Remembering Bill Paxton, A Horror Icon
Mike Snoonian
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On May 17th, venerated actor Bill Paxton would have turned 68 years old. It’s tragic that just over six years ago, complications from heart surgery robbed fans of many more years of solid but stand-out performances from one of the screen’s most respected talents. While he might be best remembered for his top-of-the-marquee billing in spectacle blockbusters like Twister and Apollo 13, horror fans have a deep respect for Paxton’s numerous iconic performances. While Paxton wasn’t always the flashiest of performers, he always imbued his characters with an undeniable charisma that made them stand out. As a means to celebrate what would have been his birthday, here are just some of the times Paxton stood out in a genre effort.
The Terminator
Does Bill Paxton play an essential role in The Terminator? No. Is he out of the movie before the five-minute mark? Yes. Am I including this movie because whenever you have a chance to talk about The Terminator you grasp it with both hands and don’t let go? Also yes. The Terminator is awesome l, like James Cameron woke up one day and asked “What if Michael Myers but a robot?” In fact, it was a fateful double bill of Halloween / The Terminator that sparked the idea behind Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett’s The Guest.
Paxton appears in the opening scene as one of the trio of punks that encounter a naked, swinging dick Arnold as he arrives in 1984 Los Angeles. Watching how movies and television presented punk rockers in the 80s is always hilarious (here’s looking at you Quincy M.D.) and Paxton is no exception here. Sporting spiked blue hair and what appear to be tire tread marks as a facial tattoo, he just looks plain goofy. We know he’s none too bright, as he responds to Schwarzennegar’s very polite request for the trio’s clothing by threatening the former Mr. Universe with the world’s smallest and least threatening penknife. Paxton’s punk is tossed aside like a sack of trash, and that ends his role here in a brief but memorable spot.
Aliens
This might be the first role that springs to mind when genre fans remember Paxton. After a brief stint in The Terminator, Paxton reunited with James Cameron for a meatier, more memorable role as Private Hudson of the Marines. Recognizing the talent in his performers, Cameron managed to do something different with the Marines that helped set Aliens apart from the horror and action movies of its day, and went a long way towards establishing the classic status it enjoys to this day. Cameron gave his marine personality. They weren’t just cannon fodder -or what Teekkies called “red shirts”-to be torn apart by the Xenomorphs in order to satisfy audiences’ cravings for blood lust.
Nowhere among the supporting cast is this more evident than Paxton’s portrayal of Pvt. Hudson. Remembering Paxton after his death, Aliens and Terminator 2 producer Gale Hurd stated, “Paxton made going to work fun.” That’s evident in the joyous, overly caffeinated performance Paxton brings to Hudson. More importantly, Paxton didn’t shy away from showing how afraid his character was as circumstances spun outside of his control. Unlike the stone-faced action heroes that wouldn’t break a sweat as gunfire and concussion grenades exploded all around them (think Jesse “The Body” Ventura not having time to bleed despite tagging a slug to the arm in Predator), Hudson near shit his pants when he learned the aliens had the intelligence to lay traps for the marines: “What do you mean they cut the power? How could they cut the power? They’re animals!”
It’s Paxton that delivers two of the most iconic moments in Aliens and the second most memorable line that’s topped only by Ripley’s “Get away from her you BITCH!” Pinned down by a swarm of pissed-off Xenomorphs, outgunned and outmanned, Paxton’s voice cracks to the point of breaking as it’s so weighted down with hopelessness, “Game over, man. Game over!” Paxton would claim he improvised the iconic line and who am I to argue? Aliens allowed Paxton a heroic death, as he mows down a swarm of aliens, going out in a hail of bullets and screaming “You want some of that?”
Brain Dead
This slab of sci-fi-infused horror is one of those nifty little gems that you can’t believe exist at times. Brain Dead offers up a twin bill, or Bills that is, as it stars both Bill Paxton and Bill Pullman. The latter is the star of the show here, as he plays a brilliant but distracted neuroscientist that has the ability to give patients “cosmetic surgeries for their personalities” through his breakthrough operation techniques. Paxton, decked out in impeccable suits and with nary a slicked back hair out of place comes off as the perfect representation of corporate sleaze and greed.
Brain Dead is one of those weird little titles that hit during a seeming dead zone in horror: after the heights of the 80s where slashers and spectacular special effects thrilled fans but before Scream revitalized the genre for the second half of the decade. It’s a sparse, often incoherent movie that would probably be forgotten by the sands of time if it didn’t star the guy that would deliver the best presidential address in movie history and the guy who would get into fights with tornados just a few short years later.
There’s a charm to Brain Dead as it plays out like an extended cautionary tale that Tales From The Crypt did so well. Its non-linear, dreamlike framing where both the audiences and Pullman question everything going on around them plays out like a second-tier Jacob’s Ladder. Still, any movie that features a flummoxed Bill Pullman wrestling for control of a brain in a jar with a homeless man screaming “You stole my brain!” moment before getting waylaid by an Oldsmobile is worth ninety minutes of your time.
