Tom Towles played the man who enjoyed it. In Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer he gave a blank film its appetite, and for the next twenty years genre directors, Rob Zombie among them, hired him as the loud, seedy menace in the corner.
Fi1m perspective
There is a stretch of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) in which Henry starts taking his flatmate along, and the film stops watching Henry and watches Otis instead. Michael Rooker plays the killer with almost nothing on his face. Tom Towles plays Otis with everything on his: grinning, sweating, leaning in, a man finding out what he is for. It is the only moment in that cold film where anyone looks pleased, and it is the hardest to sit through. We disliked Otis far more than we disliked Henry, and we think that was the idea; a blank is frightening, but appetite is worse.
He had come to it late and from the stage. Towles was part of Chicago's Organic Theater Company from 1971, working at the Goodman too, with one uncredited bit in Dog Day Afternoon (1975) before he went back to the theatre. Screen work resumed with Pink Nights (1985), and then John McNaughton cast him as Otis. After that the work was steady and mostly cheap: independent horror and crime films, television, NYPD Blue (1993) among it, until his last film in 2008.
What he was hired for is not hard to name. He was big, loud and physically unpredictable, and directors on small budgets wanted him as the cop, the soldier, the official, or the neighbour nobody trusts. Tom Savini gave him Harry Cooper in Night of the Living Dead (1990), the angry survivor nobody else in the house can stand. Then came the Rob Zombie run: Deputy George Wydell in House of 1000 Corpses (2003), Lieutenant Wydell and the film's chief antagonist in The Devil's Rejects (2005), and Larry Redgrave in Zombie's Halloween (2007), with Bill Moseley across from him more often than not. Those are the films where he looks most at home, and where the Otis quality, the leer and the relish, is turned up as far as it will go.
The reservation is the one our Henry review made. He is broad where Rooker is still, and once or twice he tips into a leering cartoon; the bigger films, The Rock (1996) and Blood In Blood Out (1993), gave him smaller parts and less room to be either. He said his aim was "to make each one of my characters so distinct that people are amazed it's the same actor." The casting rarely gave him the chance to prove it.
Start with Henry, then, and watch the flat before the film goes out on the road. It is not a comfortable evening, and Towles is a good part of the reason.
Biography
Tom Towles (20 March 1950 – 2 April 2015) was an American character actor known for portraying villains and intimidating supporting roles in film and television. Born and raised in Chicago, he served in the United States Marine Corps before beginning his career in Chicago theatre with the Organic Theatre Company, where he also collaborated on writing.
He made his screen debut in an uncredited role in Dog Day Afternoon (1975). Towles gained recognition for his performance as Otis in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986), for which he received an Independent Spirit Award nomination. His other film credits include Night of the Living Dead (1990), The Rock (1996), House of 1000 Corpses (2003), The Devil's Rejects (2005), Miami Vice (2006), Halloween (2007) and Grindhouse (2007).
On television he had a recurring role as Inspector Anthony Lastarza in the first season of NYPD Blue (1993–94) and appeared in series including Seinfeld, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager and Firefly. He also received writing credits, including story and teleplay for an episode of NYPD Blue.
