RIP. John Phillip Law

May 19, 2008 on 7:30 pm | In Movies | 1 Comment

Actor John Phillip Law has passed away at age 70.

Folks may remember him best as the blind angel from Barbarella, or Sinbad from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. However, fans of schlocky movies will mourn him as the guy who starred in Space Mutiny, Danger: Diabolik, and Skidoo.

In Space Mutiny (also called Mutiny in Space, Law played Kalgan, the chief “enforcer” on a space ship.

Granted, the ship interiors were actually a boiler room and all the outer space shots were stolen from Battlestar Galactica and the star, Reb Beach, went on to star as TV’s Captain America (the one where he wears a motorcycle helmet all the time), but Law was definitely in this film. He laughed a lot, usually at unfunny things, mostly to sound intimidating. About a quarter of the time he actually pulled this off. MST3K had a grand time with this film.

MST3K also did a number on .

This one was based on an Italian comic strip hero who’s a thief. Law was a pretty good choice for the title character, Diabolik, with his thin-ness and square jaw. If I recall, there’s not a lot of dialogue in this film and the action moves slowly. Not recommended, even the MST3K version.

Then there’s Skidoo.

Skidoo is a film so bad that it needs its own entry in this blog at some point. It’s an Otto Preminger film about drugs, gangsters, hippies, and music, none of which are convincing, compelling, or at all interesting. The cast alone sinks this film because you’d expect something good to come from Jackie Gleason, Groucho Marx, Frankie Avalon, Carol Channing, Michael Constantin, Austin Pendleton, George Raft, Caesar Romero, Frank Gorshin, Richard Kiel, Peter Lawford, Harry Nilsson, Burgess Meredith, John Phillip Law, and Mickey Rooney, yet all you get is horror and pain and boredom. It’s a film that goes nowhere while having so much. To Mr. Law’s credit, he’s the only person in the cast who WAS a hippie at the time the film was made. Suck on that, Avalon.

And so, we fondly remember John Phillip Law through the body of work he gave to us, parts of which were mocked by MST3K. Still, Golden Voyage of Sinbad was a neat movie, and that’s the one you should probably netflix for your John Phillip Law Memorial Day Celebration this weekend.