Michael Gough Dies At 94.

Sometimes we realize that it comes but that doesn't make it any easier when someone who was as good an actor as this one dies.

It's easy enough to remember Gough in butler suit, glasses and dour expression as Alfred Pennyworth, manservant to Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer and George Clooney in the early round of Batman movies. But I will always remember him as playing the serious scientific villain who is wreaking havoc with his creations and discoveries, so memorable in Hammer films like the 1962 redux of The Phantom Of The Opera and Horror of Dracula, Amicus films like The Skull and They Came From Beyond Space, even a couple of latter-day Joan Crawford chillers like Berserk and Trog.

Of course he, like any good actor, had a renaissance later in life and would come to be featured in films later on like The Boys From Brazil, Venom, The Dresser, Top Secret!, The Serpent And The Rainbow, Sleepy Hollow and even provided voices for characters in two more major Tim Burton projects The Corpse Bride and his re-imagining of Alice In Wonderland.

Is it any wonder he became a respected actor?

His special qualities of elegance, deep resonant voice and sharp demeanor will be missed, and very quickly - what does it tell you that it took Michael Caine to replace him in the new Batman movies? Yeah.

I leave you now with the best way to remember a talent like Michael Gough's: as a madman. here's Horrors Of The Black Museum.



Rest in peace, Michael.

Dope out.

- TGWD