I'm a big fan of the kind of actor who never quite becomes a star but also never quite is out of work…so I was a big fan of Sid Haig. I first became aware of him in an awful 1971 movie called The Big Doll House. It was one of those low-low-budget films shot in the Philippines about women who go to prison and take a lot of showers. Despite a script they probably got at a garage sale, Haig managed to steal the picture from all those shower-taking women.
Want to see a snippet of it? If you're old enough to watch an R-rated movie, click below and you'll be asking yourself why that year, Gene Hackman got the Academy Award for The French Connection instead of Sid Haig for The Big Doll House…
The lady, by the way, is Pam Grier, who went on to have a pretty impressive career of her own.
Once I was aware of Sid Haig, I spotted him in dozens of movies and TV shows after that, usually playing some kind of tough-guy thug (like in Diamonds are Forever) or a deranged killer, like in countless slasher/horror movies. I don't like slasher/horror movies but I occasionally was dragged to see one and if Sid Haig was in it — and he always seemed to be — he was the best thing in it.
The last decade or two, he was doing the comic convention circuit and I ran into him a half-dozen times in a food line or (once) at adjoining urinals. He seemed like a nice guy, always willing to talk to you for as long as you wanted to talk to him. He struck me as especially appreciative of anyone who knew he'd done anything more in his career than play psycho killers and demons.
A few weeks ago, he apparently took some sort of bad fall and he died from it last Saturday. He was 80 and is being mourned by all within the horror film community…with good reason.