King of the Nerds: Some of the Best Robert Carradine Movies

Last month, I was devastated to hear the news that actor Robert Carradine had passed away at the age of 71. Not only had I grown up watching him in repeat viewings of the films in the Revenge of the Nerds franchise and other movies I would catch him in along the way, but he had just recently launched the Party Nerds Pop-Cast podcast with his friend Richard Gabai, and I was a weekly viewer of the show for five months straight, having fun catching up with Richard and Bobby every week… And now, Bobby’s gone. To pay tribute, I have revisited several entries on his filmography and put together a list of what I think are some of the Best Robert Carradine Movies.

Here we go:

THE COWBOYS (1972)

Robert didn’t intend to follow his father, John Carradine, and his brothers David and Keith into the acting world. He wanted to be a race car driver. But then came The Cowboys, a Western starring the legendary John Wayne as a rancher who needs drovers for a 400-mile cattle drive – and circumstances force him to recruit a group of local schoolboys for the job. David had been offered the villain role, but turned it down (probably for the best; the role went to Bruce Dern, who was already getting typecast as psychos, and this role didn’t help him change that perception). He then told his little brother Bobby that he should audition for a schoolboy role because he had “everything to gain, and nothing to lose.” Robert auditioned and landed the role of Slim Honeycutt.

Wayne knew it was a risk to share the screen with a bunch of youngsters, but ended up feeling that working on The Cowboys was the best experience of his life… even if he had to chew out the inexperienced but opinionated Robert Carradine and reduce him to tears one day. Directed by Mark Rydell from a script by Irving Ravetch, Harriet Frank Jr., and William Dale Jennings that was based on Jennings’ 1971 novel, The Cowboys is a great Western that mixes an Old West cattle drive epic with amusing coming-of-age moments, some intense sequences, and emotional scenes that will tug on your heartstrings. Roscoe Lee Browne also turns in a great performance as Jebediah Nightlinger, the cook that accompanies Wayne and the kids on the drive.

The Cowboys was such a hit that it spawned a TV series follow-up in 1974, with Robert Carradine and A Martinez reprising their roles. But ABC bungled the development of the show and it only lasted for 12 episodes. These days, it’s disappointingly difficult to find.

COMING HOME (1978)

There’s not enough Robert Carradine in this movie for my liking, but it had to make the list because it’s the only movie he was in to earn a Best Picture nomination. It lost that honor to Annie Hall, but did take home the gold in three of the eight categories it was nominated in: Best Actor (Jon Voight), Best Actress (Jane Fonda), and Best Original Screenplay (Waldo Salt, Robert C. Jones, and Nancy Dowd).

This was the first film from Fonda’s production company, IPC Films, and was inspired by her friendship with paraplegic Vietnam War veteran Ron Kovic (whose story was told in Born on the Fourth of July). Set in 1968, the film, directed by Hal Ashby, sees Fonda playing a military wife who volunteers at a Veterans Administration hospital while her husband (Bruce Dern) is serving in Vietnam. During her time at the hospital, she falls for and starts having an affair with paraplegic veteran Luke Martin (Voight). Heartbreak and tragedy ensue.

Carradine plays Bill Munson, a veteran with PTSD who has a tragic side story of his own. This was always an emotionally impactful film, but the circumstances of Carradine’s own death have made his character’s story in Coming Home even more difficult to watch. He did great work in the role, though, and that’s something to celebrate.

BLACKOUT (1978)

Castle Residence is a 27-story apartment building in New York City. It’s home to people from all walks of life, and to most of the characters we’ll come to meet in this film: a pregnant woman due to give birth, an elderly woman caring for her husband, a magician with a beagle, a grumpy old rich man… there’s even a Greek wedding party happening on the 27th floor. Elsewhere, a group of dangerous criminals are loaded into a Department of Corrections truck, being transferred from a mental hospital to prison. One member of the group is Christie (Robert Carradine), a guy who likes to express his hatred of big businesses by blowing them up.

A severe storm hits the city, causing the titular blackout. Worlds collide when a couple of bikers do some tricky driving in front of the DoC truck and cause it to crash right in front of Castle Residence. The criminals exit the truck and decide to go into the apartment building. A spree of violence, robbery, rape, and arson follows, with Christie proving to be particularly dangerous. Menacingly calm and judgmental, he interrogates residents and condemns their lifestyles. He calls credit card users “leeches” and “parasites,” accuses the magician of exploiting his dog, and remarks that “Mother Nature has no place for the sick and the weak” when encountering a man dependent on a breathing machine.

