The Plaid Pladd

I’ve noticed that Sam Neill loves playing crazy people (Event Horizon, In the Mouth of Madness, arguably Merlin 2 because why would you ever agree to Merlin 2?). Unfortunately, I did not group these movies thematically before viewing, so this Sam Neill update only has one movie where it’s actually Sam Neill’s sanity in question. Oh well.

Current project status: 91% complete!!! Right now, only 6 more to go! Assuming my spreadsheet is correct.

Dean Spanley (2008)

Peter O'Toole, Jeremy Northam, and Sam Neill just wanted to hang out without that pesky Henry VIII bothering them

The Movie: Peter O’Toole is Jeremy Northam’s aging father and their interactions are Edwardian and hilarious. Even though I don’t have a brother who was killed in the Boer War, I still can completely interpret every long-suffering look on Jeremy Northam’s face as his dad demands to eat the same meal every day, is affably rude to random acquaintances, and loudly snores during a public lecture. Through a series of coincidences, Northam discovers that local Dean Spanley will regress to his previous life as a dog while drinking some kind of super rare Hungarian liquor he likes.

Let's get smashed and talk about how fun it is to chase sheep and pee on things

And not just any dog, but PETER O’TOOLE’s childhood dog!!!! Who disappeared unexpectedly, crushing his young heart and making him incapable of responding to grief!!! But, after listening to Dean Spanley’s account of that day (spoiler alert: he was shot by a hunter? farmer? someone kind of grizzled, anyway), the aging father finally accepts his son’s death and shares a bonding hug with Jeremy Northam. Then gets a dog. Booyah.

Some fathers and sons bond over fishing, but whatever it takes, you guys

The Character: Sam Neill is Dean Spanley!!! Of course. His full name is W.A.G. Spanley, which is not at all a connection to his previous life as a spaniel named Wag. He’s actually quite serious and no-nonsense, even when talking from his past life dog point of view. There’s just something so bizarre and transfixing about seeing this kind of uptight guy saying things like “The Master didn’t understand how much I hated baths; there was nothing so shameful as meeting a friend and having no smell” like it is the most serious business in the world.

Nothing about this situation is funny at all

What I Learned: At any one time, there are only seven great dogs in the world.

You should watch this if: you like Peter O’Toole and his ridiculous faces

The Vow (2012)

Oh, Sam Neill, the sacrifices I make for you

The Movie: Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum are quirky and in love and so forcibly adorable that you want to throw up in their hair. Then Rachel gets amnesia after a car accident, forgetting entirely about her relationship with Channing Tatum, and why she hasn’t seen her family in years. Channing attempts to be even more quirky and adorable to win his wife back, but after pressure from her family and resistance from her, he agrees to a divorce. Then Rachel discovers the reason she quit law school and left her family for the city and art school: her dad was having an affair with one of her friends! Also she likes art more than law. The film ends with McAdams back in the city and art school, asking Channing Tatum out for dinner. Nicholas Sparks, someone is horning in on your turf.

Sam Neill will always offer you a drink before trying to break up your marriage because he's a classy guy

The Character: Sam Neill is Rachel McAdams’ dad, who at first seems like a bad guy, trying to use the accident to break up the marriage he never liked and win back the daughter he betrayed without her knowing. Except it was kind of more his wife whom he betrayed? And she’s cool with it? Whatever, the point is, Rachel McAdams forgives him in the end, because she is such a big-hearted person, and he really just missed her and wanted what was best for her.

What I Learned: This movie was based on a true story!!!! I’m not sure how much of the law school/cheating Sam Neill backstory is true, but at the end they tell you that the real-life couple stayed married and have kids, and that she never regained her memory. Wikipedia says they credit “their faith in Jesus and their wedding vows before God” with keeping them together. So not chocolate and skinny dipping like in the movie, then.

You should watch this if you like: Nicholas Sparks

Children of the Revolution (1996)

I WISh everyone in this movie had a mustache

The Movie: So this Australian lady is obsessed with Joesph Stalin and writes him these passionate letters about how she just can’t get the revolution started in Australia. He invites her to the USSR to woe her, but ends up dying after they sleep together. Luckily everyone is pretty psyched, so she’s not in trouble, but she is pregnant. She marries some guy in the Australian communist party who like-likes her, and tries to raise the son, Joe, in the communist way. Joe falls in love with a Latvian policewoman whose grandparents were brutally murdered during Stalin’s purges, a fact that begins to torment her after Joe grows a mustache and starts taking control of the police force, looking and acting more and more like Stalin daily.

