Yesterday, it was announced that George Eastman had passed away at the age of 83.

George Eastman was born Luigi Montefiori in Genoa, Italy.  Montefiori began his career by appearing in Spaghetti westerns.  The tall and often bearded Montefiori had the dangerous look that made him a natural for outlaw and henchmen roles.  Like many Italian actors, he took an “Americanized” alias for his acting roles.  He appeared in his share of American and British films (he appeared opposite Charlton Heston in Call of the Wild and played Goliath in King David) but his fans will always remember him best for the work that he did in his native Italy.  Occasionally, he played a hero.  He gave a particularly strong performance in — don’t laugh — Erotic Nights of the Living Dead.  That said, Eastman will always be best remembered for his villians.

Klaus Wortmann is the one who will always give me nightmares.  Eastman played Wortmann in Joe D’Amato’s infamous 1980 film, Antropophagus.  Klaus Wortmann was a wealthy man who lived on a Greek island with his wife, daughter, and his sister.  Unfortunately, when he and his family were shipwrecked, Klaus resorted to cannibalism to survive.  As the movie begins, Klaus is back at his mansion and being sheltered by sister.  He’s also become an obsessive cannibal.  He’s surrendered his humanity.  He can no longer speak and instead just growls.  He attacks everyone that he sees and he does things to his victims that led to this film being banned in several countries.  Also known as The Grim Reaper, Antropophagus is film that delights in showing people being ripped to pieces and George Eastman is right in the middle of it all.

And he’s absolutely terrifying.

In real life, George Eastman was a handsome man.  That’s one of the things that made him such a fascinating villain in countless western and crime films.  He was usually playing a total psycho but there was still something about him that made you want to get to know more about him.  Klaus Wortmann, on the other hand, is a terrifying monster.  Unwashed, bearded, hideously scarred, continually bathed in sweat, growling and howling as he chases his victims, Klaus is a nightmare come to life.  Eastman throws himself into capturing every grimy detail of Wortmann’s twisted existence and he comes across as a creature who seems to have literally jumped out of the shadows of our greatest fears.

In many ways, Antropophagus is not a particularly good film.  Not even the notoriously shameless Joe D’Amato appeared to think much of it.  The story drags because there aren’t enough victims and therefore there’s a lot of travelogue padding, especially early on in the film.  Along with Eastman, there are some recognizable people in the cast — Tisa Farrow, Zora Kerova, Serena Grandi (who would later co-star with Eastman in Delirium) — both most of them come across like they’d rather be anywhere but there.  But when George Eastman is on-screen, the film become horrifying.  No one — not the pregnant woman and her husband, not the innocent blind girl, not even the flakey card reader — is safe.  By the end of the movie, Klaus is literally eating pieces of himself.  It takes a talented actor to pull that off.

That actor was George Eastman.

Villain of the Day

• Anton Chigurh (No Country for Old Men)
• Willie Cicci (The Godfather & The Godfather Part 2)
• Griffith (Berserk)