Ricou Browning has passed away at 93.
For those of you going, “Who?”, he was perhaps most famous as the guy in the rubber suit in “Creature From the Black Lagoon” and the two sequels (“Revenge of the Creature” and “The Creature Walks Among Us”). He had quite an interesting career beyond those:
The Florida native also served as a stuntman on Richard Fleischer’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), doubled for Jerry Lewis in Don’t Give Up the Ship (1959) and “played all the bad guys in [TV’s] Sea Hunt,” he said in a 2013 interview.
Plus, Browning directed the harpoon-filled fight in Thunderball (1965), another underwater scene in Never Say Never Again (1983) and the hilarious Jaws-inspired candy bar-in-the-pool sequence in Caddyshack (1980).
He was also intimately involved with “Flipper” and “Gentle Ben”. He directed two movies, “Salty” and “Mr. No Legs“, the latter of which sent me down a rabbit hole based on the description (from an obit Lawrence sent me): “centered on a man with shotguns built into his wheelchair”.
I don’t think that begins to cover how crazy “Mr. No Legs” sounds. Richard Jaeckel! Lloyd Bochner! John Agar! Rance Howard!
Imagine you’re hanging out by the pool in your wheelchair with a friend, and a group of thugs emerges from the bushes, knocks out your friend and rushes your chair. What do you do?
Double amputee Ted Vollrath found himself in exactly this situation and he didn’t hesitate. He knocked down the closest attacker with two quick punches, grabbed a ninja star from his spokes and zipped it across the pool, right into the jugular of another assailant who was reaching for a gun. Vollrath then finished off the remaining thugs with an array of punches and body attacks, eventually dragging two of them into the pool and subduing them.
Mr. Vollrath plays the titular character. In real life, he was a Korean war vet who lost both legs due to injuries sustained in combat. He went on to become “the first person to earn a black belt in karate while training out of a wheelchair”, and did a lot of work promoting accessibility to martial arts training for the disabled before his death in 2001.
Lawrence also sent over an obit for Gordon Pinsent, noted Canadian actor.
Walter Mirisch, producer. He was 101. Some of his credits: “In the Heat of the Night”, “The Magnificent Seven”, “The Apartment”.
Linda Kasabian. I am having a hard time deciding if she qualifies for the “Burning In Hell” watch.
On the one hand:
Mr. Manson harbored hateful ideas about Black people and sought to set off a race war, leading him to send Ms. Kasabian, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Charles Watson out on a murderous mission. In the early hours of Aug. 9, 1969, Ms. Kasabian waited at the car while the others killed five people, including the actress Sharon Tate, the wife of the director Roman Polanski, in Ms. Tate’s Los Angeles home.
The next night, this time with Mr. Manson along, a group went to the home of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. Mr. Manson tied the couple up and left with Ms. Kasabian; several of his followers then stabbed the LaBiancas to death.
On the other hand, she rolled on the Family:
Once “Susan bolted,” the prosecution gave Ms. Kasabian conditional immunity — it would be revoked if she did not testify fully and truthfully — and she became the centerpiece of the trial of Mr. Manson and the three women. (She was later important in the case against Mr. Watson, who was tried separately.)
That trial was a wild affair that lasted months. Ms. Kasabian testified for 17 days, withstanding badgering by the defense lawyers and sometimes by Mr. Manson himself.
“Though the defense had been given a 20-page summary of all my interviews with her, as well as copies of all her letters to me,” Mr. Bugliosi, who died in 2015, wrote in “Helter Skelter,” “not once had she been impeached with a prior inconsistent statement. I was very proud of her.”
In a 2009 interview on “Larry King Live,” where he appeared alongside Ms. Kasabian (her image obscured to protect her privacy), Mr. Bugliosi left no doubt that she had put Mr. Manson behind bars.
“If there ever was a star witness for the prosecution, it was Linda Kasabian,” he said. “Without her testimony, Larry, it would have been extremely difficult for me to convict Manson and his co-defendants.
“We all owe a tremendous debt of gratitude towards Linda,” he added, “because if Manson had gotten out, there’s no question he would have continued to kill. He would have killed as many people as he could have.”
And from the accounts I’ve seen, she lived out the rest of her life quietly and tried to atone for her actions.
She told Mr. King that since the trial she had been “trying to live a normal life, which is really hard to do.”
“I’ve been on a mission of healing and rehabilitation,” she said. “I went through a lot of drugs and alcohol and self-destruction and probably could have used some psychological counseling and help 40 years ago.”
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It is a good thing when someone that was that involved is such a horrific cult, was able to later change and become a better person. This perhaps more than anything else, is what attracts people to Christianity.
When taught correctly, the Biblical examples for a true Christian include those who might have been involved in some pretty awful stuff, but after deciding to follow God they are able to turn their lives around, and to attempt to help others, as an act of atonement. While still understanding that their attempt at atonement doesn’t change anything about their relationship with God. Once a person makes the decision to accept Jesus, their forgiveness is total and complete, past, present, and future, and nothing they can do will change that, anymore than I could change the fact that I am my fathers son. I can kill, rob or steal, and be sentenced to prison, or even death. But in God’s eyes, I am still forgiven. Of course, there are going to be consequences for my actions, on earth, but I am still my Father’s son.
I pray for Ms. Kasabian that she was a Christian and forgiven, and may RIP, after living with the knowledge in her head of her part in one of the most shocking cases of the 20th century.