5 Great Villain Actors from “Tango & Cash”
I recently rewatched 1989’s “Tang & Cash” on Tubi before it left the platform. I think everyone should rewatch this film at semi-regular intervals. In fact, congress should make this a law. Join me in writing to your representative to make this happen!
Anyhoo, “Tango & Cash” is an awesome action movie starring Kurt Russell and Sylvester Stallone as top L.A. cops who are framed for corruption and murder. They must escape prison and shoot their way through the criminal underground in order to clear their names. “Tango & Cash” is often critically lambasted as ridiculous and cartoonish, but that’s exactly what makes it such a fun and charming action film.
I’m a big fan of the actors who played the villains. Some of the best bad-guy actors in Hollywood at the time participated in this film. Russell and Stallone are always great, but its their standoffs with these amazing villain actors that make the film a real treat. Here are five of those great villain actors from “Tango & Cash”.
Robert Z'Dar as Face
The film begins with Ray Tango (Stallone) winning a game of revolver vs. tanker truck chicken against Face (Robert Z’Dar) and another crook. Both end up flying through the front window at Tango’s feet. Tango then exposes a secret load of coke they were hauling and Face goes to prison. Tango is reunited with Face in prison after he and Gabe Cash (Russell) are framed, and Face is none too happy. The psycho has a bone to pick with Tango for breaking "his ribs, his leg, and his jaw".
After some prison fighting and enduring some electrocution torture by Face, the framed cops finally reach the roof where Cash ziplines outside the prison walls. Just as Tango is about to follow, he’s suddenly attacked by Face. In the end, Tango defeats him by knocking him into a transformer and Face meets a gruesome demise via electrocution. Poetic justice served.
Face wants some payback on Tango and Cash!
Robert Z'Dar was born on June 3, 1950, in Chicago, Illinois. As an actor, he carved out a niche for himself in the world of B-movies and cult classics. His most distinctive feature was his massive jawline, the result of a genetic condition called cherubism, which causes excessive bone growth in the lower face. This unique physical characteristic became his trademark and contributed to his memorable on-screen presence. Throughout his career, Z'Dar was often typecast in roles that capitalized on his imposing appearance, portraying villains, henchmen, and tough guys. He gained widespread recognition for his portrayal of the eponymous character in the 1988 action-horror film "Maniac Cop" which spawned two sequels. He appeared in numerous films in the 80s and 90s including the B-movie mega-classic," Samurai Cop" (1991).
Some interesting facts about Robert Z’Dar:
The stage name “Z’Dar” is a shortened, modified version of his full name “Zdarsky”.
Z’Dar’s most notable role is as the undead killer police officer in the “Maniac Cop” trilogy. Z’Dar was a Chicago cop in real life for a time before acting.
Robert Z’Dar was a musician. He was a singer, keyboardist, bass guitarist and performed with bands Nova Express and Z-Rock. He also wrote ad jingles for the Leo Burnett and J. Walter Thompson ad agencies
Robert graduated from Arizona State University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. He also played football there.
Z’Dar was a Chippendale’s dancer for a brief time.
We lost Robert Z'Dar on March 30, 2015, at the age of 64 but his legacy and iconic contributions to cult cinema will always be remembered.
Marc Alaimo as Lopez
We see Westside Mexican mafia boss Lopez (Marc Alaimo) and his associate conferring with the white-suited mega boss in a limo as they pass by their tanker truck drug run thwarted by Ray Tango. They are vexed and want the super cops Tango and Cash dead because the do-gooders are costing their operation a lot of money. Lopez and associates later visit the big boss Perret in his lair. Lopez doesn’t understand why they don’t kill the officers and be done with them. The game-loving big boss insists they must discredit the heroes. When his plan is successfully executed, Lopez still “can’t appreciate these games you keep playing”. He’s probably right to be a bit annoyed and worried. When Tango and Cash escapes prison, Lopez tries to insist on not relying on the police to capture them, to which he is harshly reprimanded.
Later, during Tango and Cash’s super-truck assault on the criminals’ compound, Lopez attacks the officers with a machine gun. However, because this is an 80s action movie, his bad guy bullets are unable to meet their target. He is promptly blown away in an office surrounded by 80s computers. But just when they think he’s down, Lopez reemerges and lands a “clean exit” shot on Cash who takes a bullet for his pal Tango. Tango then finishes Lopez with a hail of more bullets.
Lopez is not amused with all the games.
Marc Alaimo was born on May 5, 1942 in Milwaukie, Wisconsin. Most remember him best from his role as Gul Dukat, the complex antagonist in "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine." With his depth and complexity, many Trekkies (including myself) consider Dukat the best Star Trek villain of all time. Interestingly, Alaimo played a space mob boss named Rogor in the film “Arena” which was released the same year as Tango & Cash in 1989. Rogor is very similar to the character of Gul Dukat. Before his recurring role in DS9 , March Alaimo was a prominent television actor, often playing roles in action shows and cop dramas such as “The Fall Guy”, “T.J. Hooker”, “Hill Street Blues” and “Cagney and Lacey”.
