Ken Terrell

He did occasional outside work, such as an appearance in The Mummy's Hand at Universal, and appeared in B-westerns such as the Jimmy Wakely vehicle Song of the Range; during the 1940s, Terrell's one appearance in a major movie was in a small role in George Cukor's Winged Victory, based on the play by Moss Hart. Terrell didn't get acting roles with decent screen time until the mid-'50s, after leaving Republic, when he was cast in a succession of roles in several low-budget science fiction/horror films. His rough-hewn features and dark eyes allowed him to convey fear, villainy, or concern in equal measures, and to play anything from thugs to army officers, just as his bit roles had him cast as everything from Arab assassins to town drunks. In Jack Pollexfen's The Indestructible Man, he played Joe Marcella, the nervous one of the three hoods being hunted down by a super-strong resurrected murderer Lon Chaney Jr.; in Nathan Juran's The Brain from Planet Arous, he played the army colonel who gets burned to a cinder by alien-possessed John Agar and, in his best and longest part in a feature, in Juran's Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, he plays Jess, the loyal valet to victim Allison Hayes. Terrell had a small role, mostly involving stunt work, in Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, and made his last screen appearance in the Vincent Price vehicle The Master of the World. He died of arteriosclerosis in 1966. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide