On the Fritz

Or

Obsolete Man

(Props to Monty)

Fritz Weaver, the cheap, American Christopher Lee knock-off, has died at the age of 90. His early career included two appearances on The Twilight Zone: the imperious but cowardly Chancellor who kills Burgess Meredith’s quietly noble, if obsolete, librarian, and a scientist fleeing a planet on the verge of nuclear war in a spaceship bound for  - dun, dun, dun - a planet called earth. His big-screen debut was in Fail Safe as Col. Cascio, an unstable military officer with foreign-born parents who somehow gets a job in the headquarters of Strategic Air Command and orchestrates a coup that lasts about 18 seconds. His long, angular face, pointed Cap Weinberger-esque nose and deep voice made him a natural to play evil geniuses. Weaver helped Hal Holbrook feed his drunk shrew wife Adrienne Barbeau to a thing in a crate in Creepshow. He ran the shadowy Franklin Foundation that trained dolphins to kill the president of the United States in The Day of the Dolphin. He invented Proteus IV, an advanced artificial intelligence program that takes over his house and rapes his wife in Demon Seed. For his golden years, Weaver narrated a bunch of documentaries on The History Channel when it still gave a damn.