Gene Hackman: 5 Great Offbeat Films
Some of Hackman's best roles were in little seen movies
Like everyone, I was saddened by the recent passing of Gene Hackman. There’s no question that he was one of the best film actors of our time.
Although he’s best known for his leading roles in movies like The French Connection and The Conversation, I believe that many of Gene Hackman’s best performances were in the offbeat movies he made in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Listed below are five lesser-known films that I think gave Hackman the opportunity to really showcase his acting ability.
Cisco Pike (1971)
In Cisco Pike, Gene Hackman plays a corrupt narcotics officer, Leo Holland, who blackmails Kris Kristofferson’s washed-up musician, Cisco Pike, into selling drugs so Hackman can quickly make a lot of money. It’s not clear why Hackman’s character needs the money until the end of the film.
As the story begins, Cisco has given up dealing drugs because of the pleas of his live-in girl friend, Sue, (Karen Black) and the knowledge that another bust would land him in prison for at least five years. Instead, Cisco tries to rekindle his music career by sending out demo tapes to music producers and record labels.
Not long afterwards, the cop who busted Cisco, Sgt. Leo Holland (Gene Hackman), re-enters Cisco’s life. A by the book policeman suddenly gone corrupt, Holland coerces Cisco to take part in a scheme; if Cisco sells all of Holland’s illegally seized bricks of pot in one weekend and gets Holland $10,000.00 in cash, Cisco can keep any additional money he makes and Holland will get Cisco’s conviction thrown out.
Of course, Cisco wants no part of this scheme, but after Holland threatens him with another arrest (which would send Cisco to prison), Cisco has no choice but to do Holland’s bidding and sell the dope.
Later, after Cisco informs Hackman’s Sgt. Holland that he’s sold all the drugs, Holland suddenly shows up unannounced at Cisco’s house wanting his money. Sweating profusely and acting jittery, Holland tries to justify his turn to corruption by alluding to a terminal heart condition that will get him relieved of duty from the police force with no pension.
However, when Holland hears the sirens of an ambulance and spots a police helicopter in the sky, his paranoia gets the best of him. Holland accuses Cisco of setting him up for arrest and begins firing his gun at both the ambulance and the helicopter. Soon, Sgt. Holland is shot dead by his fellow policemen on the force.
In the film, Gene Hackman brilliantly plays Holland as a sweaty, nervous man about to fall apart. By balancing menace and desperation, Hackman avoids making Holland into a caricature of a bad cop. Instead, Hackman’s portrayal of Holland reveals a man worn down by the long hours and stress of his police job that has resulted in an incurable health issue. Although Hackman’s police sergeant has morphed into a corrupt “dirty cop,” viewers can’t help but feeling sorry for him by the end of the film. Hackman’s scenes have an unpredictable energy, and his quiet intensity makes him feel genuinely dangerous.
Prime Cut (1972)
Released one year after Cisco Pike and in the same year he played Reverend Scott in the hit movie, The Poseidon Adventure, Gene Hackman still found time to film his first role as an outright villain named Mary Ann in Michael Ritchie’s Prime Cut.
From his performance in the film, it’s clear Hackman relished the opportunity to play an evil guy who enjoys hurting others.
As the film begins, Mary Ann is a human trafficker who uses a meatpacking facility as a cover for his pimping activities, aided by a group of goons including his top lieutenant, Weenie. After he owes 500k to the Chicago mob, Hackman’s Mary Ann ignores threats from the midwest hoodlums and at one point even grinds up one of their enforcers and turns the remains into hot dog links that he sends back to the gangsters in Chicago.
Fed up, the Chicago mob boss sends Nick (Lee Marvin) to Kansas to retrieve the money. Once he arrives in Kansas, Nick discovers Mary Ann holding a large cattle-auction in a barn; only in this case, the cattle laying in the hay-filled pens aren’t animals but young women up for sale to the highest bidder.
In one of the film’s most memorable scenes, Nick first confronts Mary-Ann as he and his men are eating disgusting looking plates full of meat guts. The fact that Hackman’s Mary Ann is eagerly wolfing down the innards of god knows what tells you all you need to know about this villain.
Soon, we learn that Mary Ann is a pillar of the community and loved by all the locals, but it’s still clear that Mary Ann is a very dangerous man.
