Horrendous cliché though it may be, Stockwell was one of those actors who was great in everything; capable of putting a unique and memorable spin on even the most minor or underwritten part. Like many people of roughly my age I suppose, I think I first clocked his existence in ‘Blue Velvet’ and subsequently followed that line back to ‘Dune’ before eventually realising, hey, he’s the same guy who’s in ‘Quantum Leap’ (of which I was never a great fan), right?
But, for me, you’ll be unsurprised to hear, his defining role will always be that of Wilbur Whateley in The Dunwich Horror (1970). Such a fantastic, totally off-kilter characterisation (not to mention one of the only occasions on which he was top-billed, or so I'm assuming). I’m sure I spilled quite enough digital ink on that subject at the above link, but needless to say, the delirious sight and sound of Stockwell furtively intoning the name of “yog...sothoth” over Les Baxter’s bonkers theme whilst pressing his fists against his scalp and waggling his thumbs, is forever burned into my brain, ready to infest my dreams at any moment.
That aside, other memories speak for themselves: his consummate child-star-gone-wrong performance in Joseph Losey’s ‘The Boy with The Green Hair’ (1948), freaking out Mumblin’ Jim with his gnomic wisdom as by far the best character in the frankly ridiculous ‘Psych-Out’ (1968), goofing around with his pal Neil Young in ‘Human Highway’ (1982), or acing it as a shady attorney in ‘To Live and Die in L.A.’ (1985). Rarely on screen for more than a few scenes at a time and never really a “star”, he was one of those weird creatures who seem to live in the weird underbelly of American cinema, popping up when you least expect him to add menace, absurdity or implacable cosmic nuance to otherwise undistinguished bits of quasi-Hollywood business.
Stockwell’s passing also causes me reflect once again of just how brilliantly so many of his generation of counter-culture inclined Hollywood brat/former child star types (Hopper, Fonda, Roddy McDowell, Russ Tamblyn, Bruce Dern) broke the ‘movie star’ mould, and how they almost all proved their critics wrong by turning in great (if often under-appreciated) work in multiple creative fields across their lives, all accomplished on their own terms.
What I’ve seen of Stockwell’s visual art is very impressive, and I’ve always been fascinated by the legend surrounding the unproduced screenplay which was credited on the sleeve of Neil Young’s ‘After The Gold Rush’ album as inspiring some of the songs therein, including the title track. Sounds as if it must have been quite something.
It makes me sad to consider the fact that he has now joined the majority of his contemporaries on the above list who are no longer with us. A unique talent amongst a whole gang of unique talents, riding free across a time and place of what now seems like unimaginable possibility.
RIP, needless to say.
3 comments:
Great piece about an unforgettable actor. An in-depth Psychotronic piece from 1995 is available online, and I was delighted to discover that Stockwell was already a Lovecraft fan when he was offered ‘Dunwich Horror’, though he found the script a bit ridiculous. As ever, he gave it his best shot, and takes the film well beyond what it woulo otherwise have been. Rest in power, Mr. Stockwell. https://archive.org/details/Psychotronic_Video_21/page/n33/mode/2up
Thank you for your comment Major, and for the link to the Psychotronic interview - very interesting to hear how critical he was about so many of the films he appeared in (not that I can fault his judgement). A fascinating read!
A worthy tribute to a great actor -- thank you!
Weirdly, I'd been discussing Dean Stockwell with a mate just the evening before his death was reported in the news. We'd been to the cinema to see Denis Villeneuve's new version of 'Dune', and in the pub afterwards -- well, 157 minutes spent in the deserts of the planet Arrakis had left us feeling pretty thirsty -- we were trying to remember which character Stockwell had played in David Lynch's 'Dune' back in 1984.
I've read the Psychotronic Video interview mentioned by Major Weir and I wonder if Stockwell's disappointment in 'The Dunwich Horror' was due, in part, to the fact that the film had a contemporary setting, rather than a late 1920s one true to Lovecraft's original story. The irony is that 1969 is now further removed in time from 2021 than it was from the 1920s. This probably makes the film's hippy aesthetic seem as quaint to contemporary viewers as any 1920s trappings -- characters dressed in fedoras and cold-weather overcoats driving around in Ford Model-Ts and so on -- would seem to them...
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