Yeah, I would not be that upset if I came home to find Sam Neill unexpectedly in my house, but I'm not a communist party leader so whatever

The Character: Sam Neill plays Joe’s possible father, a Russian/Australian/British/??? spy, who seems pretty unclear on whose side he’s on, just that he’s in love with Joan. He accompanies her to the USSR, either to kill her or to protect her, depending on whose orders he decides to take, and ends up having grief-sex with her right after Stalin’s death. Yes, that’s apparently a thing. He tries to do his best by Joe, believing he might be the father, but ends up attempting suicide after discovering he killed Joe’s wife’s Latvian grandparents on Stalin’s orders.

I don't know, somehow this movie is still billing itself as a comedy

What I Learned: People have apparently been arguing about the cause of Stalin’s death since it happened! In 2003, a joint group of Russian and American historians announced their view that he’d eaten warfarin, a powerful rat poison which predisposes the victim to strokes. Stalin was 74 and already suffering the ill-effects of his lifetime of heavy smoking.

You should watch this if: you enjoy fake documentaries; you want to see the lighter side of Stalin

I can’t believe I’m almost done with this project!!! I’m going to have to think of something dramatic to do to celebrate!

Previously: Prime Minister, Soviet Sub Captain, Master Criminal
Next: Thomas Jefferson, Tennis Dad, and a Somber Narrator

Sorry I couldn’t think of an overarching theme for this week. It was going to be “Sam Neill: Action Guy”, but I couldn’t really make this first one fit with that. And then I thought maybe “Sam Neill: Forgettable Minor Character” but he’s the main villain–well “villain”–in the last one, so that didn’t work either. Deal with it. Current status of this project: 86% complete, 105 hours.

Molokai: The Story of Father Damien (1999)

Sam Neill's head has no business being the second biggest on this cover

The Movie: This film is based on the true story of Father Damien, a priest who selflessly worked for 16 years in the leper colony on the Hawaiian island of Molokai, petitioning the government and church for funds, helping to build houses and plant crops, and eventually dying of leprosy himself.

Sorry I didn't get any pictures of leprosy for you

The colony is a pretty terrible place to be, especially when Damien first gets there. People are forcibly sent there, taken away from their families, and it’s underfunded and lawless, with the few strong less-sick people stealing all the rations. With Damien’s help, global awareness grows, and the government is eventually forced to send them things like beds and a doctor. I was surprised to read that people were being moved there as late as 1969, and some of them are still there. Also, in 2009 Father Damien was made a saint!

The Character: Sam Neill plays the prime minister Walter M. Gibson whose wikipedia page pretty much reads like a ridiculous adventure novel (gunrunning? excommunication? buying a newspaper to tell everyone how great he is? a Pacific empire?). Unfortunately, the version of him Sam Neill plays is much less exciting, mostly limiting himself to weaseling out of giving Father Damien anything, and insisting that leprosy is just a form of syphilis, so clearly those people deserve it for being skanks.

But, hey, sideburns

What I Learned: All about leprosy! Which we are now calling Hansen’s disease. Apparently sufferers stop being contagious after 2 weeks of treatment and about 95% of people are naturally immune.

You should watch this if: you aren’t planning on eating breakfast while watching, unlike me

The Hunt for Red October (1990)

You’ve probably already seen this one, right?

I bet this was a lot more exciting in 1990

The Movie: I know it’s weird that I’ve never seen this, but you know I’m not a huge fan of war movies. I also managed to somehow live 22 years without knowing the basic plot, so I was pretty curious at the outset if Sean Connery was going to be a bad guy or not and how one-dimensional evil the Soviets would be, since this was made during the Cold War. If, like me, you somehow don’t know this plot, let me fill you in. Sean Connery is a USSR submarine captain who, along with his officers, has decided to defect to the US with their super cool awesome new submarine, the Red October.

According to imdb, that hair piece cost $20,000

In the process, he has to keep the US from just firing on him, keep the Russians from sinking the ship so it doesn’t fall into US hands, and save the rest of his crew who don’t know anything about this secret plan. Luckily, the CIA has Alex Baldwin, who can basically read his mind.

Also, Tim Curry is his doctor?

I don’t really understand all of what happened (I admit to completely spacing out during the “dramatic” submarine maneuvers at the end), but after getting the rest of the crew to evacuate because of a fake radiation leak, Sean Connery tricks the pursuing USSR submarine into blowing itself up. Somehow? I don’t know, the point is, he totally makes it to America and the government doesn’t want you to know about it.