It’s obvious that Hackman is having fun with this role, oozing pure sleaze out of every pore of his body, yet he’s careful to never overplay it.
Instead, Gene Hackman makes Mary Ann feel like a guy who truly believes he’s untouchable, which makes the moments when he gets rattled even more satisfying. Hackman’s relaxed delivery, even when doing horrific things, makes his character even more chilling.
Scarecrow (1973)
For his role in Jerry Schatzberg’s cult film, Scarecrow, Gene Hackman plays Max, an ex-con drifter with a habit of getting into brawls because of his short temper.
At the beginning of the film, Max is hitch-hiking on a country highway in Northern California, suspiciously eyeing another hitch-hiker across the road who is a homeless ex-navy sailor named Francis, played by Al Pacino. Max has just recently been released from prison. He dreams of opening up his own car wash, which Max thinks will set him up for life, using the the prison wages he regularly deposited in a savings account in Pittsburgh.
Likewise, Francis (who Max calls Lionel because of his bad associations with the word “Francis,”) has recently ended his military service at sea. Lionel is headed to Detroit to see the girlfriend he abandoned when she got pregnant. Although he has been regularly sending her money, Lion has remained out of contact with her and doesn’t know if the child he had with her is a boy or a girl.
Eventually, the two team up and become friends and Max decides to make Lionel his business partner. The film follows their adventurous picaresque journey as they make their way across the country to Pittsburgh and Detroit.
Because Max is suspicious of people, quick to anger, and has a habit of getting into physical altercations, the two frequently end up in less than ideal situations, including a stint at a prison farm.
The two men don’t belong together, of course, but they form a bond based on mutual need (neither of them has anyone else) and their shared dream of striking it rich with a car wash helps keep them together through thick and thin.
In one of his most underrated (and best) performances, Gene Hackman plays Max as tough on the outside but deeply wounded on the inside, masking his vulnerability with anger.
In addition, Hackman’s multi-layered performance shows us many sides of Max, from his sense of humor to Max’s paranoia and quick temper. Most notably, Hackman’s performance as Max brings real depth to what could have been a one-note character.
Night Moves (1975)
Two years after Scarecrow was released, Gene Hackman starred in Night Moves (1975), a neo-noir thriller directed by Arthur Penn. In the film, Hackman plays Harry Moseby, a Los Angeles private investigator and former pro football player whose career never quite lived up to expectations. Moseby is the kind of guy who plays chess in his car as he bides his time on a stakeout.
Soon, Moseby is hired by fading Hollywood actress Arlene Iverson (Janet Ward) to find her missing teenage daughter, Delly Grastner (Melanie Griffith, in her film debut). Delly is a wild and rebellious girl with a history of getting involved with older men.
Moseby starts by tracking down Delly’s acquaintances, including her on-again, off-again boyfriend Quentin (James Woods), a film stuntman. Quentin hints that Delly has a complicated past involving men in the movie business. Moseby eventually follows a lead to Florida, where Delly has been staying with her stepfather, Tom Iverson (John Crawford), and his girlfriend Paula (Jennifer Warren). Tom runs a small boatyard and seems oddly indifferent to Delly’s whereabouts.
Meanwhile, Delly is found safe and seems to enjoy her life in Florida, hanging out with Tom and a shady pilot named Marv Ellman (Anthony Costello). Acting as a surrogate father figure, Moseby convinces Delly to return to Los Angeles, but something about the situation doesn’t sit right with him. Back in L.A., Delly takes a film job as a stuntwoman, but tragedy strikes when she is killed in an on-set accident involving a mishap with a stunt car. Eventually, Moseby begins to suspect that Delly’s death wasn’t an accident and that it ties back to what she saw or knew in Florida.
Returning to Florida, Moseby starts digging deeper into Tom Iverson’s operation and learns that Tom, Paula, and Marv Ellman were smuggling valuable artifacts from a sunken wreck offshore. Delly may have accidentally witnessed something she shouldn’t have, making her a liability. Moseby confronts Paula and begins unravelling the mystery of what’s really going on.