Officer Dan Evans (Jim Mitchum) finds the wrecked transfer truck and the dead officers within and decides to check out Castle Residence. It’s up to him, and a few sidekicks he gathers along the way, to help the troubled citizens within the building and stop the criminals. This is a pretty interesting drive-in movie with a cool set-up (the random careless bikers aside) and a good cast. In addition to the actors mentioned, you also get June Allyson and Ray Milland as Castle Residence residents.

THE LONG RIDERS (1980)

“You want David, you’ll take Keith, you’ll get Bobby.” That’s the joke Robert Carradine would tell about having brothers who were actors, but in the 1980 Western The Long Riders, you get all three of the Carradine brothers sharing the screen.

Directed by Walter Hill from a script by Bill Bryden, Steven Phillip Smith, Stacy Keach, and James Keach, the film tells the story of the real-life outlaws that made up the James-Younger Gang, and one of its big selling points was that four sets of actual brothers were cast to play the four sets of brothers in the story. So you get the Keach brothers as Frank and Jesse James, Dennis and Randy Quaid as Ed and Clell Miller, Christopher and Nicholas Guest as Charlie and Robert Ford, and David, Keith, and Robert Carradine as Cole, Jim, and Bob Younger.

Robert was one part of a large ensemble here, and when it comes to Carradines, it’s David who gets the most screen time (including a knife fight with James Remar) – but it’s one hell of a strong ensemble to be part of, Robert is present for most of the running time, and The Long Riders is another great movie from Walter Hill, the man who brought us classics like The Warriors, 48 Hrs., Streets of Fire, and more. Hill has gone on to cast Keith Carradine a few more times.

THE BIG RED ONE (1980)

Born in 1912, Samuel Fuller started out working as a crime reporter when he was still a teenager, then got into writing pulp novels and screenplays, earning his first credit on a movie in 1936. When World War II broke out, he enlisted in the United States Army, where he was assigned as an infantryman to the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division. That meant he saw a whole lot of fighting in a variety of locations: Africa, Sicily, Normandy, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, and Germany. He was present at the liberation of a concentration camp in Falkenau. He reached the rank of corporal and was awarded the Silver Star, Bronze Star, Purple Heart, and Combat Infantryman Badge. All that, and there was only a two-year gap in his film writing credits during the years the U.S. was in the war (although a four-year gap followed). By the late ‘50s, Fuller was already planning to direct a film based on his personal experiences in World War II… but getting it into production turned out to be a twenty-year ordeal, due to studio issues.

When The Big Red One (which is the nickname for the 1st Infantry Division) finally started filming, Fuller chose Robert Carradine to play the character based on himself, young writer Private Zab, and to deliver the film’s narration. Lee Marvin stars as Possum, who was a Private when he served in World War I. By November of 1942, he’s a Sergeant, leading a squad of infantrymen into battle. This squad includes Carradine’s Zab, plus characters played by Mark Hamill, Bobby Di Cicco, and Kelly Ward. The theatrical cut of the film has a running time of 113 minutes and follows the 1st Infantry Division through a series of battles in the places Fuller himself fought, ending at the Falkenau concentration camp. It’s an action-packed movie, written with the tone of an old man who had seen some hellish things in his life and could no longer be fazed by much of anything.

The Big Red One wasn’t exactly what Fuller wanted it to be. His rough cut was four hours, he got it down to two hours, then the distributor made him cut it down to 113 minutes. Still, it’s one of the best war movies ever made – and if you want to see more of Fuller’s cinematic take on his own experience, there’s a “reconstruction cut” that adds nearly 50 minutes to the running time.

TAG: THE ASSASSINATION GAME (1982)

Four years after playing Michael Myers in the original Halloween and one year after he co-wrote the sci-fi action classic Escape from New York (both of those projects being collaborations with John Carpenter), Nick Castle made his feature directorial debut with TAG: The Assassination Game. Some describe this movie as an action comedy, others call it a college campus thriller, and the fact is that it has a little bit of everything. There is action and comedy, there are thrills, and there’s even a bit of romance between characters played by Robert Carradine and Linda Hamilton. Castle tends to present their interactions in film noir style, complete with a recreation of the “you know how to whistle” scene from the 1944 film noir To Have and Have Not, with Hamilton and Carradine in place of Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart.