Some interesting facts about Marc Alaimo:
Marc has played six distinct roles in ten different seasons in the Star Trek television franchise: two humans, two Cardassians, a Romulan and an Antican.
He was nicknamed "The Neck" by his fellow Star Trek actors. In fact, his distinctive neck influenced the look of the Cardassian alien race.
Marc Alaimo is the father of Michael Alaimo, a television producer of the shows “The Closer”, “Major Crimes”, “Frequency” and “The Brave”. Marc and his son share the same birthday, May 5th.
Marc Alaimo was a director of theater productions.
James Hong as Quan
Quan (James Hong) is the Triad mafia boss. He is Lopez’s chain-smoking counterpart on the Eastside. While Lopez has to deal with Tango, Cash has costed Quan’s turf $60 million dollars in guns, drugs and other enterprises. That would be over $150 million in today’s money! That’s a lot of Cash (see what I did there?) Quan seems initially pleased when learning of the plan to frame and incarcerate the star police officers. This smug felicity soon turns to paranoia when Quan hears about their escape from prison. “Mr. Perret,” he says. “This is most disturbing. We are being threatened by two maniacs! I think we must take some action.” He’s then reprimanded by Perret for “thinking”.
Quan’s anxiety is not misplaced! When he teams up with Lopez to defend the criminal compound against Tango and Cash’s invasion, he takes a stream of machine gun bullets through a glass window in an epic action movie death scene.
Quan is concerned about the loss of $60 million in “Cash”.
James Hong is a Hollywood legend. We’ve written and podcasted about him before. James Hong was born on February 22nd, 1929 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. James has been in the news recently for joining his colleagues at the “Kung Fu Panda 4” premiere, and for being immortalized with a monument at the TCL Chinese Theater in Los Angeles.
Some interesting facts about James Hong:
James Hong was in four films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. Two are 1980s films: “Airplane!” and “Blade Runner”.
James Hong has over 450 credits to his name! He is quite possibly the most prolific actor in English language cinema.
His big break was when he appeared on Groucho Marx's game show “You Bet Your Life” in 1950 while working as an engineer in Los Angeles. He did popular impersonations of Groucho that later landed him an agent.
Check out James Hong and other Asian American actors from the 80s and 90s in this article.
We talk about James and other Asian American actors from the 90s on our review of "The Perfect Weapon".
Brion James as Requin (AKA “Ponytail”)
Requin, AKA “Ponytail” (Brion James), is Perret’s henchman and courier. With his thick Cockney accent and imposing figure, Requin is always around when some dirty work needs to be organized and executed. Requin leads Tango and Cash’s “welcoming committee” or “surprise party” at the prison where he threatens to cut Cash’s throat with a straight razor. Cash declares he’d rather be killed by an American jerkoff, not a “limey, immigrant jerkoff”.
After the guys escape from prison, they catch up with Ponytail and take him to a roof. They dangle him off the building to get him to reveal his boss’ name is to no avail. Since “Plan A” didn’t work, they go to “Plan B” and tape a hand grenade to his mouth. Tango and Cash then perform a superb performance of “good cop - bad cop”, frightening Requin into giving Yves Perret’s name as the main crime boss.
Once they make it to Perret’s lair during their raid, Requin appears, holding Tango’s sister (and Cash’s potential future girlfriend) Kiki (Teri Hatcher) hostage. With his own “Plan B” grenade taped to her neck, the cops surrender. Yet, in typical 1980s action movie style, Requin and his associate forgo just killing their enemies with the guns they have. No no, that’s not manly enough so they engage in hand-to-hand combat. Just as it seems Requin is getting the upper hand, Cash blocks a punch and reveals a grenade. “We never talked about ‘Plan C’ asshole,” he says. Cash releases the grenade pin with his middle finger, shoves the bomb down Ponytail’s pants and uppercuts him down the stairs.
This time, it wasn’t a dud. BOOM!
Requin is short on words.
Brion James was born February 20, 1945, in Redlands, California. In this humble blogger’s opinion, he was one of the best supporting character actors in the business. Brion grew up in Beaumont, California where his parents owned and operated a movie theater. After graduating from San Diego State University with a major in theater arts, he moved to New York to study acting. Brion James has over 200 television and film credits. I remember him most for his role as the strong but emotionally immature replicant Leon in “Blade Runner” (1982). He was also General Munro in “The Fifth Element” (1997), which was the only time he played a good guy. These are just a few notable roles, but if you were to pick a large enough sample of 80s and 90s films, he’d likely have starred in at least one.
Sadly, we lost Brion too soon in 1999 at the age of 57 but he left us a legacy of hundreds of awesome roles.
