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Vincent Schiavelli

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Schiavelli gained fame as a character actor. His best-known roles include Fredrickson in  One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest  (1975), Mr. Vargas in  Fast Times at Ridgemont High  (1982), the Subway Ghost in  Ghost  (1990), Organ Grinder in  Batman Returns  (1992), Chester in  The People vs Larry Flynt  (1996), Dr. Kaufman in  Tomorrow Never Dies  (1997) and ABC executive Maynard Smith in  Man on the Moon  (1999).

Before his death in 2005, Vincent Schiavelli was considered by many as one of Hollywood's best character actors. Roger Ebert stated "Schiavelli had a way of slipping into films without people knowing his name, but they remembered his great performances as unique characters."

• 1 Early life
• 3 Personal life
• 5 Ghost Roles

Early life [ ]

Schiavelli was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Sicilian-American family. He attended Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School as a teen. He studied acting through the theatre programme at New York University. He began performing on stage in the 1960s.

Schiavelli's first film role occurred in Miloš Forman's 1971 production  Taking Off , in which he played a counselor who taught parents of runaway teens to smoke marijuana in order to better understand their children's experiences. Schiavelli's aptitude and distinctive angular appearance soon provided him with a steady stream of supporting roles, often in Miloš Forman films, including  One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ,  Amadeus ,  The People vs. Larry Flynt ,  Valmont , and the 1999 biopic  Man on the Moon .

He played Mr. Vargas, the biology teacher, in the 1982 comedy  Fast Times at Ridgemont High , a role he reprised in the 1986 television spin-off  Fast Times . He was cast in a similar role in  Better Off Dead  in which he played Mr. Kerber, a geometry teacher.

In 1987, he starred alongside Tim Conway in the short film comedy  Dorf on Golf , and then  Dorf and the First Games of Mount Olympus  in 1988. In 1990, he played the Subway Ghost in  Ghost  and in 1992, he played in Tim Burton's  Batman Returns  as the "Organ Grinder", one of the Penguin's henchmen. He appeared as another villain in the James Bond film  Tomorrow Never Dies  (1997), as a silent monk in  The Frisco Kid  (1979), and as John O'Connor, one of the evil Red Lectroids in 1984's  The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension . In 1994 he appeared in the music video for ZZ Top's song "Breakaway", alongside Fairuza Balkand in 1997, he was named one of America's best character actors by  Vanity Fair  magazine. He also made several voice appearances in the animated television show  Hey Arnold! . In 2002, he played a children's television show host turned heroin addict named Buggy Ding Dong in  Death to Smoochy .

His first television role came in 1972 as Peter Panama in  The Corner Bar , the first sustained portrayal of a gay character on American television. His other television credits include  The Moneychangers ,  Buffy the Vampire Slayer , and  Taxi  as the priest who marries Latka and Simka. He appeared in the  Star Trek: The Next Generation  episode "The Arsenal of Freedom" as a holographic salesman, on  Miami Vice  as a research scientist who conspires to steal a top-secret prototype weapon from his employer, and in an uncredited role in an episode of  Punky Brewster . In 1987 he appeared as Lyle, a gangster, in the  MacGyver  season 2 episode "Soft Touch". In  Highlander: The Series , he played Leo Atkins, a homeless Vietnam War veteran accused of murder in the Season 1 episode "Innocent Man". In  The X-Files , he played Lanny, man with an underdeveloped conjoined twin in the Season 2 episode "Humbug".

He wrote a number of cookbooks and food articles for various magazines and newspapers, notably Gourmet, Saveur and the Los Angeles Times. In 1999, Schiavelli starred in a 26-episode Italian cooking show called  Chefs of Cucina Amore  that aired on PBS periodically for the next couple of years. He received a James Beard Foundation Journalism Award in 2001 and was nominated on several other occasions.

Vincent Schiavelli's three cookbooks are memoirs, with recipes related to personal history and anecdotes:

Papa Andrea's Sicilian Table: Recipes from a Sicilian Chef As Remembered by His Grandson, 1993

Bruculinu, America: Remembrances of Sicilian-American Brooklyn, Told in Stories and Recipes, 1998

Many Beautiful Things: Stories and Recipes from Polizzi Generosa, 2002

Schiavelli served as honorary co-chair of the National Marfan Foundation, an organization which serves those affected by Marfan syndrome, from which Schiavelli suffered.

Schiavelli also performed in a few video games, including  Emperor: Battle for Dune  (Harkonnen Mentat Yanich Kobal) and as Dr. Hellman in the video game  Corpse Killer .

Personal life [ ]

Schiavelli was married to actress Allyce Beasley from 1985 until their 1988 divorce. He guest-starred as the love interest of Beasley's character on one episode of  Moonlighting . Their son, Andrea Schiavelli, was born in 1987. In 1992, Schiavelli married American harpist Carol Mukhalian.

Schiavelli died of lung cancer on December 26, 2005, aged 57, at his home in Polizzi Generosa, the Sicilian town where his grandfather was born, and about which he wrote in his 2002 book  Many Beautiful Things: Stories and Recipes from Polizzi Generosa  ( ISBN 0-7432-1528-1 ). Schiavelli was buried at Polizzi Generosa Cemetery, near Palermo, Sicily. Two documentaries were made about Schiavelli's Sicilian life. The first,  Once Upon a Time in Polizzi , was released on October 11, 2005 (two months before his death) and the second,  Many Beautiful Things  ( Tanti Beddi Cosi  is the Sicilian title), was produced by Aurelio Gambadoro and released in 2014. The film  Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie  is dedicated to his memory. (Schiavelli provided a memorable guest voice appearance as the Pigeon Man in the original series.)

