Steve Railsback: That’s Our Manson!

A shout-today to actor Steve Railsback (b.1945).

As Bela Lugosi is to Dracula, so is Steve Railsback to Charles Manson, for better or worse. Having played the sixties cult maniac in the definitive 1976 TV adaptation of Vincent Bugliosi’s true crime bestseller Helter Skelter, Railsback ended up casting a shadow that’s been impossible for any subsequent actor to transcend. Nobody has been better. One can either imitate him, or try to deviate, but no one has eclipsed him. And sadly, the role has also defined him. From the get-go he has been either typecast as crazed killers and rapists or stunt cast in horror or science fiction films. Even his second best known role, the title character in The Stunt Man (1980) has him playing a Vietnam Vet on the lam from a murder rap.

And this was how Railsback was cast from the beginning. An Actors Studio alum who started out in New York theatre, his big screen debut was in Elia Kazan’sThe Visitors (1972) as a Vietnam war criminal who did time for rape and murder. That was followed by a supporting part in Monte Hellman’sCockfighter (1974), another seedy milieu. Following Helter Skelter (1978) he did Angela, a latter day adaptation of Oedipus Rex, with Sophia Loren as the mom; and a 1979 TV movie version of From Here to Eternity, in the Montgomery Clift role, a boxer haunted by his mauling of an opponent.

After The Stunt Man, it’s mostly low-budget horror and sci-fi like Deadly Games, Trick or Treats,Turkey Shoot (all 1982), Lifeforce (1985), The Wind (1986), Blue Monkey (1987), Nukie (1987), Alligator II: The Mutation (1991), Scissors (1991), Forever (1992), Aftershock a.k.a. The Stalker (1993), Barb Wire (1996), and In the Light of the Moon (2000) in which he portrayed serial killer Ed Gein. Occasionally he got to switch it up, as in Torchlight (1985) with Pamela Sue Martin, wherein he played a cocaine addicted boyfriend.

Steve Railsback’s most recent film Gone Are the Days (2018) was a western, with Lance Hendrickson, Tom Berenger, and Danny Trejo. Consigned, as always, to desert exile!