As Moseby begins to piece things together, Ellman attempts to flee in a seaplane but is shot by Tom Iverson, causing the plane to crash into the water. Moseby is also wounded by Iverson and is unable to steer the boat he’s been using to follow the other two men. Moseby lies bleeding as the boat goes round and around in circles. He watches helplessly as the wreckage of the smuggling operation sinks into the sea.
In one of the best performances of his career, Hackman turns Harry Moseby into a complicated everyman who ultimately is naive enough to believe he alone can solve the case and make a difference.
Eureka (1983)
After appearing as Lex Luther in Superman I and II in 1978 and 1980 and playing a small supporting role in Warren Beatty’s Reds in 1981, Gene Hackman made one of the most unusual movies of his career, Eureka.
In this film, Hackman plays the part of Jack McCann, an obsessed gold prospector during the 1920s who has gone to the Yukon to find his fortune.
At one point, Hackman’s McCann screams into the wind that he will “never make a nickel off another man’s sweat.” He wanders out into a blizzard searching in vain for gold, and almost freezes to death.
Then, through the supernatural intervention of a fortune teller, McCann strikes the mother lode and becomes the richest man in the world.
Twenty years later, in the 1940s, Jack McCann is still the richest man on earth and lives on his own private Caribbean island.
Despite his immense wealth, McCann is deeply disillusioned and paranoid, feeling that he has reached the peak of existence and that nothing in life excites him anymore: “Once I had it all,” he says ruefully at one point, “and now I have everything.”
McCann has also become a recluse. He distrusts everyone around him, and he’s prone to violent outbursts. His wife Helen (Jane Lapotaire) suffers from his emotional distance, and his daughter Tracy (Theresa Russell) struggles with his overbearing nature.
Tracy is romantically involved with a European playboy named Claude Maillot Van Horn (Rutger Hauer). Naturally, McCann mistrusts Claude’s intentions. McCann believes that Claude is using Tracy in order to eventually get access to McCann’s gold.
Soon, McCann realizes that Claude doesn’t just want to take Tracy and his gold from him, Claude also wants to take his soul as well.
Meanwhile, McCann’s wealth attracts the attention of two gangsters, Mayakofsky (Joe Pesci) and Aurelio D'Amato (Mickey Rourke), who work for a powerful Miami businessman. They’re trying to convince McCann to sell them the island so they can turn it into a casino resort. Of course, McCann refuses the offer.
Because of this, McCann is eventually murdered in one of the most disturbing scenes ever put on film.
In gruesome detail, Hackman’s McCann is bludgeoned to death in his bedroom; then his body set on fire with a blowtorch. If that’s not enough, the killers also tar and feather McCann’s body and behead him too.
Of course, Claude Maillot Van Horn is accused of the crime, and with Tracy’s help, he must defend himself in court during the last part of the movie.
The film is loosely based on the true story of Harry Oakes, who really did discover a motherlode of gold in the Yukon during the 1920s and briefly became the richest man on earth. And, just as it’s portrayed in the film, Oakes eventually was bludgeoned to death in his own bed, his body burned, tarred and feathered, and then beheaded.
Eureka gives Hackman the opportunity to express a wide range of emotions ranging from determination and ambition in the first part of the film to outbursts of anger, distrust, and regret later on when McCann lives on his own island.
It’s an amazing performance in a strange and unusual movie.
In Conclusion…
I think what makes the late Gene Hackman’s performances in these films so memorable is his ability to fully-inhabit the flawed characters he often portrayed by making them seem natural and authentic.
Hackman was able to achieve this by frequently delivering his lines in a calm but intense manner. He also was able to effectively use his uncanny ability to say more with a simple look, gesture, or subtle shift in body language than most other actors.
While the late Gene Hackman will always be known for his roles in films like The French Connection and The Conversation, I believe it’s his performances in these lesser-known films that allows fans to experience Hackman’s wide-ranging talent as an actor in new ways.
Hackman's over-the-top comedic roles were excellent also (e.g. Lex Luthor and, my favorite, the blind abbé in "Young Frankenstein ".
Gene Hackman’s greatness was not just in the landmark films. It was in how completely he could inhabit men who were compromised, exhausted, dangerous, funny, wounded, or already halfway beaten by life. He never made those characters feel like acting exercises. He made them feel like people you had met somewhere and could not quite forget. That is why the offbeat roles matter. They show the actor beneath the reputation, and the reputation was already enormous.