Scary Lookin' Bastards

Tim Hulsizer
31 August 2004

This month: Anthony James

Most Famous Appearance: Your nightmares

Typical Role: Emaciated bad guy

As frightening faces go, few can match Anthony James' cringe-inducing countenance. His emaciated, long-necked appearance never fails to elicit a shudder of fear in the average filmgoer and his appearance hasn't changed much over the years. Pock-marked skin stretched taut over a sleepy-eyed skull and a casual stare that says, "Give me your babies for I am hungry. So very, very hungry."

Born in Myrtle Beach, SC in 1942, Anthony's arrival must have come as quite a shock to his mother and the gathering of nurses at her bedside. "God help us all, the prophecy has come to fruition!" As he matured and rose to his adult size - nine feet tall and eighty-five pounds - he soon found work in the world of film and television.

James has found steady work for the past three decades playing a variety of aliens, evildoers and menacing hitchhikers. His stint on V: The Series in the mid 1980s had him stalking the land as one of the reptilian Visitors, and few actors were anywhere near as convincing. All of us here at The Film Basement are still having nightmares from the first time we saw him come walking out of the underbrush on legs so thin they looked like stilts. It was as if the show's crew somehow figured out how to reanimate the dead and cast a corpse as the bad guy.

These days our man Anthony is taking it a little easier; nobody's seen hide nor hair of him since Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven in 1992. His character's name? Skinny.

Also seen in:

The Naked Gun 2 1/2
Blue Thunder
Return From Witch Mountain
High Plains Drifter

Many TV Appearances

Check out Anthony's list of credits at The Internet Movie Database