- Philip Carey, Fighting Mad, 1975. Carey and Napier – total opposites – were candidates of Pierce Crabtree during small farmer Peter Fonda’s battle with land developers. Carey was slim. Napier was not. As heavies, upper-grade military officers and even great lovers, he was a favourite of such diversew directors as Jonathan Demme and Russ Meyer, while clocking up 203 screen roles in 43 years…
- Donald Pleasence, Halloween, 1978. Hitchcock fan auteur John Carpenter searched high and low for his shrink, Dr Sam Loomis. Peter O’Toole and the Hammer horrors, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee versus Charles Napier, Lawrence Tierney, Abe Vigoda. The $300,00 shoestring budget couldn’t afford any of them! Same for Lloyd Bridges, David Carradine, Kirk Douglas, Steven Hill, Walter Matthau… even such off-the-wall surprises as John Belushi, Mel Brooks, Yul Brynner, Edward Bunker, Sterling Hayden, Dennis Hopper, Kris Kristofferson… and Dick’s brother, Jerry Van Dyke. Pleasence said he only made the film because his daughter told him to! She’d loved Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13… He also told Carpenter he’d never read the script, nor Loomis. “Only later,” said Carpenter, “after [we] became close friends, did I realise he was finding out how much I loved the movie I was making.” Incidentally, Loomis was named after John Gavin’s Psycho character; his screen lover was Janet Leigh, mother of Carpenter’s heroine, Jamie Lee Curtis. So it flows.
Birth year: 1906Death year: 2011Other name: Casting Calls: 2