Halloween Scene: Seeing Halloweeners

Much like spying Lost cast members, I love seeing folks from the Halloween movies (well, the ones I've seen and liked at least) in other flicks. I've recently had the pleasure and surprise of seeing Danielle Harris and Donald Pleasence in various flicks I didn't even know they were in.

Danielle Harris popped up as a kid in two flicks about dads she doesn't really like who get into some crazy situations. First up, I watched a movie called Back to Back (1996) starring her and Michael Rooker (who I've only seen in Mallrats, he looks kinda funny with hair). Oh, Bobcat Goldthwait is in it too and is super annoying, but don't worry, he gets blown up pretty good.

Back to Back is not a good movie. It's not altogether bad, it's just kind of unremarkable. Rooker and Harris get kidnapped by this Asian guy who has a score to settle with someone for some reason, so he escapes from a police station and blah blah blah. I guarantee you've seen this kind of movie before done better. But, if you're like me and you're looking for something to watch on Netflix Instant, you can probably do worse.

Harris also appeared as the angry daughter in The Last Boy Scout (1991). I'll be honest, I wasn't all that interested in the movie and still haven't finished it from early last week (I had pretty bad luck picking movies as I'm sure I'll get to in further detail in upcoming posts). I'm sure there's some good stuff in there, I just need to finish it out. Thanks to this commute, though, it'll be rough. Anyone want to give me one of those plug-in internet things? I'd greatly appreciate it and even plug the heck outta you, for what it's worth.

On the Donald Pleasence front, I peeped him in two movies as well, first up the Sean Connery James Bond film You Only Live Twice (1967). In it, Pleasence plays Blofeld, the big villain for the early Bond flicks. Pleasence was the first guy to play Blofeld in person (you saw him petting his cat a lot and feeding fish before this) and boy does he look crazy nutso, but in a good way. It's pretty clear that Donnie here was the inspiration for Dr. Evil in Austin Powers (down to the suit and even some of the mannerisms).

Pleasence also appeared in the 1979 version of Dracula starring SkeletorNixon himself Frank Langella as Drac. I read about the movie on Horror Movie A Day and thought it sounded pretty good. I was bored to tears for most of it, but Pleasence played a mental institute-running Dr. Jack Seward. He didn't do much but be a dad for the parts I saw (this was another movie I couldn't get through, even being a captive audience on a train. Ah well, you can't go wrong with crazy Pleasance, though he still, in my opinion, never topped the upper echelon's of crazy-old-guy he reached in Halloween 6.