Know Your Role: Patrick Kilpatrick
I want to begin this edition of Know Your Role by sending out Happy Birthday wishes to the man who is in our Know Your Role spotlight, Patrick Kilpatrick.
Kilpatrick is a character actor who has had the distinction of playing the villain opposite a variety of action heroes over the course of his 30+ year career.
Perhaps his biggest role in action movies was in the Jean-Claude Van Damme film, Death Warrant. Kilpatrick plays the almost super natural character of “The Sandman” Christian Naylor. A guy that Van Damme’s character and Canadian cop, Louis Burke, sent to prison. When Burke takes a dangerous undercover assignment as a prisoner, wouldn’t you know, “The Sandman” gets transferred to the same prison. Kilpatrick is as creepy as he is evil as Christian “The Sandman” Naylor. The Sandman is, in my opinion, one of the Top 5 JCVD Villains of all-time. And I think we can all agree that the final showdown between Burke and Sandman was pretty epic.
Kilpatrick was also the main bad guy in the fourth and final film in The Substitute series, The Substitute: Failure Is Not An Option. Kilpatrick plays Brack, leader of a white supremacist group that has taken control over a military academy. The movie also starred Treat Williams and a naked Angie Everhart.
Kilpatrick played a cyborg teacher in the action/sci-fi/horror mash up known as Class of 1999. Kilpatrick’s character, Mr. Bryles, was in good company with fellow cyborg teachers Mr. Hardin (John P. Ryan of Death Wish 4: The Crackdown and Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection fame) and Ms. Connors played by the legendary Pam Grier.
One of my personal favorite Kilpatrick roles was as Stone in the 1985 film, Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins. Stone is the muscle for the rich and powerful (and corrupt) George S. Grove. Stone is the guy who Grove calls upon to do the dirty work and he does so with pleasure. Stone has a unique feature in that he has a diamond in his tooth. Stone’s demise in the film is also unique, as he learned the hard way you don’t try to assassinate an assassin like Remo Williams (Fred Ward).
I was pleasantly surprised earlier this year when I reviewed the Billy Blanks movie Showdown and found that Patrick Kilpatrick was playing an over zealous karate instructor named Lee. Lee’s motto in the movie is “Success is control. Control is success.” He made Martin Kove’s character in The Karate Kid seem like a push over. If this one slipped under your radar like it did mine, you should check it out. Kilpatrick’s performance alone is worth it.
Other films on Kilpatrick’s action movie resume include, Eraser with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Steven Seagal sequel Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, Beastmaster III: The Eye of Braxus with Marc Singer and Casper Van Dien, the Tom Cruise sci-fi action flick Minority Report, Last Man Standing with Bruce Willis, Open Fire opposite Jeff Wincott and Best of the Best II with Phillip Rhee and Eric Roberts.
Kilpatrick also has made the rounds on several action TV shows including Burn Notice, The Equalizer, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and 24 just to name a few.
Patrick Kilpatrick is still going strong. You can catch up with all his latest projects by visiting his official web site, patrickkilpatrick.com, including a project that sounds most intriguing, Active Shooter.
Once again I’d like to wish Mr. Kilpatrick a Happy Birthday and thank him for being a quality bad guy in so many movies. Without villains like the characters brought to life by Patrick Kilpatrick, we wouldn’t love our heroes as much as we do.
