Frank Gorshin, who played the ‘Riddler’ in the Batman series, passed away today.
I know it was a one in seven chance, but how weird is it that he passed away on new comics day?
As much as I loved Frank’s Riddler, let me praise a little known other role he had. He was some sort of Time Villain on ‘Black Scorpion’.
Ah Black Scorpion. It was first a cheesy sex/action movie by Roger Corman. Then it morphed into a weird sexy stupid superhero series on Sci-fi channel starring the delicious Michele Lintel. How much emphasis did they put on sex? Well, seventeen Playboy Playmates played villians on the show. It also featured stock scenes from other movies for their car chases. It was cheaply made, dumb and spent way too much time creating new and exciting cleavage shots. I loved it.
One episode featured Frank playing a bad guy who was put in jail for a very very very long time. So long in fact, he became obsessed with time and learned how to manipulate it. WTF? Despite this premise that wouldn’t make sense for 4 seconds, Frank acted his heart out for a full hour. Now, I have suspended belief so that Lisa Boyle could be believable as a scientist with a stone ray, but my head hurt afterwards. Frank made his character so interesting and so engrossing that you not only beleived, you had fun.
So I salute Frank Gorshin, because anyone who can elevate a sexplotation series to real drama, is a better actor than most.
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