Oliver Reed as Generational Actor

Rating: 10/10 (12 September 2013)

I was wondering how to arrange my train of thoughts about actor Oliver Reed."Gladiator" (2000) was his last film and though sacrifice should be made not to speak for the movie itself, I still insist of paying tribute to the Actor with this shot which sent him to grave just like many other times he was binging and filming. I read his authorized biography from Virgin Books and was amazed at his extraordinary practices to absorb industrial amounts of alcohol at no costs to his health. I myself can not afford this habit any more though sometime we used to drink and party a lot. I also brood on the fact how people change with age and their zeal for life also.
By calling Oliver Reed generational actor I mean the following. These actors appear on the big screen as stars once in a decade, usually in tuples, brought as product by great nations or at least big enough to form a pool. Thus France gave to the cinema in the 60s and 70s Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo. Unscathingly, here in this movie Reed is paired with Richard Harris - in the role of Emperor Marcus Aurelius - who also happens to be manifesto actor that together with the titular and couple of more fellows created the image of British adventure cinema for 20 years. At least thus appears to me as compared British to American born film stars. So we are talking here about weightlifters to be more precise.
Now I want to link the persona of Oliver Reed to a former Bulgarian buff called Kliment Denchev (d. 2009) - an immigrant to Canada from the 1980s. I remember that corpulent man for several reasons not the least that he had physical resemblance to Oliver which I put two-and-two together recently. That Kliment Denchev left Bulgaria for political reasons few people in that former communist country would remember or are willing to. What I recently read about his case was that he deliberately got shunned by the State Security organs and forced to live abroad with his wife as fugitive. I remember this giant of a man from his performances in the 1970s when he was leading in the children's nightly at 19.45 PM two times a week. He also participated in many Bulgarian cult films before he left for overseas.
Returning back to Oliver Reed. I shouldn't indulge anyone reading my preferences for him; he had enough fame and many critics. Women also loved him and I want to give a separate estimate for three of his films where he treated the opposite sex in his particular way:
1. Trap (1966) - Rita Tushingham, whom I took mistakenly for Geraldine Chaplin, plays a mute that is bought by fur trapper to attend. But they are stalked by Indians in the remote cabin and Oliver loses his leg in a wolf-trap by accident. The young girl finally understands what hard life means and returns to his lame master;
2. Hunting Party (1971) - Candice Bergen, a rancher's wife and schoolteacher, makes threesome with Oliver when he and his gang kidnap her for ransom. At first she is very resistant to the abductors but afterwards Oliver feeds her with peaches and she agrees to teach him lessons in gramercy. Subsequently they fall in love but unfortunately the rancher (Gene Hackman) organize a posse that exterminate the whole gang with long range rifle. At the end the three of them die in the desert;
3. Castaway (1986) - Amanda Donohoe, who actually became a celebrity with this movie, plays an unemployed secretary that agrees to become female companion for one year on uninhabited island in the Pacific. The film contains limited amount of nudity for which received complaints from the critics. However, Oliver takes care of business and they survive amidst the wilderness until end of time. Sort of "Blue Lagoon" film for grown-ups. So long and Thank You!