Category: Starring Debuts
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Staring Debuts #11:Jeffrey Combs in Re-Animator (1985)
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Read more: Staring Debuts #11:Jeffrey Combs in Re-Animator (1985)It’s apt that Herbert West (Combs) resembles both Harry Potter and Scottish necrophile Dennis Nilsen. His small stature and precocious schoolboy looks suggest he’s harmless, enabling him to obscure a deep-rooted fascination with corpses while committing murder if necessary. It’s a plum role, all right, and Combs seizes it with such memorable relish that he…
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Starring debuts #10: Bo Derek in 10 (1979)
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Read more: Starring debuts #10: Bo Derek in 10 (1979)Bo Derek is actually rated a Spinal Tap-esque 11 in this successful sex comedy but that still might be underscoring her. She looks sensational here and it’s not hard to see why George Webber (Moore) gets hit by an Apollonian thunderbolt as he mundanely waits in his open top Roller at a Californian stop sign.…
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Starring debuts #9: John Amplas in Martin (1978)
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Read more: Starring debuts #9: John Amplas in Martin (1978)Martin on the hunt with a syringe clamped between his teeth is one of the great sights of 70s horror. We know he’s a serial killer, but is he a vampire? As played by the superb Amplas, we never get a telling answer. The movie continually toys with conventions and expectations so that facts and…
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Starring debuts #8: Alan Rickman in Die Hard (1988)
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Read more: Starring debuts #8: Alan Rickman in Die Hard (1988)You know Alan Rickman’s done his job remarkably well in Die Hard when he plunges to his death from a high-rise building and we feel a bit sad. Unlike Kong, it wasn’t beauty that killed the charismatic beast, but a combination of old-fashioned greed and sheer bad luck. Rickman plays Hans Gruber, a debonair German…
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Starring Debuts #6: Harvey Stephens in The Omen (1976)
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Read more: Starring Debuts #6: Harvey Stephens in The Omen (1976)According to the nursery rhyme, little boys are made of snips, snails and puppy dogs’ tails. However, some parents being driven up the wall by their misbehaving spawn probably believe they’re actually jam-packed with satanic DNA. Take Damien Thorn. There’s just no hope with this kid. Appoint a nice nanny to look after him? She’ll…
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Starring Debuts #5: Eddie Murphy in 48 Hrs. (1982)
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Read more: Starring Debuts #5: Eddie Murphy in 48 Hrs. (1982)The pioneering brilliance of the ancient Greeks laid many of the foundations for Western civilization, producing great leaps forward in fields as diverse as philosophy and science. For hundreds of years progress and innovation flourished until the curtain was violently brought down by the Romans. What a shame. Somehow, though, a cinephile like me finds…
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Starring Debuts #4: Kathleen Turner in Body Heat (1981)
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Read more: Starring Debuts #4: Kathleen Turner in Body Heat (1981)Now this is my idea of a Strong Female Role. Kathleen Turner’s performance in Body Heat hasn’t quite carved itself into pop culture as unmistakably as Louise Fletcher in Cuckoo’s Nest, Judy Garland in Wizard of Oz or Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, but it’s hard to think of any woman who’s made a better…
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Starring Debuts #2: John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever
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Read more: Starring Debuts #2: John Travolta in Saturday Night FeverYou’d think the sight of a bloke walking down a street carrying a tin of paint isn’t much of an opening for a movie. But we’re talking John Travolta in his pomp here, and he’s not just walking, he’s strutting like an electrified peacock to those falsetto disco gods, The Bee Gees. “Well, you can…
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Starring Debuts- #1: Paul Hogan in Crocodile Dundee (1986)
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Read more: Starring Debuts- #1: Paul Hogan in Crocodile Dundee (1986)Here in Oz there’s a cringe factor around Crocodile Dundee, despite it being a worldwide phenomenon that took well over three hundred mil at the box office. Perhaps it’s disliked in hipster circles because it was such a runaway success. After all, the titular character is a rough hewn, leg-pulling pub-dweller, the sort of guy…