TapeHead Profiles Brad Dourif

Eternally condemned to the status of "Oh THAT guy!", the inimitable Brad Dourif has been on film seemingly forever in oddball roles that encompass ALL genres and quality levels. In fact, the amazingly prolific Dourif likely won't stop acting until he literally drops dead on a movie shoot like poor John Carradine. Besides David Warner, there's no other actor working today who can move so comfortably between prestigious "serious" fare and the lowest-of-the-low budget potboilers with such ease and career longevity.

Born on March 15, 1950 in Huntington, West Virginia, Dourif began his career as a stage actor in New York and found immediate acclaim in one of his earliest (and Oscar nominated) film roles as Billy Babbit in Milos Forman's classic One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975). Take another look at Babbit's powerful suicide, and marvel that this is the same actor who played an exterminator in the giant rat movie Graveyard Shift! Then again, it's a testament to Dourif's talent, fearless spirit, and utterly unique screen presence that he can survive such debacles and still remain Hollywood's number one "character actor" du jour.

Dourif appeared for the rest of the 70's and into the early 80's in acclaimed literary-based efforts like John Huston's Wise Blood (as religious fanatic Hazel Motes) and Forman's Ragtime, followed by Michael Cimino's legendary indulgence Heaven's Gate. It was after Dourif costarred as the Mentat "Piter" in David Lynch's 1985 adaptation of Dune in an unusual fright wig and eyebrows that his career choices began to get increasingly weird (and given his roles to this point, that's quite a statement!), sometimes not by choice.

Dune more or less branded Dourif as a Class-A screen weirdo, and the persona's stuck to him like a set of wet clothes for the remainder of his career to date. Chances are if you're hanging out at this site that you've seen Dourif in decent programmers like William Peter Blatty's Exorcist 3, and grade Z wastes-of-time like Critters 4. Sadly, more filmgoers probably know Dourif more as the voice of Chucky than they do for his cameo in Lynch's masterpiece Blue Velvet.

Typecasting occasionally subsides, though, to allow Dourif to pop up in mainstream dramas like Alan Parker's Mississippi Burning and Spike Lee's Jungle Fever. He's also made memorable television appearances on Babylon 5, The X Files, and Millenium (admittedly, as a dysfunctional type in all instances!). But in the past two years alone, Dourif has found his true home in genre films ranging from Urban Legend to Alien: Resurrection to the remake of Nightwatch. "People don't tend to hire me for dad," Dourif has joked. "But I'd just as soon play people who are interesting." To our eternal benefit.

In 1990, Dourif starred in two obscure films that Tapeheads really should seek out: Martin Robert Carroll's Sonny Boy, and Alan A. Goldstein's Canadian drama Chain Dance a.k.a. Common Bonds. In the too-screwed-up-for-words Sonny Boy, Dourif plays a lowlife who sells a baby to the unlikely couple of Paul Pieces Smith and David Kung Fu Carradine, the latter appearing in complete Granny Clampett drag (yes!). It's gotta be quite the movie if Dourif is NOT the strangest thing about it! In the much more low-key Chain Dance, Dourif costars with Michael Ironside (who co-wrote the film) as a handicapped patient who's assigned a convict/caregiver as part of an experimental prison therapy program. Some of the subtlety of Dourif's "Billy Babbit" gets a chance to shine through in this impressive, little-seen role.

Just in time for Halloween 1998, Dourif's back, at least in part, in Ronny Yu's hit Bride Of Chucky. We at Tapehead anxiously await his next onscreen role, in whatever vehicle it may appear. Merchant-Ivory? The return of Earl Owensby? Critters: 20 Years Later? And isn't it about time for someone (not from the current SNL) to conceive the definitive Dourif impersonation? The greatest tribute Dourif could be awarded is to join the ranks of William Shatner, Christopher Walken and other distinctive thespians whom standup hacks milk to death. And we can all live with the satisfaction that we saw him first!

- Maxx Renn