Ten years after his death at age 75, Donald Pleasence can be ranked as one of the great kings of horror, right up there with Karloff, Carradine, Chaney, Lugosi and Price. Pleasence’s output in the horror genre was nothing short of protean: 53 films and TV shows demonstrate the English actor’s mastery at portraying characters menacing, misanthropic, malevolent, murderous and megalomaniacal.

All the more extraordinary as Pleasence’s physical appearance was unprepossessing – he was bald, unattractive and of slight build. And yet Pleasence had talent to burn and that mysterious indefinable something that commanded the viewer’s attention. That grim countenance and those piercing eyes! The camera loved him.

"There’s a certain malevolence about Donald Pleasence that never fails to amuse me," observed film critic Roger Ebert in a 1976 review of I Don’t Want To Be Born. "He’s small and bald and beady-eyed, with a mouth that surrenders each word with the greatest reluctance. He always seems to be holding something back--and somehow, I’d rather not know what."

Through his entire 43-year career in movies and TV, Pleasence never stopped working. To quote from a 1989 Fangoria story by Marc Shapiro: "Pleasence’s need for the green and his ability to add chills to chillers resulted in his lending support to a ton of horror and fantasy-tinged titles." These were wildly uneven in quality, ranging from the sublime (Halloween) to the ridiculous (Frankenstein's Great Aunt Tillie).

Film critic Leonard Maltin writes that Pleasence was often cited as the busiest actor in the world. "There seemed to be no part this bald, big-eyed, creepy-looking little Englishman wouldn’t take," Maltin notes.

All told, Pleasence appeared in 210 films and TV shows from 1952 until his death in 1995. A few of these productions are classic, but many of them are worthless. In some of his more obscure foreign-made films, Pleasence is the only recognizable name in the cast. Not unlike actor/director Orson Welles (with whom he co-starred in Where Is Parsifal? in 1983), Pleasence dreaded downtime and would flit from one project to the next, lending his once classy name to the most atrocious garbage.

From 1980 on, Pleasence would no longer appear in A-pictures like The Great Escape or Fantastic Voyage. And that is a great pity for an actor of such astonishing talent.

Pleasence’s first foray into horror was by way of the 1954 BBC TV version of George Orwell’s dystopian vision of the future--1984. Pleasence registered strongly as Syme, the dedicated bureaucrat in charge of the Newspeak Department, which invents new words and destroys old ones. Syme boasts that Newspeak will eventually replace the literature of the past, reducing the range of thought and vocabulary and opposition to the State (as represented by the all-seeing, omniscient Big Brother). Yet the devoted Syme is accused of "thoughtcrime" and becomes a pariah.

Peter Cushing plays Orwell’s doomed hero Winston Smith. Pleasence has several memorable encounters with Cushing in scenes set in a canteen. The shifty and unknowable nature of Syme’s character (is he friend or foe?) really comes across in Pleasence’s ambiguous portrayal. Later, Syme’s complete breakdown and his pleas to Smith, who quickly abandons him for fear of being incriminated, are a powerful contrast to the character’s cool, controlled and implacable manner in the earlier scenes. If Syme--a party man through and through who loved his corrupting work of destroying words for Big Brother--can be accused of thoughtcrime, then no one is safe.

Pleasence is the only actor to have appeared in two different adaptations of Orwell’s seminal novel. In Michael Anderson’s 1956 film noir version of 1984, Pleasence is cast as Parsons--Smith's fellow employee at the Ministry of Truth. Orwell describes Parsons as "a fattish but active man of paralyzing stupidity, a mass of imbecile enthusiasms--one of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges on whom, more even than on the Thought Police, the stability of the Party depended." Parsons is also turned over to Big Brother for unspecified crimes against the State. This time, Pleasence played his scenes in the canteen with beefy American character actor Edmond O’Brien, miscast as Smith for his marquee value.

Pleasence makes his first real mark on the world of horror in 1959’s The Flesh and the Fiends. He steals the show as the scheming and insidious 19^th-century grave robber and murderer William Hare, who provided fresh corpses to medical researcher Dr. Robert Knox (Peter Cushing). Eventually, there is a shortage of cadavers, so Hare and his equally disreputable partner William Burke (George Rose) decide they can’t simply wait around for people to die of natural causes.

