shady figure. But the interesting aspect is that he doesn't speak with his own voice, he was dubbed. In every scene he's in he mostly stands without any movement and tries to open his mouth as to demonstrate what he wants to say. When they do this, does the actor know that he'll be dubbed? I'm always curious - does he actually speak or just moves his mouth and there is silence when they film. It all looked so strange.
Yeah, I agree with you on all points there. Borgnine had more of a support role in that picture. I haven't seen in over 30 years, but I remember it was basically a screwball comedy with no attempt to be realistic or anything (how realistic can you be when the climax of your picture hinges on a deux ex machina involving beans and bubblegum).
It's a strange movie. I believe I read it was the first Disney movie ever to not have a G rating, apparently an attempt at making something that wasn't "family entertainment". It's a decent movie, if you ignore the concept of a robot that speaks with Slim Pickins' voice and all the scientifically inaccurate stuff (yeah, that happens in all sci-fi movies and TV shows, but The Black Hole carried it to an all time high...I mean who's ever heard of humans surviving exposure to the vacuum of open space?!).
The special effects and the musical score (particularly that fanfare thing that gets reprised like a dozen times throughout the movie) are the best thing about the picture. That and the fact that they somehow conned Ernest Borgnine, Anthony Perkins, Maximillian Schell, Yvette Mimeux, and Roddie McDowell into taking part.
(of course, I imagine it's no worse than all those tacky Italian and Spanish made horror and sci-fi flicks from the 70's that inexplicably have lots of big name American actors in them)
Last edited by GuitarGeek; 03-05-2016 at 07:00 PM.
And then fifty years later, he read a on top ten list on the Letterman show about being an Oscar winner.
My impression is they really are delivering the dialog. I remember seeing an interview with Jessica Harper where she talked about how she couldn't believe how much noise there was on the set of Suspiria. But I guess since all the dialog is being dubbed anyway, they don't have to worry about "quiet on the set", so they're building or taking down other sets, people are talking off camera in a way that would never happen on a US production.
In Tentacles, it looks like the American actors weren't dubbed (it's certainly their own voices we're hearing), but then I get the impression they may have been filmed separately from most of the Italian cast in that picture. The really strange thing is they dubbed over Cesare Danova's voice, but he was an actor who worked regularly in the US and spoke perfectly sound English (you may remember him as Mayor Carmine DePasto in Animal House). And I've seen other movies with different ratios of dubbed/non-dubbed voices. In Amsterdamned, most of the cast did their own dubbing for the English language version of the film.
Maybe the producers of Top Line couldn't afford to hire George Kennedy to do his own dubbing, or maybe there was a scheduling conflict. Or maybe they production got waylaid, Kennedy had returned to LA or wherever he lived at the time, and they couldn't afford to fly him back over when it was time to do looping.
Superfuzz is definitely a movie which could and probably should be labelled as ridiculous. There is a lot of nonsense. But you're right about the premise, after all it's a fantasy/comedy. One film which it could be compared to is Zapped with Scott Baio.
About The Black Hole - totally agree about the robots. They wanted too much to follow in the footsteps of Star Wars that it became a bit of a mess. I agree with those who say that Alien from that same year is a much better space film overall.
The thing you say about the Spanish and Italian horror/sci-fi films - The irony of it is that most of them were really good actors. Some of them even managed to be in some good films, like Richard Crenna who was involved in the last Melville picture "Un Flic" which wasn't a horror or a sci-fi but an intelligent French crime pic.
I've seen Amsterdamned several times, good setting, locations, some great chase scenes as well.
A lot of the Asian movies from the 80's had all kinds of versions with different running times and different dubbings for their local audience and for international market. Some of the Jackie Chan films had several dubbing versions. I've seen them and it's almost an entirely different film with each of the dubbings. Armour Of God is one.
Reagarding Top Line - well, the film looks like one of those low budget and a bit trashy Italian pics that were made in the 80's. They made so many movies which were inspired by Escape From New York/Mad Max with those post apocalyptic vibes and although I haven't seen them all most of them aren't particularly good. This one was more of a Terminator and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers follower.
On a side note, there is a Robocop and Predator clone called Robowar and a film with a title Shocking Dark which is "inspired" by Aliens. They don't even shy to include scenes and dialogues which are practically the same as in the originals.
There's one movie I have on a bootleg (or pirate or whatever) VHS called Cave Of Sharks. It's a Spanish made picture, starring Andres Garcia (who I understand is a big deal in the Latin American world), with the baddie being played by Arthur Kennedy (you might remember him as Dr Duval in Fantastic Voyage). The version I have on VHS is dubbed in German. I only speak a few phrases here and there in German, so I don't really understand the dialog too well. But as the website I bought it off pointed out, "The plot isn't hard to follow". So I went along with it, and it seemed to make perfect sense to me (well, as much as sense as any of those low budget off shore horror/sci-fi/whatever pictures from the 70's do).
Well, a few years later, I managed to procure a copy of the film dubbed in English, and it actually made less sense in English than it did in German. I think what happened was, when I was watching the German dubbed version, my mind was adjusting for the fact that I didn't understand the dialog, so subconsciously, my mind is thinking "OK, this would make perfect sense if it was English". And guess what, it didn't!Still, it was an enjoyable picture to watch.