Ghost Roles [ ]

• Vincent lost his life to cancer at the age of 57, four years before co-star Patrick Swayze did.
• 1 Oda Mae Brown
• 2 Subway Ghost
• 3 Carl Bruner

10 Best Horror Movies That Take Place On A Train

Commuters would be lucky if they ended up missing these terrifying trains.

Trains are ubiquitous in our world, so common we barely think about them. They haul freight in mile-long caravans across wide open country. They move passengers from town to town, or, in cities, from neighbourhood to neighbourhood. If you live next to train tracks, eventually you get used to the trains going by, even take comfort in the sounds (it's called the lullaby effect.)

Aside from trainspotters and hobbyists, about the only time you really think about a train is when you see one pulling away without you on it, cursing that you now have to wait for the next one.

In these films, though, missing your train would be a blessing.

If you think about it, trains are a perfect venue for horror. They're contained spaces with not a lot of places to hide, so you're basically a captive. They move quickly, making escape difficult, if not impossible. They're massive vehicles, full of machinery and equipment that can crush, slice, boil, or run over you.

With all this in mind, when things go bad on a train, they can go really bad. This list explores what happens when people (or things) on a train decide to turn a pleasant way to watch the countryside pass into exercises in horror.

10. Night Train Murders - 1975 (Also Known As Last Stop On The Night Train)

Night Train Murders was one of the infamous video nasties banned in the UK in the 1980s, and for good reason. For all intents and purposes, it's a European remake of Last House on the Left, with all the expected violence and depravity.

Two college students, Lisa and Margaret, are travelling to stay with Lisa's parents for Christmas. Unfortunately, during their trip they cross paths with criminals Curly, Blackie, and their upper-class blonde accomplice. After being sexually assaulted and tortured, the girls are killed. Lisa's father meets the criminal trio, figures out what happened, and takes his revenge on them.

Night Train Murders is absolutely a product of its time. It's dark, gritty and raw, with some scenes that are borderline unwatchable (one infamous scene, where one of the girls forcibly loses her virginity to a switchblade, is thankfully shot very dark and the worst is left to the imagination.)

The film has some interesting social commentary on violence (Lisa's dad, a doctor, was a vocal critic of violence in society until he needed it as a tool) and working-class vs wealthy (the blonde clearly manipulated the two thugs into violence but used her upper-class status to escape unscathed at the end.)

Night Train is a tough watch, but it is a great mid-'70s example of a violent revenge movie and makes an interesting European book-end to Last House on the Left.

Child of the Canadian '80s. Fan of Star Wars, Marvel (films), DC (animated films), WWE, classic cartoons. Enjoys debating with his two teenage sons about whether hand-drawn or computer animation is better but will watch it all anyways. Making ongoing efforts to catalogue and understand all WhatCulture football references.

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The Ghost Train

1941, Mystery & thriller/Comedy, 1h 25m

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After his hat flies out the window of a speeding train, passenger and music-hall performer Tommy Gander (Arthur Askey) yanks the emergency brake, causing the train to stop. All the passengers are stuck in rural Cornwall, England that night, unable to get a connecting train for hours. The stationmaster, Saul Hodgkin (Herbert Lomas), wants them gone for mysterious reasons, so he tells them a scary story about a ghost train that passes through every night, hoping that will do the trick.

Genre: Mystery & thriller, Comedy

Original Language: English

Director: Walter Forde

Release Date (DVD): Oct 16, 2007

Runtime: 1h 25m

Cast & Crew

Arthur Askey

Tommy Gander

Richard Murdoch

Teddy Deakin

Kathleen Harrison

Miss Bourne

Herbert Lomas

Saul Hodgkin

Walter Forde

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Ghost Train

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Ghost Train streaming: where to watch online?

Currently you are able to watch "Ghost Train" streaming on GuideDoc. It is also possible to buy "Ghost Train" on Amazon Video as download or rent it on Amazon Video online.

Once a year, estranged brothers Michael and Peter make a reluctant pilgrimage to the old fairground yard where their friend Sam went missing when they were boys. Both men's' lives are colored by what happened the day their friend was sucked inside the Ghost Train, never to return. This year, Michael has something to tell Peter that will cast fresh light on the incident, something that will change their lives even more than that fateful day 30 years ago...

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Ghost Train

Once a year, estranged brothers Michael and Peter make a reluctant pilgrimage to the old fairground yard where their friend Sam went missing when they were boys. Both men's' lives are colore... Read all Once a year, estranged brothers Michael and Peter make a reluctant pilgrimage to the old fairground yard where their friend Sam went missing when they were boys. Both men's' lives are colored by what happened the day their friend was sucked inside the Ghost Train, never to return... Read all Once a year, estranged brothers Michael and Peter make a reluctant pilgrimage to the old fairground yard where their friend Sam went missing when they were boys. Both men's' lives are colored by what happened the day their friend was sucked inside the Ghost Train, never to return. This year, Michael has something to tell Peter that will cast fresh light on the inciden... Read all

• Owen McDonnell
• Matthew Dillon
• 1 User review
• 7 Critic reviews
• See more at IMDbPro
• 3 wins & 2 nominations

• Young Michael
• Young Peter
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Shot in five days.
• Connections Edited into Minutes Past Midnight (2016)

User reviews 1

• October 11, 2014 (United States)
• Bord Scannán na hÉireann / The Irish Film Board
• Finnish Film Foundation
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 17 minutes

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