It's what I think of first when I think about David Warner, so let me put it here to memorialize the actor, who died yesterday at the age of 80. Here's the NYT obituary, "David Warner, Actor Who Played Villains and More, Dies at 80/He seemed destined for a major stage career but by the early 1970s was focused on film and TV. His credits included 'TRON,' 'Titanic' and hundreds more."
Here's the scene where he takes his mother to visit the grave of Karl Marx:
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It would have made a more avant-garde film to have them visiting the grave of Groucho Marx. Karl is so predictable.
David Warner was a fine actor. RIP.
I've seen a delightful interview with him concerning the prop head used for the decapitation scene in "The Omen." The interviewer asked what became of the head, and Warner said they gave it to him when the film wrapped, but his wife ended up with it when they got divorced. "She sold it on eBay. So now it's somebody else's head."
He was an excellent corporate executive villain in Tron but what I remember him for is his completely different kind of villain in Straw Dogs, a movie which was so powerful yet so brutal that I still wish I had never seen it.
David-2... Straw Dogs' brutality was a turning point in the American Cinema Genre. It's just everyday in Chicago and New York now.
The actress playing the mother was a delight. I don't think much of the movie though. Good acting, mediocre script.
Warner was a delight. Just saw him in TNG: Chain of Command where he plays a nasty villan opposite Patrick Stewart. But he also plays a quirky preacher in Peckinpah's "Cable Hogue" and a German soldier in "Cross of Iron". Great range!
He had quite a career. His list of credits on IMDB is impressive and includes a lot of BBC series that I would watch if they were on a streaming service. In "Time Bandits", his credited role was "Evil Genius". He played that role a lot, and was always good at it. In "Time After Time", he played the role of a time traveler who made use of H.G. Wells time machine to travel forward to the present (1979). It was the conceit of the movie that in the present (1979) scene, Jack the Ripper fit right in. H.G. Wells, the futurist, pursued him and when he arrived in our era he was hopelessly quaint and out of date. Good movie. Malcolm McDowell, another evil genius type, was cast as the benign H.G. Wells....I remember Morgan quite well. Vanessa Redgrave had a nude scene. You didn't see that many naked women back then, and it made an impression. Back then, women of advanced politics like Vanessa Redgrave got naked to show their liberation from repressive, bourgeoisie upbringings. This was one of the first movies where the star got naked.
Question for the Althouse community. How many deaths attributable to Karl Marx’s philosophy? 30m? 50m? 100m?
Another question. Did Karl collect royalties from his books?
"Nipples for men!...Are we not in the hands of a lunatic?!"
Need to watch Cross of Iron again. Extraordinary battle stagings for the time, and the gear is authentic. Plus, Warner, Coburn, and my man Mason.
A little help. I have a memory of having seen Morgan as a teenager, but I was only a teenager until 1971. I know I did not see it at the theater. But, I can't imagine that it made it to Illinois tv stations that early. Did it? Or am I misrembering when I saw it. It made a big impression on me at the time. Thanks.
"How many deaths attributable to Karl Marx’s philosophy?"
Does that include those made by nazism because:
- I don't think there would have been a nazi-Germany without an USSR
- There might not have been a WW2 in Europe without the Hitler-Stalin pact
- And the nazi ideology isn't that different from communism. Both are part of 'socialism' and while one murdered on basis of 'race' and the other on basis of 'class' that's not much of a difference. Neither thought of people as anything but disposable, glorified cattle really.
Maybe watch the movie and see how the Karl Marx theme is used.
Because I know that's unlikely, here's the plot summary (to read and consider so you can say something specific and not just slot in conventional wisdom). Spoiler alert, obviously:
"Morgan Delt (David Warner) is a failed working-class London artist, who was raised as a communist by his parents. His upper-class wife, Leonie (Vanessa Redgrave), has given up on him and is in the process of getting a divorce in order to marry Charles Napier (Robert Stephens), an art gallery owner of her own social standing. Locked into a personal world of fantasy, Morgan performs a series of bizarre stunts in a campaign to win back Leonie, including putting a skeleton in her bed and blowing up the bed as her mother sits on it. When these stunts fail, Morgan secures the help of Wally "The Gorilla" (Arthur Mullard), a pro wrestler friend of his mother (Irene Handl), to kidnap Leonie, who still nurtures residual feelings of love tinged with pity for Morgan. Leonie is left with Morgan and Wally on the British countryside, with are ironically intercut with clips from Tarzan. Leonie soon gets rescued, and Morgan is arrested and imprisoned. After escaping, he crashes the wedding reception of Leonie and Charles dressed as a gorilla (with clips from King Kong used to illustrate Morgan's fantasy world). Morgan flees the wedding on a motorcycle with his gorilla suit on fire, and subsequently is committed to an insane asylum, where Leonie visits him looking visibly pregnant. With a wink, Leonie tells him he is the child's father. Morgan returns to tending a flowerbed, as the camera pulls out to a longshot of the entire circular flowerbed with the enclosed flowers arranged into a hammer and sickle."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan_–_A_Suitable_Case_for_Treatment
I think this is one of those 60s movies that suggested the insane person is somehow better and wiser than the normal.
Riding a motorcycle while wearing a gorilla suit that's on fire — that was a memorable image.
"It would have made a more avant-garde film to have them visiting the grave of Groucho Marx. Karl is so predictable."
Yeah, I had 2 Marx posts on one day. I like that.
My favorite of his roles was Bob Cratchit in the George C Scott version of A Christmas Carol.
"It would have made a more avant-garde film to have them visiting the grave of Groucho Marx. Karl is so predictable."
Sure, but Groucho was still alive at the time.
If they remade MORGAN today, they would probably tell the story correctly: as a tale of a deranged man terrorizing his estranged wife, stalking her, committing acts of vandalism and destruction, kidnapping and raping her, until he is ultimately captured and imprisoned...held in a padded, celled room, restrained in a straight jacket.
Warner seems like somebody who did British science fiction and horror, a Dr. Who or Hammer Films character. I didn't bother looking him up. I'm just judging from his physiognomy.
I remembered the gorilla suit but forgot the communism. I may try watching it on Amazon Prime. Another gorilla suit movie from the period is Where's Poppa? which I remember much better - not sure if that's because it's in color or because it was funnier.
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