RIP Chuck Heston

Chuck wasn't the greatest actor (and he was kind of a wacko, politically)...but he definitely had a sense of humor:



One need only recall his brilliant cameo in Wayne's World 2 to know the guy could laugh at himself.

And though his performances tended towards the overblown and cheesy, the guy wound up in a lot of notable, and in some cases even classic, films. Touch of Evil, Soylent Green, Planet of the Apes, Omega Man, The Ten Commandments, The Three/Four Musketeers, El Cid, Ben-Hur...It's quite a resume.

The Far Horizons is also kind of a memorable film, though maybe not for the right reasons...It's a weird retelling of the Lewis and Clark story starring Heston and Fred MacMurray. Donna Reed plays Sacajawea, who gets it on with Heston's Clark, much to the chagrin of MacMurray's Lewis and the ludicrous French stereotype who had previously bought her from a warring tribe. This movie confirms that, if you're going to make a movie that's historically inaccurate, it's best to push the inaccuracy as far as it can possibly go.

Again, many of these are not great films, but they are big, memorable films, and Heston is the main, driving presence in them. The guy was a star, and though I was never a huge fan, you've got to give credit where it's due.