The fire of Brad Dourif's acting cannot be contained...
I've been obsessed with veteran weird actor Brad Dourif all week, so this installment of Weirdhouse Cinema looks at Tobe Hooper's flawed 1990 pyrokinetic thriller Spontaneous Combustion. But I also watched 1990's Graveyard Shift (in which Dourif has a fun role as an exterminator) and the 1979 tour de force Wise Blood.
He's easily one of my favorite living actors and he's appeared in so many weird and interesting films, including but not limited to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Dune, Blue Velvet, the Child's Play franchise, The Exorcist III, Jungle Fever, Critters 4, Death Machine, Alien: Resurrection, The Prophecy 3, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done.
Plus, he has some incredible TV credits as well, popping up in Star Trek, The X-Files, Deadwood and one of my favorite Tales From the Crypt episodes.
First up, here's the trailer for Spontaneous Combustion and our podcast episode:
Now, I want to give you a taste of his work in Graveyard Shift and Wise Blood as well, so here you go:
Graveyard Shift is a fun monster flick, though Dourif is only a minor character. Wise Blood, however, is a nonstop express train for the actor. Directed by John Houston and based on the novel by Flannery O'Connor, the film puts Dourif opposite such great performers as Harry Dean Stanton (as in the above clip), Amy Wright, Ned Beaty and William Hickey. I highly recommend it.
We have full Weirdhouse Merch now over at the Teepublic store, by the way. What's up next week on Weirdhouse Cinema? Well, Joe is hungry for shark movies so we're serving up Deep Blue Sea.
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