 A bald-headed actor with intense, staring eyes, associated with nervy, unstable characters, Donald Pleasance was briefly a railway worker, made his stage debut in 1939, and returned to stage after WW2 service in the RAF. He began to appear in TV drama in the '50s, including 1984 (BBC, 1954), and as Prince John in Robin Hood (ITV, 1955-57). In film character roles from 1954 (he was never going to be a handsome leading man), he was excellent as grave-robber Hare in The Flesh and the Fiends (d. John Gilling, 1960) and in two 'B' film roles: a timid accountant in The Big Day (d. Peter Graham Scott, 1960), and the weak father devoted to his pet rabbits in The Wind of Change (d. Vernon Sewell, 1961). He was a perfect Dr. Crippen (d. Robert Lynn, 1962), and, in The Caretaker (d. Clive Donner, 1963), reprised his acclaimed stage performance as the tramp Davies. In Roman Polanski's bizarre, darkly humorous Cul-de-sac (1966), he played an ineffectual husband, living in isolation on Holy Island, finally left weeping and hunched on a rock as the tide moves in. After The Great Escape (US, d. John Sturges, 1963), he appeared in US films regularly, notably in Halloween (US, d. John Carpenter, 1978), the success of which made him a horror specialist, often in low-budget films, many of the shlocky Italian slasher variety. He was excellent as saintly Rev. Harding in TV's The Barchester Chronicles (BBC, 1984), reminding viewers he was capable of more than gore and horror. He was awarded an OBE in 1993, and his daughter is actress Angela Pleasence. Roger Philip Mellor, Encyclopedia of British Film
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