Some interesting facts about Brion James:
Brion James and James Hong worked together before on the set of “Blade Runner”. Brion played the vengeful android Leon Kowalski, and James Hong portrayed Hannibal Chew, a replicant eye designer. Their characters would have on-screen deaths in both “Blade Runner” and “Tango & Cash”.
Brion made pals with Rutger Hauer on the set of “Blade Runner”. They made three other movies together including “A Breed Apart” (1984), Paul Verhoven’s “Flesh+Blood” (1985), and “Precious Find” (1996).
Brion James appeared posthumously in five movies after his death.
Jack Palance as Yves Perret
Initially unknown to Tango and Cash, Yves Perret (Jack Palance) is the game-loving uber-boss in charge of all the crime they are fighting. “These two cops are driving me crazy,” he tells Lopez and Quan in his limo passing buy Tango’s tanker truck drug bust. Later, when Lopez and Quan visit him in his very 1980s bad guy lair, complete with neon lights, Perret is reviewing footage of multiple busts the cops made on his multi-television video wall lamenting, “Oh I’ve had enough of this!”
Lopez and Quan state that it would be much quicker and easier to just kill them. Perret replies, “Yes, quick and easy is how you make a cake, or clean a toilet bowl, or shop by mail. But quick and easy is not how you run a multi-million business such as ours!” Perret then reveals two rats (he says they’re mice, but they look like rats to me) from a box representing Tango and Cash as he catalogs how much money they’ve costed him. “Why make martyrs out of them?” he asks. Perret proposes that, instead of killing the star officers, they play a game only they can win. He places the rats in a maze he has embedded in his bar. That’s right, this villain has a rat maze in his bar. He comforts his associates by revealing his plan to discredit and confine the cops while they take their largest shipment of contraband yet.
The plan to frame Tango and Cash works and the dishonored cops go to prison. They first encounter Perret as a figure in the shadows, surrounded by prisoners who want their revenge. The two survive the assault and escape from prison, hatching a plan to raid Perret’s compound with a sweet 1980s gun truck. As the two shoot and fight their way to the top, they make it to Perret holding Kiki hostage in a hall of mirrors a la “Enter the Dragon”. Yup, in addition to a rat maze imbedded in his bar, Yves Perret has a hall of mirrors. During Perret’s epic villain monolog, Tango somehow know which of the reflections is the real one. The guys agree to take him alive by shooting knee caps, but end up “accidentally” shooting Perret in the head.
He probably should have just let Lopez and Quan kill them the “quick and easy” way to begin with. But what’s the fun in that, right?
Game lover Yves Perret holds Kiki hostage in his own “Enter the Dragon” style hall of mirrors.
Jack Palance is one of the most prominent villain actors in film history. Jack was born “Volodymyr Ivanovich Palahniuk” to Ukrainian immigrants on February 18, 1919, in Lattimer Mines, Pennsylvania. Jack Palance started his acting career in the late 40s and has ~125 credits to his name. Some other notable villains Palance portrayed in the 80s and 90s were L.G. Murphy in “Young Guns” (1988) and boss Carl Grissom in “Batman” (1989), both of which also met their end with a bullet. Jack Palance would win his first Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role as rugged cowboy Curly Washburn in “City Slickers” (1991). He famously broke out into one-armed pushups during his award acceptance speech. I also have keen memories of his tv commercial spots in the 1990s, especially for Mennen's Skin Bracer Aftershave. I thought that, if Skin Bracer was good enough for Jack Palance’s manly face, it was good enough for me!
"Confidence is very sex, don't you think?"
We lost Jack on November 10, 2006 at the age of 87.
Some interesting facts about Jack Palance:
Palance was a pro boxer, fighting under the name “Jack Brazzo” before joining the Army Air Force during WWII to train as a B-24 Liberator bomber pilot. He suffered head and facial injuries as a result of a crash in 1943 and underwent reconstructive surgery. Jack sure is a good looking guy for a former boxer and crash victim!
Jack was an artist and poet. He painted landscapes and each piece included a poem on the back. He authored a book of poems called “The Forest of Love” in 1996.
Jack Palance starred in many westerns but became a real cowboy later, maintaining a 1000-acre cattle ranch in California's Tehachapi Mountains. It seemed he really liked the cows though, because he stopped eating red meat altogether.
Kurt Russell and Sylvester Stallone are great to watch as an action star duo in “Tango & Cash”, but it’s the ensemble of fantastic villain actors that make this film a real treat. Who is your favorite villain actor from the movie? Let me know in the comments below. With that, I leave you with this quote:
“When the one Great Scorer comes to write against your name, he'll mark... not that you won or lost... but how you played the game. What bullshit!”
— Yves Perret, ‘Tango & Cash’ (1989)
Our friend Katie discusses "Tango & Cash" on the Retromade podcast.
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