They must hasten the process along to increase the supply--snuffing out the lives of those drunkards and beggars who litter the murky alleyways of Edinburgh, Scotland. After asphyxiating their victims, Burke and Hare tote them in packing crates to the misguided doctor’s clinic, eagerly collecting the blood money so they can go off on another drunken spree.

Pleasence is unforgettable as the sleazy body snatcher. Who cannot be thoroughly repulsed by Hare’s crudeness, greasy preening, raggedy mountebank costumes and completely conscienceless malice, asks film critic Glenn Erickson in his review for DVD Savant.

Underrated and overlooked for decades, The Flesh And The Fiends (aka Mania) is now widely regarded as a horror classic, ranking with the best early Hammer Film Productions (although it was actually produced by Triad Productions).

Pleasence has his first lead role in Dr. Crippen (1962), the real-life story of Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen, who was hanged in London in 1910 after poisoning his wife, dismembering her body and burying the remains in the coal cellar of their home. Dr. Crippen attempted to flee England with his much younger mistress (Samantha Eggar), only to be arrested aboard ship while en route to North America. Pleasence is brilliant as the mild-mannered, middle-aged quack doctor, driven to murder by his overbearing wife (Coral Browne), a failed music-hall performer with an eye for younger men.

In the early 1960s, Pleasence went Stateside to work, so he was available for a nostalgic episode of The Twilight Zone entitled The Changing of the Guard, written by Rod Serling. Made up to look twice his age, Pleasence stars as Professor Ellis Fowler, the oldest teacher at the exclusive Rock Springs School for Boys. Ordered by his headmaster to retire after 51 years of service, the dejected Fowler is convinced that his life has been rendered meaningless and contemplates suicide – until he is paid a nocturnal visit by several ethereal-looking "alumni." The episode (the third season finale) was telecast on June 1, 1962.

In The Man with the Power episode of The Outer Limits (1963), Pleasence is well cast as a milquetoast type given destructive telekinetic powers during a NASA experiment in mind control. Harold J. Finley, a professor at a second-rate college, despises his job and uncaring wife and dreams of joining the space program. (At this juncture of his career, Pleasence specialized in "quiet desperation" roles.) Prof. Finley devises a means of mentally harnessing ambient cosmic energy into a focused beam, gradually transforming the discrete beams into psychokinetic lightning bolts directed at his enemies.

Around this time, Pleasence was Michael Reeves’ first choice for the role of Matthew Hopkins-- Witchfinder General (aka The Conqueror Worm/1968), but American International Pictures insisted on the more bankable Vincent Price instead.

Pleasence then appears in the first of several made-in-Canada movies. However, Creature Of Comfort (1968) has never been released. Nor is it ever likely to be, as it is a lost film. Creature Of Comfort is the tale of a giant amoeba-like entity that absorbs mean and selfish people when they use it on their beds as a comforter. Pleasence appears in the linking story as the man who owns the sinister store that sells the creature. Somehow, after each absorption, the mega-amoeba finds its way back to the store, to be sold to yet another miscreant. Creature of Comfort sounds like an urban legend, but apparently it was actually filmed in Toronto, according to actor/writer Laird Stuart, who wrote the screenplay.

While Pleasence rarely turned down film parts, he did pass on the role of Britain's notorious serial murderer John Christie in Richard Fleischer's 1971 suspense drama 10 Rillington Place. After having already played Dr. Crippen, Pleasence feared the role of Christie would further stereotype him as a film psychotic. Richard Attenborough, who co-starred with Pleasence in The Great Escape, took the part and played it most effectively.

In Death Line/Raw Meat (1972), Pleasence is perfectly cast as an irritable and sarcastic police inspector investigating a series of gruesome killings committed by a lonely cannibal living in the disused tunnels of the London Underground. Pleasence’s outstanding performance as Inspector Calhoun adds a welcome comic tonic to the grim and seedy proceedings. Another bonus: in a cameo as a Whitehall Foreign Service officer, a mustachioed Christopher Lee exchanges stinging insults with Pleasence. Seeing these two acting legends sharing screen time is horror heaven!