Sure, Paxton plays second fiddle here, but he has a hell of a time vamping it up. He oozes an aura of distrust like it was a cologne branded “Despicablè”. He gets to languish naked with entwined limbs with Pullman’s character’s wife (the lovely Patrica Charbonneau) for multiple stretches. I still can’t wrap my head around exactly why he needs to remove the specific information from his client’s brain (the sublime Bud Cort of Harold & Maude) but he sure has some fun going full-blown mustache-twirling villain in trying to convince Pullman’s surgeon to get that info.
Near Dark
Sometimes I like to write characters’ backstories in my head. It’s weird, I know. In the case of Severen, the psychopathic bloodsucker in Kathryn Bigelow’s vampire-western epic Near Dark I have a fun one that I would really like to be the case. I imagine Paxton playing Severen as the punk Arnold decimates in The Terminator newly rescued and turned immortal by Lance Hendrickson’s band of misfits. Now an immortal and nearly indestructible demon, Severen spends his early days transforming from punk rocker to new Cowboy as he devours the works of Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone to develop this new persona. This doesn’t feel too off the mark as any aging punk can tell you that while they wanted to be Ian Macaye or Joe Strummer in their teens, by the time they hit thirty, they wanted to reinvent themselves as the new Townes Van Zandt.
Anyhow, Bill Paxton is a revelation in Near Dark. He plays a terrifying vampire because he’s so damn unpredictable. Paxton plays Severen not as the schoolyard bully, but as the kid that got his ass handed to him for years by the bullies that grew up, filled out, and discovered he could not only take a punch, but throw a hellacious one, too. Now it’s time to bring the receipts and take out all that pent-up anger and frustration on anyone that crosses his path and so much looks at him sideways.
In Near Dark’s best scene, Severen and his crew lay waste to a bunch of hard men drinking hard liquor. The beauty of Paxton’s performance is he plays it knowing that violence is inevitable. Once he decides he’s going to teach the freshly minted vampire Caleb (baby-faced Adrian Pasdar) a lesson in power, there’s nothing a single patron in that joint can say or do to stop the ensuing bloodbath. Severen does everything he can to antagonize the patrons and barback, and we know he’s not stopping until he gets exactly what he wants: the chance to bury his boot’s spur deep into the throat of one of the local rednecks.
Frailty
Bill Paxton starred and directed this chilling 2001 horror movie and it remains one of the top five “most scared I’ve ever been watching a movie in theaters” experience. This one got so under my then-roommate and my own skin that we immediately purchased a ticket for Van Wilder right after walking out of this one, just so we wouldn’t feel so freaked out once we got home.
In Frailty’s flashback sequences, Paxton plays a widowed father, raising his two young sons that just happen to believe with unshakable faith he is an instrument of God sent to rid the world of demons. Paxton tells his confused and scared sons that angels allow him to see through the demons’ human disguises and enlists their help in his murder spree.
The horror in Frailty has little to do with the killings and violence, most of which we only see in the aftereffects. Instead, it’s the quiet certitude Paxton brings to the role of the father. Paxton comes off as the sort of dad that could play catch in the backyard with his kids, or help them with their math homework over a glass of cold milk at the kitchen table. There’s a gentleness in his demeanor when he’s not burying the business end of an ax in his neighbor’s abdomen. As events progress the father figure slips further into a quiet madness, tormenting one son while indoctrinating the other with his delusional beliefs.
Paxton delivers the performance of a man so assured of the righteousness of his actions that it would never occur to him to question his actions. His singular flash of anger happens when he’s forced to kill the town’s sheriff after his son tries to expose his father’s crimes. That’s the only moment he believes he’s killed an innocent man, and even then he can rationalize it as a casualty in God’s greater holy war. There are few things more terrifying than a person steadfast in the righteousness of an unjust cause. Paxton understood this and it shines through both in front of and behind the camera. That he manages to pull a quiet, focused performance out of Matthew McConaughey just as he was hitting the peak of his leading man RomCom period might be the greatest miracle of all.
Quick Hits
Frailty marked Bill Paxton’s last appearance in a pure genre effort, unless you count the slasher spoof Club Dread. You can find Paxton popping up in small roles in his early days like Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker, and 1982’s Mortuary. Lastly, after popping up in 1990’s Predator 2, Paxton took the lead role in a horror comedy that certainly wouldn’t come out today: The Vagrant.
Paxton plays Graham Krakowski (as in “crack house”) an uptight businessman who buys a lovely little suburban home at a steal of deal, only to learn he’s sharing it with, and these words are from the logline and not my own, “a dirty bum”. The trailer alone contains about two dozen cringe-inducing moments, but I have to admit, I’m intrigued. It looks like my kind of silly sleaze. It’s directed by horror royalty Chris Walas, the man responsible for melting off the faces of Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark and for creating the gross-out effects of the BrundleFly among others. Now that I think of it, I believe I know for sure exactly what movie I’m firing up tonight in order to remember the great Bill Paxton.
Categorized:Editorials