Sounds like all the Jaws knockoffs that came out in the mid to late 70's. Two that stand out for me:
Evil In The Deep: This is a weird one. The original version of the movie was called Treasure Of The Jamaican Reef, and was released before Jaws. It starred Stephen Boyd (another Fantastic Voyage escapee), Cheryl Stoppelmoor, David Ladd (husband of Ms. Stoppelmoor, yes that's right, that makes her Cheryl Ladd), Rosie Greer, and Chuck Woolery. The title pretty much tells you what the movie was about. After the success of Jaws, the producers re-cut the picture, adding a bunch of extra material, including an endless prologue about a cursed treasure map, the very graphic shark attack death of one of the black hats, and a superfluous epilogue that brings up backed to the cursed map trope. And of course they rechristened it with a new title so no one would suspect that 90% of the picture was more than a year old and had already sunken without a trace once at the box office.
Great White aka L'Ultimo Squalo aka The Last Jaws: This is the notorious Italian made Jaws rip off that came out in 1980. I actually remember the stupid commercial for this movie. Anyhow, the picture stars James Franciscus and Vic Morrow (again with the American actors!) and the producers lifted so much out of the first two Jaws pictures that Universal got an injunction from the picture shown or released on home video Stateside. Universal also got the last laugh by stealing the ending of Jaws 3 (which curiously, was perhaps the one thing in the picture that was stolen from the Jaws franchise, instead appropriating said plot device from a Roger Corman produced picture called Up From The Depths).
There's absolutely know reason I or anyone should know the information in this post.
I know Kennedy mostly from Winner's The Sentinel and several Euro crime pics. He was also in that 70's film about the zombies.There's one movie I have on a bootleg (or pirate or whatever) VHS called Cave Of Sharks. It's a Spanish made picture, starring Andres Garcia (who I understand is a big deal in the Latin American world), with the baddie being played by Arthur Kennedy (you might remember him as Dr Duval in Fantastic Voyage). The version I have on VHS is dubbed in German. I only speak a few phrases here and there in German, so I don't really understand the dialog too well. But as the website I bought it off pointed out, "The plot isn't hard to follow". So I went along with it, and it seemed to make perfect sense to me (well, as much as sense as any of those low budget off shore horror/sci-fi/whatever pictures from the 70's do).
Well, a few years later, I managed to procure a copy of the film dubbed in English, and it actually made less sense in English than it did in German. I think what happened was, when I was watching the German dubbed version, my mind was adjusting for the fact that I didn't understand the dialog, so subconsciously, my mind is thinking "OK, this would make perfect sense if it was English". And guess what, it didn't!
Sounds like all the Jaws knockoffs that came out in the mid to late 70's. Two that stand out for me:
Evil In The Deep: This is a weird one. The original version of the movie was called Treasure Of The Jamaican Reef, and was released before Jaws. It starred Stephen Boyd (another Fantastic Voyage escapee), Cheryl Stoppelmoor, David Ladd (husband of Ms. Stoppelmoor, yes that's right, that makes her Cheryl Ladd), Rosie Greer, and Chuck Woolery. The title pretty much tells you what the movie was about. After the success of Jaws, the producers re-cut the picture, adding a bunch of extra material, including an endless prologue about a cursed treasure map, the very graphic shark attack death of one of the black hats, and a superfluous epilogue that brings up backed to the cursed map trope. And of course they rechristened it with a new title so no one would suspect that 90% of the picture was more than a year old and had already sunken without a trace once at the box office.
Great White aka L'Ultimo Squalo aka The Last Jaws: This is the notorious Italian made Jaws rip off that came out in 1980. I actually remember the stupid commercial for this movie. Anyhow, the picture stars James Franciscus and Vic Morrow (again with the American actors!) and the producers lifted so much out of the first two Jaws pictures that Universal got an injunction from the picture shown or released on home video Stateside. Universal also got the last laugh by stealing the ending of Jaws 3 (which curiously, was perhaps the one thing in the picture that was stolen from the Jaws franchise, instead appropriating said plot device from a Roger Corman produced picture called Up From The Depths).
There's absolutely know reason I or anyone should know the information in this post.
The thing about all kinds of dubbings is that most of the English ones are bad. One of the worst I've seen is a film called Abuso Di Potere (Shadows Unseen) with Frederic Stafford. So I'm not surprised about the film which you mention. Btw, sometimes the German dubbings are much better than the English originals (not the English dubbings but the original voices of the actors) but it depends.
I wanted to watch that Jaws inspired flick with Franciscus sometime but still haven't managed to do it. I guess I wouldn't be too far of the truth if I speculated that it isn't even as good as Argento's The Cat O'Nine Tails in which Franciscus starred in the beginning of the 70's. All those Jaws knock offs remind me of all those Alien imitators which were made both in USA and Italy. These aspects are ones of which the filmmaking industry of the late 70's and 80's shouldn't be proud of.
I got my copy of L'Ultimo Squalo off Cinemageddon. Great torrent site, where you can find lots of obscure movies in pretty much all genres. I've never seen Cat O'Nine Tails, so I don't know how it compares to that, but I think L'Ultimo Squalo is pretty entertaining, if for no other reason than you get to watch how obvious the unauthorized appropriation is. Vic Morrow seems to be trying his damnedest to channel Robert Shaw in his portrayal of the military diver turned commercial fisherman who assists Franciscus in his attempts to "get the shark".
The problem with Cinemageddon is that you can get there only with an invite. Since that system was implemented I haven't managed to get there. But the site really is good because of the reason you mention - there are all kinds of obscurities. I recommend to watch The Cat O Nine Tails, also The Bird With A Crystal Plumage which was the first giallo that Argento made. The English dubbing in it is bad though. It's better in Cat as Franciscus and Karl Malden speak with their own voices. They're worth seeing at least for the gorgeous visuals. Argento was a real master of the visual craft in the 70's and 80's.
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