Tony Hicks: In time for Father's Day -- bad dads in pop culture

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Jun 4, 2009 | by Tony Hicks

In the past, I've celebrated the upcoming Father's Day in this column by pointing out some of the fictional dads (sorry kids, Darth Vader wasn't real), in movies and TV who won't exactly earn themselves a bottle of Old Spice.

This year I thought it would be fun, not to mention fair, to run down the great fictional dads of pop culture.

But that's really no fun at all.

So to make you feel better about your own father, here's another version of the "Dads who don't even merit a fish tie" column, with all new entries for the bad dads hall of fame. They join current members Bull Meechum ("The Great Santini"), Prince's unnamed bad dad ("Purple Rain"), Luca Brasi (book version of "The Godfather"), Dr. Evil (Austin Powers'), Brad Whitewood Sr. ("At Close Range"), Ed Wilson ("Natural Born Killers") Lester Burnham ("American Beauty") and the aforementioned Darth Vader.

-- Randall Peltzer (Hoyt Axton) from "Gremlins": I don't care how cute it is, who buys an endangered animal that can't take a bath from a mysterious 200-year-old Chinese man who may or may not have eyeballs? Then he gives it to his teenager with a bunch of rules that have to be followed, lest the rodent turn into a salivating demon. Oh yeah, this is a perfect present for a teenage boy. Because a teen boy trying to impress Phoebe Cates would never do the exact opposite of what he's told.

-- Bill (David Carradine) from "Kill Bill": The recently deceased Carradine was fantastic as the coldhearted crime lord who sits down for a comforting chat with his pregnant ex, agrees to be part of her wedding, then unleashes an assassin squad to take out the entire wedding party. Then he raises their daughter waiting for the girl's mother to come take her revenge. Go to bed, honey, and don't mind the noise downstairs. Mommy and Daddy are about to have a karate fight to the death. Don't worry; maybe one of us will be here when you wake up. It was a great, fun role for Carradine, exposing him to a generation who didn't grow up watching him in "Kung Fu."

-- James Court (John Mahoney) from "Say Anything": Oh he seemed like a good father to Ione Skye's Diane. But, really, no man could be a decent father with hair like that. Having the worst dye job in cinematic history is even worse than going to prison while you're daughter jets off across the Atlantic with a slacker like Lloyd Dobler.

-- Noah Cross (John Huston) from "Chinatown": Fathering one's own grandchild is pretty much at the top of the checklist of qualities making one a bad father.

-- Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) from "The Godfather": Anybody else feel like dad maybe steered Sonny into the wrong profession as the Barzinis blasted him to ribbons at the Jones Beach toll plaza? So Sonny was a tad psycho and violent. He would've made a great butcher. Or reality TV show producer.

-- Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) from "The Shining": Though many of us may want to chase our children with bloody axes, most rarely do. Except, of course, when the spirits tell us to. Or when they don't clean their room.

-- Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind": Nothing like watching old dad freak out at the dinner table and start piling seven pounds of mashed potatoes on his plate for an impromptu art project. If that wasn't enough to send the kids straight to the shrink's office, he woke up the next day and decided to re-landscape the backyard "... by putting it in the living room. Then he kindly remembers his responsibilities to his three kids by jumping on a spaceship and leaving forever. To just which planet should the state send the child support bill, anyway?

Reach Tony Hicks at thicks@bayareanewsgroup.com. Read his blog, "Insert Foot," at www.ibabuzz.com/insertfoot.>

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