Did you know?
Today's fun fact is a little tidbit I've always been fascinated with. If you claim you love zombies, or just horror in general, you of course are familiar with the brilliantly played performance of Joe Pilato as Captain Rhodes in George A Romero's Day Of The Dead. Not since Jeffery Dean Morgan's role as Negan in The Walking Dead has there been a character that's even came close to trying to rival Pilato's very over the top performance as the mean bastard Rhodes who in my eyes has one of the greatest deaths ever shown on the silver screen.
My love for Day Of The Dead has been around since I was ten or eleven. As much as I love Dawn, Day will forever and always be my favorite entry in the Dead series. In fact, Rhodes was one of my first movie crushes (what can I say? I love a villain) As of recently I've been re-watching Day over and over again and I truly can't get over how truly bad ass Rhodes really is. I mean you can't blame the poor guy for snapping. Also his showdown with Bub as well as his last line as the zombies carry away his lower half is legendary. "Choke on em!" Sadly Pilato never truly got the career I think he deserved. He had a small bit int Dawn, and of course a leading part in the highly underrated Effects before playing the role that made horror history. For years he did voice over work, as well as making cameos in films like Wishmaster, and Pulp Fiction. One little known fact not many horror fans are aware of is that writer/director Quentin Tarantino was a HUGE fan of Day Of The Dead as well as Joe's character from it. Long before he had him appear briefly in Pulp Fiction, Tarantino just when he first started his career, had big plans for Joe.
As he was writing From Dusk Till Dawn in the early 90's. Just before his breakout film with Reservoir Dogs, he started the screenplay of the crime/vampire film and originally had Pilato in mind as Seth Gecko that was later played by George Clooney.
In fact in the early 90's they brought Joe in for a reading when the script was still in development and even had him film a teaser trailer for the movie before it was even off the ground. Sadly time passed, and in the end the studio bought the film and ended up going for Clooney who at the time was a huge TV and film star. As much as I love From Dusk Till Dawn (as well as the TV show) I adore Pilato and honestly think he would have completely KILLED it in this role. Sure he was a little older (who knows if they would have still given him those sick tattoos Clooney sported in the final film.) But I think it would have been beyond awesome seeing Joe aka Rhodes kick ass all over again, this time instead of taking out zombies he would have tackled Vampires.
Here down below is the killer teaser trailer of what could have been!!!
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