Sean Connery/Sam Neill??? I ship it

The Character: Sam Neill plays Captain Vasili Borodin, and he seems to be Sean Connery’s second in command. At one point, he asks Sean Connery if the Americans will “let him live in Montana”, and that his plan is to marry a “round American woman” and raise rabbits and winter in Arizona with a pick up truck and just drive around from state to state, because they let you do that. And I was like “Russian Accent Sam, I will be your round American woman any day.” I would maybe even learn to cook rabbits.

Oh, but you've got to give me that hat. Important part of this deal

Unfortunately, our dreams could never be, since he’s killed by a cook/saboteur right before the submarine version of a Western shoot out. He dies saying how sad he is to never get to see Montana.

What I Learned: Apparently the sonar guy in the US submarine can hear the men singing inside the Red October at one point?? I had no idea sonar was so precise.

You should watch this if you like: war movies; not knowing what’s going on

Framed (2002 TV movie)

Rob Lowe with a New York accent was the main character of this movie, which was super distracting

This cover pretty much says it all

The Movie: Rob Lowe is vacationing with his family in the Bahamas when he happens to run into Sam Neill, famed money launderer. So he catches him! Yay! Then Sam Neill turns state’s evidence, or whatever, to help them get some Russian mob boss, but is convinced that the New York state attorney is crooked and out to get him. Rob Lowe is tricked into helping him escape? Or maybe it was their plan all along? Something like that.

I'm mainly used to Rob Lowe from Parks and Rec, so it was shocking to see him eat a candy bar

A lot of the plot hinges on Rob Lowe’s attempts to get Sam Neill to give him a “secret zip disk” with lots of incriminating data on it. lulz 2002

The Character: Sam Neill is like amoral James Bond, basically.

Just chillin on my boat with my wife and girlfriend. What?

He teaches Rob Lowe’s character about cloth napkins and fancy cooking, and, to make sure he’s not wearing a wire/being tracked, forces him to change clothes into this fancy schmancy suit he bought him.

"Are you giving me fashion tips at gun point?" "Someone has to"

Eventually Sam Neill gets away to live on his boat in the Caribbean with the two beautiful ladies that are right for him, and Rob Lowe gets his precious zip disk. After turning down a handful of diamonds for some reason. Sometimes being the good cop sucks.

What I Learned: In Brooklyn, using cloth napkins is grounds for your wife cheating on you.

You should watch this if: you want to see Sam Neill being ridiculously nonchalant about how fancy he is.

Previously: Dad Edition
Next: Losing My Mind Edition

You know Sam Neill loves his made for TV movies. Also, this project is now 60% complete!!!

Snow White: A Tale of Terror (tv 1997)

The Movie: This is the story of Snow White but creepier and with better costumes! The dwarves are now an outlaw band of renegade miners (including one hot guy). Snow White’s name is Lilli, and the guy sent to kill her doesn’t so much take pity as gets tired of chasing her pathetically quickly. Also, the handsome prince is a handsome doctor! Steven and I debated the whole movie about whether Sigourney Weaver, the Evil Stepmom, was evil from the beginning or if Young Snow White drove her to it by being terrible. Either way, her creepy possessed mirror definitely commits at least one murder before she is even really married to Sam Neill so there’s that. But she seems to go really nuts after the stillbirth of her child, the heir Sam Neill wants so badly. A lot of her actions seem to be motivated by magically bringing it back to life.

As always, great choice in women, Sam Neill

The Character: Sam Neill plays Snow White’s dad. Unlike the fairy tale, he doesn’t die, but does suffer a bad accident which hurts his leg. Then Sigourney Weaver goes full on crazy, poisons(?) everyone in the castle, and hangs him upside down in the chapel to bleed him for some kind of dead-raising black sabbath. Luckily Snow White and her hot new outlaw miner BF arrive in time to save him! I was expecting his character to be somewhat bumbling and oblivious, but he was actually pretty normal.

Well, apart from his taste in clothing

What I Learned: Hot outlaw miners know way more about how to tell if people are really dead than hot doctors!

Would I Watch Again?: Probably not, unless it was to study the costumes, which were pretty awesome!

Forgotten Silver (TV 1995)

Netflix basically tricked me into watching this

The Movie: So this is actually a mockumentary, back when those were less common and Peter Jackson was way less famous. Apparently when it was first aired on TV people were pissed when they found out it was hoax. It was less over the top than other mockumentaries I’ve seen, so I get why they might have been confused. It follows the life of Colin McKenzie, a “forgotten” New Zealand filmmaker at the very birth of filmmaking in the early 20th century. It was actually pretty funny and interesting, tying the fake story in with real historical events and people.