The Assassination Game is being played by students on this particular college campus, and it’s just like it sounds. The idea is that each participant is pretending to be an assassin. They’re given the names of other participants and sent out to “assassinate” them with suction cup dart guns. The reigning champion is Loren Gersh (future Re-Animator star Bruce Abbott) – and when he’s taken out of the game in a ridiculous way, he has a complete mental breakdown and decides to hunt down his opponents with a real gun. While Gersh is knocking students off with real bullets, his biggest competitor, Susan Swayze (Hamilton) is racking up the “kills” with her dart gun, putting them on a collision course for climactic action. While heading for the championship, Swayze is also falling for fellow student Alex Marsh (Carradine), who works for the school paper and has introduced himself to her under the guise of covering this Assassination Game the campus has gotten swept up in.

Naming two major characters who get referred to by their last names such similar names as Gersh and Marsh was an odd choice in the writing process, but who am I to question Nick Castle? He made this an entertaining hodge-podge of genres.

WAVELENGTH (1983)

In the late 1970s, writer/director Mike Gray came up with an idea for a science fiction movie he wanted to make. He had it set up at Warner Bros., but then Close Encounters of the Third Kind came out and the studio scrapped Gray’s project because they felt it was too similar to Spielberg’s movie. A few years went by, and Gray managed to secure $1.5 million to film Wavelength independently… and found himself in a race against another Spielberg movie, E.T. The Wavelength team was hoping to get their movie released before Spielberg’s, but it took so long to finish the special effects that Gray’s movie came out more than a year after E.T. charmed the world – and seems to have been released directly into obscurity. One of the few times it has been referenced since then was when fans accused John Carpenter’s 1984 film Starman of stealing a space ship shot from Wavelength.

The film begins with musician Bobby Sinclaire (Robert Carradine) meeting a woman named Iris Longacre (Cherie Currie) in a bar and embarking on a relationship with her. When Bobby takes Iris back to his home, she hears strange noises emanating from a nearby military installation. Turns out, Iris is a twin, which makes her more sensitive to the telepathic messages being sent out by the alien beings that are held captive in the military base. Bobby and Iris set out to help these child-like creatures get back home.

Wavelength is an odd one, but it’s also a really good movie with a cool score, courtesy of Tangerine Dream. It deserved to get more attention than it has been given over the decades.

REVENGE OF THE NERDS (1984)

It may be the greatest accomplishment of Robert Carradine’s career that he’s best remembered for being a nerd, because the guy wasn’t a nerd until he landed the role of Lewis Skolnick in the 1984 comedy classic Revenge of the Nerds. He was a Carradine! He was a race car driver, a motorcycle enthusiast, a musician, and had dated Jamie Lee Curtis and Melanie Griffith. Before this movie, he was mostly playing cowboys, soldiers, football players, and cool dudes. (See him in The Pom Pom Girls, or as the hippie who has a threesome in Massacre at Central High.) And then he turned in the most iconic nerd performance of all time.

Directed by Jeff Kanew from a script assembled by Steve Zacharias, Jeff Buhai, Tim Metcalfe, and Miguel Tejada-Flores, Revenge of the Nerds tells the timeless and heartwarming story of outsiders standing up for themselves against oppressors, advocating for acceptance and self-pride. Like pretty much every ‘80s comedy, there are rough edges and elements that haven’t aged well, but it still holds up as a really funny movie populated with likeable characters.

Not only did Carradine return for all of the sequels – Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise (1987), Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation (1992), and Revenge of the Nerds IV: Nerds in Love (1994) – but he also teamed with co-star Curtis Armstrong to host a reality competition show called King of the Nerds, which ran for three seasons, from 2013 to 2015. In 1988, his nerd notoriety earned him a role in the Disney special Totally Minnie, where his character (named Maxwell Dwebb) gets a makeover from the animated mouse.

NUMBER ONE WITH A BULLET (1987)

The buddy cop action comedy Number One with a Bullet was one of the many cool movies made by the legendary company Cannon in the 1980s, and one that they fumbled on their way to their demise. One week before the buddy cop classic Lethal Weapon reached theatres, Cannon dumped their buddy cop movie onto 228 screens, allowing it to sputter out with less than $411,000 at the box office. Sure, this isn’t up there with the likes of 48 Hrs. or Lethal Weapon in the quality department, but it deserved better.

