Last night, I went to a free preview of the new re-make of of William Castle’s “13 Ghosts” at the Cineplex Odeon Outer Circle in DC (overall lousy movie with some good scary scenes and one VERY gory scene). In the opening scene, we see Matthew Lillard as a ghost-hunting psychic and as his sinister employer is…F. Murray Abrahams. I cannot believe that a guy who won a freakin’ Academy Award[sup]TM[/sup] for playing Antonio Salieri in “Amadeus” 16 years ago is reduced to playing the heavy in a schlocky low-budget horror flick.
What the hell happened to his career? He’s done movies, Broadway, and now “13 Ghosts.” He really needs to fire his agent.
Jim Varney – went from the lovable Ernest P. Warrel in Ernest Goes to Camp to the mean, ruthless lead he had in Ernest Saves Christmas…oh wait, scratch that
I dunno. I thought F. Murray Abraham was pretty good in Finding Forrester. That’s one of the curses that can happen to an Oscar winner. I mean, what’s greater than winning an Oscar? After that, everything you do seems to be crap. You’ve already reached the top, the only place you can go is down. That doesn’t happen to all actors or actresses that win an Oscar, but in a lot of cases that does happen. At least, that’s my opinion.
But in response to the OP…I would have to say Anthony Perkins. Psycho, and then some years later Blackhole, or the numerous (and stupid) Psycho sequels.
Wow, I forgot all about him. Jan Michael vincent used to be so hot. I lusted after him bigtime watching “Airwolf.” Now, he’s fat, alcoholic, old and ugly. Damn, that’s sad.
You could almost say that about Michael Caine. Playing the bad guy opposite Steven Segal in On Deadly Ground. What’s up with that?
OK, then again, I think he just does films to get out of the house. For every Cider House Rules and Little Voice there’s a Jaws III - 3-D. Just can’t pin him down.
Michael Caine has got to be strung out on crank. IMHO.
I think the poster child for this is Bela Legosi. From Dracula to the Ed Wood crap that he ended up in, strung out on heroin and being replaced by Ed Wood’s dentist because he had, um, died.
I haven’t seen 13 Ghosts, but the part F. Murray plays reminded me of another good-but-maybe-not-great Johnny Depp film, The Ninth Gate. Frank Langella played an evil super-powerful businessman trying to raise the devil.
I couldn’t help but be disappointed at the aging, round Frank, while fondly remembering the sexy Dracula Frank. Not that it was terrible or anything, just odd. He does do a great “evil guy” even in bad films- see Bad Company with Ellen Barkin & Lawrence Fishburne as a prime example.
Good flick, BTW, worth a rental.
And Sofa King, don’t tease me. If you are going to gossip, spill it. Otherwise, don’t bother.
You are, of course entitled to your opinion, but in all fairness to Mr. Caine, a bad choice of films does not put him “on the skids”. One cannot gauge public reaction to a film until the numbers are in, and the “numbers” have not been kind to quite a few great actors. The late Henry Fonda had his “dogs”, as did James Cagney and Sean Connery (In my opinion he should have never reprised James Bond in Never Say Never…).
Be that as it may, I don’t think the OP meant for us to take the choice of a few bad films as an indication that these celebrities have “hit the skids”. Instead, how have they gone “downhill” in their private lives? If I misinterpreted that, then my apologies to you and the OP.
Nitpick: Caine was in Jaws IV. Dennis Quaid was in Jaws 3D.
And I think John Travolta qualifies for this catagory every seven years or so. His career is similar to Haley’s comet - shows up really big and shiney for a while, then just wanders off again.
Tim Roth. Many great performances, including one of the best villians of all time in Rob Roy, has made nothing but shite for the past four or five years.
Michael Caine has never made a secret of the fact that he will act in anything if the money is good enough, He grew up dirt poor and openly admits he has had one goal only in being an actor: making money. Art of any kind is a very distant secondary consideration. He probably shouldn’t even be on this list, he’s being doing shithouse movies like ‘Killer Bees’ for the last 40 years but his acting always seems to be on about the same level. He plays Michael Caine remarkably well, but he’s only in it for the money.
Now Steven Segal is a definite contender, not that he was ever an actor. He was all set to become the next Arnie or Sly when the ‘Under Siege’ movies were released, and since then everything he’s been in has flopped. He was even reduced to doing a walk-on in some Kurt Russell flick.