The Character: Sam Neill actually plays himself, which is why this movie wasn’t originally on my spreadsheet. Netflix, which has finally seemed to detect the pattern underlying all of my recent movie selections, suggested it to me. Sam Neill is one of many real famous people who are interviewed to talk about their own experiences with Colin McKenzie’s work and what they think his affect has been on the film industry.

What I Learned: Richard Pearse, famous New Zealand aviator, may have beaten the Wright brothers into the air, although there is little proof besides some witness accounts. It’s easy to forget that lots of people all over the world were working on how to fly at the same time!

Would I watch again?: I think so. The fake black and white footage was pretty entertaining and the story it told, though fiction, was still interesting. Plus, it’s funny to imagine the hundreds of people totally believing all of it.

The Incredible Journey of Mary Bryant (TV 2005)

I couldn't go a whole post without watching something based on a true story

The Movie: Mary is a young, pregnant, starving thief who is sentenced to transportation to Australia at the very start of the New South Wales penal colony. Both the journey and conditions when they get there are looking pretty grim. Luckily Mary finds love with a hot smuggler, Will Bryant, and they get prison married! Jack Davenport is a young lieutenant virtually identical to his character in Pirates of the Caribbean in that he sticks to his ideals and then loses the girl of his dreams to someone who is hotter and looser in the moral department. Mary decides that this is no place to raise her children and organizes a crazy escape attempt, making it all the way to the Dutch Indies before being caught and sent back to England for trial. Luckily everyone loves her so she gets off!! Yay!!

Sam Neill mostly wears a lot of wigs

The Character: Sam Neill plays Arthur Phillip, the governor of the penal colony! He’s kind of a jerk in that when a massive night of rape breaks out, he says “Just let it run its course” and orders his men to protect the food. Another time, when confronted with violent natives, he commands one of his men to take his pants off “so that they can see we’re men, same as them. Otherwise they might think us women.”

It's the hair, Sam. And the shiny gold decorations

Previously: Space Edition!
Next: Angst Edition!

SuperCroc (2001 TV)
Not to be confused with the monster movie of the same name, this is a National Geographic documentary narrated by Sam Neill!

It didn't walk with dinosaurs... IT ATE THEM!!!

The Movie: The documentary follows a paleontologist and a crocodile expert traveling the world to study modern day crocodiles in an attempt to make educated guesses about what the ancient supercroc (or Sarcosuchus, if you want to get technical) was like. The documentary began with digging up some Sarcosuchus bones in the Sahara, including a massive skull, but without more of the body they needed measurements and ratios from modern versions to guess at how big supercroc was (answer: about 40 feet long, 8.75 tons). Interspersed with capturing and measuring the world’s different crocodile and alligator species is kind of bad computer animation about what we imagine prehistoric supercroc was like. And it chomping down on dinosaurs.

Also I learned that this exists

The Character: Since this was a documentary he was narrating, I never actually got to see Sam Neill, which, as you can guess, was a bit of a blow since you know I love making fun of his clothes. He was really good at narrating, though, providing some ironic detachment from the alligator expert, who was annoyingly excitable. I think he would do really well recording audiobooks! I still enjoyed this more than A Cry in the Dark; thanks for teaching me something, Sam Neill!

Best Sam Neill Quote: (after annoying alligator guy has captured a big crocodile and tied it down in the back of his pick up, asking can you IMAGINE what supercroc would be like?) “You’d need a bigger truck”.

Thing I Learned From This Movie: Alligators have medicine in their blood that heals their wounds from the inside!

Would I Have Watched This Without the Lure of Sam Neill?: Yes, but only while doing something else, like cooking

Skin (2008)

This movie was based on a true story, so, once again, I learned something! You’ve just spent this week educating me, Sam Neill!

Also, Sam Neill's Afrikaner accent is crazy!