The film was directed by Jack Smight from a script that was crafted by Gail Morgan Hickman, Andrew Kurtzman, Rob Riley, and James Belushi. When he was working on the script, Belushi was also intended to co-star in the film – and it’s still clear in the finished film that the character of Nick Barzack, played by Robert Carradine, was meant to be Belushi. He feels very much like a Belushi character: he’s an irreverent fellow who lives on junk food (when he’s not eating raw steak) and beer (which he disguises as bottles of Coca-Cola), is always messing with the love life of his clean-cut, healthy-eating partner Frank Hazeltine (Billy Dee Williams), dodges calls from his mother (Doris Roberts), and basically stalks his ex-wife Teresa (Valerie Bertinelli). Despite the fact that Barzack’s behavior is appalling, we’re supposed to root for him, even when he wins back Teresa, who should be staying far away from him.

Barzack and Hazeltine are a pair of Los Angeles cops who are working to bring down a drug-running criminal kingpin – and while that endeavor takes up a lot of screen time and leads to plenty of action sequences, including one where a helicopter gunner opens fire on the small plane our heroes are in, and another where assassins in semi trucks attempt to smash Hazeltine in a junk yard, none of that is as interesting as watching Carradine play Barzack, a very unpleasant hero.

I SAW WHAT YOU DID (1988)

In 1965, producer/director William Castle brought us a cool little horror thriller called I Saw What You Did, about a pair of teenage girls who make prank phone calls to random people to say, “I saw what you did, and I know who you are.” Unfortunately for them, one of their prank victims happens to be a man who just murdered his wife, so they end up in serious danger. 23 years later, Universal Television decided to produce a TV movie remake of I Saw What You Did for CBS – and when you’re making a horror thriller involving phone calls, of course you would turn to director Fred Walton, who made the classic When a Stranger Calls in 1979.

While the set-up is the same, with Shawnee Smith and Tammy Lauren playing teen girls who make the bad decision to start making prank calls, screenwriter Cynthia Cidre switched up some of the details and wrote her own characters. Robert Carradine plays musician Adrian Lancer, who’s losing his mind and seeing hallucinations. When his girlfriend turns down his marriage proposal, he murders her – and then the kids call him up and say, “I saw what you did, and I know who you are.” So, he sets out to commit some more murders. Along the way, Bobby got to share some more scenes with his brother David, who plays Adrian’s concerned brother Stephen. The movie is a solid thriller, with the younger Carradine giving a good, off-kilter performance.

I have to note that Robert Carradine also gave a great psycho performance in one segment (the best segment) of the 1993 John Carpenter / Tobe Hooper horror anthology Body Bags, which paved the way for two more Carradine / Carpenter collaborations: Escape from L.A. (1996) and Ghosts of Mars (2001).

As you can see, I’m particularly fond of the work Carradine did in the ’70s and ’80s, but he continued working steadily through the ’90s and all the way up to the weeks before he passed away. Some examples: The Player, The Tommyknockers, ER, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Humanoids from the Deep, NYPD Blue, The Practice, Nash Bridges, Monte Walsh, Timecop: The Berlin Decision, Tooth and Nail, Jesse Stone: Benefit of the Doubt, Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda; Mommy, I Didn’t Do It; The Night They Came Home, and more. The man racked up 150 screen acting credits.

You can spot him in Django Unchained, a movie that would have made it onto this list if not for the fact that he’s only on screen for a few seconds (which is especially disappointing when you take into account the fact that Quentin Tarantino originally envisioned Carradine playing Clarence in True Romance). He had such a likeable screen presence, he could even make something like The Kid with X-ray Eyes unexpectedly easy to watch.

For the generation after mine, I have to give an honorable mention to the Lizzie McGuire TV show and its follow-up feature film. I have never watched the show, but the amount of people who know Carradine best for playing Lizzie’s dad Sam McGuire is right up there with the number of people who know him best as Lewis Skolnick. At attempt was made to revive the series in 2019, and it’s a shame that it fell apart over creative differences.

Robert Carradine was a great actor, and it’s a bummer that he’s no longer with us. His work will continue to endure, and there are a lot of projects on his list of 150 credits that I will keep going back to again and again. (And there are still some first-time viewings to take in as well.)

What are some of your picks for the best Robert Carradine movies? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

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