DON’T DARE PUSH HIM AROUND
A MAN CALLED IRONSIDE
Fright-fan favourite Michael Ironside talks to Calum Waddell about his top-turn as one of the genre’s nastiest villains in Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall, now over thirty-years old and still as fresh as any of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s one-liners…
Cult movie legend Michael Ironside first came to widespread attention with a (quite literal) bang in the shape of David Cronenberg’s classic Scanners (1981), which was immediately followed-up with the grim and gritty Canadian slasher effort Visiting Hours (1982) - something of a cause célèbre in the UK where it ended up being (temporarily) banned as a video nasty.
After this provocative double-bill of genre movie mayhem, Ironside would grab memorable supporting roles in Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1983), which also featured a pre-superstardom Molly Ringwald, and the rather brilliant, in-name-only sequel Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987).
It was, however, probably his prominent role as Ham Tyler in the hit television series V (1984 onwards) that brought him to the attention of a wider American audience, and his casting opposite Tom Cruise in Top Gun (1986), one of the decade’s biggest blockbusters, was doubtlessly a role which did his profile no harm at all.
Meanwhile, the great man’s acting prowess was becoming stronger and stronger - including with his well-regarded part in Walter Hill’s Extreme Prejudice (1987) wherein he joined an ensemble that also included Nick Nolte and Powers Boothe.
However, after this initial super-sized success Ironside’s career has opted for a quirky and consistently fascinating path, taking in everything from the unlikeliest of direct-to-video sequels (Red Scorpion 2 in 1994! Lake Placid 3 in 2010!) to multiplex malarky such as Terminator Salvation (2009) and X-Men: First Class (2011) and everything in-between (including more than holding his own against an in-character Christian Bale in the Sundance critic’s choice The Machinist in 2004). And let us not forget that there have been the timeless turns in some other memorable mega-hits - most notably 1990’s Total Recall, 1993’s Free Willy (!) and 1997’s Starship Troopers. It is for the new 4k Blu-Ray release of Total Recall, the Paul Verhoeven horror/scifi mash-up, adapted from the writing of Philip K. Dick, notably his ‘We Can Remember it Wholesale for You’ short story, that Infinity finds itself chatting over Zoom with the living legend.
‘I choose to only interview with people who don’t twist my words,’ affirms Ironside, who this author last met, in-person, almost 15 years ago. ‘We have spoken before and it was fine, so I think you are okay’, he intones. Well, thank goodness for that - and with our time together limited, and safe in the knowledge that I probably won’t get much more than eye-rolling if I ask about childhood crush Lisa Schrage in Prom Night II or if he really does hate killer whales, I decide that it’s best to go straight into the Total Recall talk…