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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - July 14th

SID HAIG (actor) Born in 1939

Tall, bald and nearly always bearded, Sid Haig has provided hulking menace to all his characters, especially with Jack Hill's blaxploitation films (made mostly in the Philippines) in the 1970's. In 1992, with nearly forty films to his credit and having appeared in over 12 primetime TV shows, Haig retired from acting dissatisfied with being typecast as the brutal "heavy". Little did Haig know that his most (in)famous role was yet to come!

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Born Sidney Eddy Mosesian in Fresno, California, Haig's career began somewhat by accident. As a child, his rapid growth affected his motor coordination and took dancing lessons to alleviate the symptoms. By 7-years old he was a paid dancer in a children's Christmas show and, later, a vaudeville revival show. When Haig was in high school, the head of the drama department was Alice Merrill, who encouraged him to pursue an acting career, and two years later, Haig enrolled in the Pasadena Playhouse (the school that trained such noted actors as Robert Preston, Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman).

Top:   Haig with frequent co-star Pam Grier in The Big Doll House;

Above:   Haig stars as Django in the non-sequel follow-up, The Big Bird Cage

Moving to Hollywood, Haig's first acting job was in Jack Hill's student film at UCLA titled The Host and would become a regular player for producer-director Roger Corman. Haig's frequent collaborations with Jack Hill/Roger Corman saw him travel mostly to the Phillipines, where filming conditions under the-then dictatorial regime of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos were less stringent and, above all, cheap! During this period, Haig usually starred as the crazy revolutionary anti-hero in a number of "women-in-prison films" such as  The Big Doll House (1971), The Big Bird Cage (1972), Black Mama White Mama (1973), and Savage Sisters (1974), or the villian in Beyond Atlantis (1973). Back in the US, Haig continued working with Hill in more blaxploitation movies, Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974). Over the next twenty years, Haig played mostly "bad guy" roles in movies and television, most notably appearing in Mission: Impossible a total of eight times, appearing as a different villain each time! In 1992, dissatisfied with the quality of roles being offered, retired from acting, stating "I just didn't want to play stupid heavies anymore. They just kept giving me the same parts but just putting different clothes on me. It was stupid, and I resented it, and I wouldn't have anything to do with it."

Top:   Haig as Musha in just one of his eight "villain" appearances in the TV

show Mission: Impossible;   Above:   Haig stars as Omar in Jack Hill's Coffy (again

co-starring with Pam Grier)

Haig's interest in acting again was first peaked when he was approached by writer/director Quentin Tarantino to appear as Marsellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction (1994), but chose to turn the role down (later the role of Wallce was brilliantly played by Ving Rhames). Haig would later regret his decision, especially when Pulp Fiction became such a hit. When Tarantino approached Haig again, this time for a bit part in Jackie Brown (1997) that would unite him with frequent co-star Pam Grier, Haig instantly accepted after Tarantino explained he wrote the part of the Judge specifically for him.

Above:   Haig as the Judge in Jackie Brown

Then in 2002, Haig was cast by filmmaker/musician Rob Zombie to appear in his feature film debut House of 1000 Corpses. In what is perhaps Haig's most significant and recognizable role, Haig plays the psychotic Captain Spaulding, a man who dresses as a clown and owns a gas station and "The Museum of Monsters & Madmen". Spaulding described in the script for Corpses as a "crusty looking old man in a filthy clown suit and smeared make-up" whose main purpose was to redirect a group of young adults looking for the local legend of "Dr. Satan" to the tree where he was supposedly hanged, where they instead end up running into the murderous Firefly family. Described by Zombie as a "lovable asshole", the director wanted to keep Spaulding's connection to the Firefly family ambiguous; if he is in league with them, or if he is just a murderous vigilante unconnected to the Firefly clan (in the film's opening scene, he shoots and kills two burglars attempting to rob his store). Haig himself claimed he had to "get in touch with his own insanity" for the role.

Top:   "Captain Spaulding" from House of 1000 Corpses;

Above:   Spaulding deals with a pair of robbers in his museum!

Released in 2003, House of 1000 Corpses became a huge hit with horror fans, and a sequel, The Devil's Rejects, immediately went into development. The second film gave Haig's Spaulding a much more significant role, establishing him as the patriarch of the Firefly family and father to "Baby" Firefly (Sheri Moon Zombie). This time, Zombie wanted Haig wanted to be less cartoon-ish in the more realistic and gritty sequel, only having his trademark clown make-up on for the first half of the film. Roger Ebert would later write "He [Captain Spaulding] is a man whose teeth are so bad, they're more frightening than his clown make-up. He plays such a thoroughly disgusting person, indeed, that I was driven to discover that in real life Sid looks, well, presentable... This was a relief to me, because anyone who really looked like Captain Spaulding would send shoppers screaming from the Wal-Mart!"

Top:   Captain Spaulding: "Did I stutter, bitch?" (from The Devil's Rejects);

Above:   Spaulding with the last remaining members of the Firefly clan, "Baby"

(Sheri Moon Zombie) and Otis Driftwood (Bill Moseley)

For The Devil's Rejects Haig received the award for "Best Actor" in the 15th Annual Fangoria Chainsaw Awards, as well as sharing the award for "Most Vile Villain" at the First Annual Spike TV Scream Awards with Leslie Easterbrook, Sheri Moon and Bill Moseley as The Firefly Family. Haig was also nominated as "Best Butcher" in the Fuse/Fangoria Chainsaw Awards, but lost to Tobin Bell's Jigsaw from Saw II. Since Rejects, Haig has reunited with Zombie for the movies Halloween (2007), Lords of Salem (2012) and reprised his role of Captain Spaulding for the animated exploitation comedy horror The Haunted World of El Superbeasto (2009). Haig also appeared in two separate remakes of Night of the Living Dead - Night of the Living Dead 3D (2006) and Mimesis: Night of the Living Dead (2011) - as well as appearing in Adam Green's Hatchet 3 (2013).

Above:   Sid Haig with wife, Susan L. Oberg in 2007

From the typical "token tough/bad guy" roles from the 70's to becoming a horror icon of the new millennium, Sid Haig's career has spanned 56-years and still shows no sign of slowing down with four movies to be released between 2016-18 and a television series 86 Zombies just announced. Not bad for a man who turns 77 today!

IHdb wishes Sid Haig a very Happy Birthday!