The Movie: Sandra Laing looks black (is black? This terminology is a major issue in the movie too) but both of her parents are white Afrikaners in apartheid-era South Africa. Obvs this causes all kinds of problems, such as is she allowed to attend a white school? And how to stop everyone from being terrible to her there? Who can she marry? Can she legally even live with her parents? At one point a professor explains that she is probably the result of African/European intermarrying at some point far back in her parents’ ancestral past, something he claims most Afrikaners have in their genes at some point. Sandra takes a lot of crap, even from her own family, and eventually runs away with a black man, whom she can’t even legally marry since she is technically classified as white. Their relationship can’t survive their differences in background–he gets really pissed when she keeps trying to contact her mother–and she eventually runs away from him, starting a new life with their two children. Eventually she reunites with her mom, but her dad dies, leaving her money but never speaking to her again. The part I remember the most is just a simple scene without any dialog, showing Sandra and her mother going shopping for a new dress. Because Sandra isn’t allowed inside the store, her mother and a saleslady stand in the window with the mannequins, holding up various choices while Sandra stands outside, pointing to ones she likes and pantomime pleading with her mother for the one she wants.

Sam Neill, as always, at the height of fashion

The Character: Of course Sam Neill is Abraham Laing, her stubborn, domineering father. He is pretty much ace at playing troubled dad characters at this point. He pushes the government continually until they finally decide to determine race based on ancestry, not appearance, and just as stubbornly tries to force Sandra to have a “normal” life, even going so far as to not care when some guy sexually assaults her since at least he’s white. He delivers an ultimatum after she runs off with her black boyfriend: return home now or never see your family again. He then spends most of the rest of the film burning her letters and trying to prevent his wife from seeing her through creepily serious death threats. “If I ever see her here again, I’ll kill them. And then myself.” Towards the end of the movie, when Sam Neill is dying of cancer, he tries to leave the house to find Sandra and apologize to her, but his wife won’t let him, claiming that they don’t deserve her forgiveness. Which is a nice sentiment, but, you know, Sandra is pretty much homeless and starving so maybe put your high horse away, mom. Sam Neill’s Abraham Laing is believably terrible to his family, sticking with the government-sanctioned racism that would definitely have been the status quo at the time this movie is set. I still end up feeling bad for him at the end when he realizes what a dick he’s been. Oh, Sam Neill, it’s so hard to hate you for realsies.

Thing I Learned From This Movie: Sandra Laing is a real person and most of the events in this movie really happened!

Would I Watch This Without Sam Neill?: From reading the description, no, but if I started it I would end up liking it.

Perfect Strangers (2003)

Pretty sure Sam Neill agreed to this movie because he got to spend a lot of it pretending to be dead inside a freezer.

The description made it sound like a romcom, and it is, if you like CRAZY

The Movie: Melanie lives a pretty boring life, until one night she decides to go home with a mysterious hot guy she meets at a bar. Except when she wakes up the next morning she is on his boat, since his home is on a remote deserted island! Plus, he seems to know a lot about her, and keeps saying things like “I would do ANYTHING for you!” Then he cooks them a romantic dinner, burns her old clothes, and insists that they can’t sleep together until she loves him. In her attempts to escape the next morning–since she is apparently too dumb to realize there are two locks on the door hotel room style–she ends up accidentally stabbing The Man (that’s how he’s listed in the credits–we never know his name), and then trying to nurse him back to health. Of course, he ends up dying, but that’s cool, she just stashes his body in the freezer and starts hallucinating him, imagining an elaborate and romantic relationship between them. Eventually some guy she used to know arrives, and apparently it’s really his house but The Man just rents it? And she tries to kill him too? But then he’s cool with it? And they get married? The last scene is her dancing with her hallucination at her own wedding to the other guy! Yeah, supper sweet.

I assume they chose Sam Neill because he makes a great corpse

The Character: Sam Neill plays The Man, and he acts the hell out of it! The Man doesn’t have too many lines, preferring silent mystery/being dead, but in the beginning of the kidnapping I was really unsure if I was creeped out by him or wanted to date him. Then Melanie revealed herself to be crazy to the power of twelve, so Sam Neill definitely now appears to be the most sane, attractive character in this film. It’s like she waited to get Stockholm syndrome until he was already dead, so she just had to fall in love with his corpse/hallucination. My favorite part is when she has a gun out, trying to shoot the Island Owner, and she asks Sam Neill’s specter if you can kill someone twice. Sam Neill shrugs and suggests that she just better try it to see. Then she throws a little pity party about how she never meant to kill him, which is weird since she did stick a knife in his stomach.

Thing I Learned: Pro tip: When the girl you’ve kidnapped locks you out of your own house, the best thing to do is start a smile fire under it and smoke her out!

Would I Watch This Without Sam Neill?: Yes, thinking it was a romantic comedy! Then I’d end up finishing it despite mounting unease out of a morbid curiosity.

Previously: Merlin (again), Erotic Artist, Tragic Dingo Victim
Next: Total Player, Overbearing Dad, Crackpot!