Let's hear a big Hip Hip Hooray, Transylvania style, for the mighty Joe Turkel, who led a film career mostly defined by obscurity yet managed to score pivotal roles in not one but two of the most important movies in my personal home theatre parade.
First and foremost, Turkel was in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. He portrayed futuristic techno-magnate Dr. Eldon Tyrell, the man responsible for creating all the replicants that are causing our protagonist Deckard (Harrison Ford) so much trouble in his mission to terminate their command with extreme prejudice.
A relative newcomer to the pantheon of "films JSH won't stop quoting from until you hit him really hard with a chair" is Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, and Turkel is here too. He plays the most important character (if you ask me), that of Lloyd the Bartender, who appears to writer Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) in a series of apparitions that may be ghostly hauntings, Satanic manifestations, psychological hallucinations, Remote Viewing, quantum time travel, or all of the above.
Turkel also appears in two other Kubrick flicks, The Killing and Paths of Glory, and also made appearances on TV shows like Fantasy Island, Kojak, Bonanza, Rat Patrol, and even The Andy Griffith Show.
Bonus Turkel: photo at the top depicts our man dead center, in the film Cell 2455 Death Row, in an uncredited role as "Curly", a gangster.
- - JSH
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