Henry Silva was born on September 23rd, 1926 and lived all the way up to September 14th, 2022. During his years on earth he played a lot of bad guys in movies. From my growing up years, I remember him in stuff like LOVE AND BULLETS (1979) with Charles Bronson, SHARKY’S MACHINE (1981) with Burt Reynolds, CODE OF SILENCE (1985) with Chuck Norris, and ABOVE THE LAW (1988) with Steven Seagal. These were some of my favorite movies at a time when I was really getting into movies as a teenager. I’ve always considered LOVE AND BULLETS a missed opportunity, because he never fights Charles Bronson. Seriously!!
Silva got his start playing bad guys very early in his career. I guess he just had the right face for it. An early psychopath performance that I really appreciate came all the way back in 1957, when he played a vicious gunman in Director Budd Boetticher’s THE TALL T. Let’s just say that cute kids are not safe when his character of Chink is around. In a cast that included Randolph Scott, Richard Boone and Arthur Hunnicutt, Silva stood out like a sore thumb. Here’s a scene of Silva shooting the breeze around a campfire while eating some grub. He doesn’t seem like such a bad guy here, which is one of the things that makes him so good in the role… because he’s capable of absolute evil, and not caring one bit about it. Enjoy!
