In Memoriam
May 17, 1955 – February 25, 2017
Friends, I originally created this website back in 2000, collecting Bill Paxton’s movies on DVD and VHS and adding reviews on the average of once a week, until I ran out of steam. I eventually took the website down and forgot about it, until our beloved Bill suddenly passed away at the young age of 61. I decided to get out my backups of the site, update the coding, and put it back online, as a memorial to a great actor and excellent human being. The Introduction below was the original when the site was first created.
When I become obsessed with Bill Paxton, naturally one of the first things I did was head on out to the Internet Movie Database to find out what movies he’s been in, so that I could immediately watch as many of them as possible. The man has been a busy little bee: the IMDb lists over fifty movies, dating back to 1975. And I’ve been working my way through the list diligently, having my own Bill Paxton film festivals whenever I can hunt down more movies.
Wonderful as the IMDb is, though, it is sorely lacking in certain very important kinds of information every Bill Paxton fan wants to know when trying to decide between, say, Mighty Joe Young or Commando for the evening’s viewing, or whether it’s really worth the trouble to try to hunt up a copy of Mortuary. (Note: it is. If you like schlocky over-the-top horror movies. Which I do.) For example: do a net search on “Bill Paxton” and one of the first things you’ll run into is this quote from our Bill:
“It’s very liberating to be naked in front of a hundred people, but there’s nothing sexual about lovemaking on a movie set.”
Well, to me that means only one thing: there’s a nude scene out there somewhere! Maybe more than one! But does the IMDb flag which movies have Bill’s nude scenes in them? No! Does it tell you which movies he wears black leather in, or gets beat up in, or has love scenes in? No! Does it even tell you whether he’s got enough screen time to make it worth the $3 rental fee? No!
This, I said to myself, is a situation that must be remedied, and I have therefore taken it upon myself to create this Bill Paxton Movie Guide, for which I will attempt to watch as many of Bill’s movies as I can, and provide not only plot synopses and the other usual info, but also my own Bill-O-Meter of Important Bill Information for each movie. It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it. I hope my fellow Bill fans will find it a useful tool in navigating the video rental store aisles when having their own Bill Paxton Film Festivals.
So, on to the movies!