The voice of horror

Two great things about this TV commercial for The Amityville Horror: First, it ends with "Now playing at a theater or drive-in near you." When was the last time a movie ad said anything about drive-ins? Exactly. Second, the voice-over announcer is the late, great Percy Rodrigues, aka the "voice of horror."

Rodrigues also had a long career in front of the camera, including guest roles in genre programs like Star Trek, The Man from UNCLE, Mission: Impossible, Planet of the Apes (the TV series), and The Starlost.

Probably his most memorable vocal performance, however, was as the Loknar in Heavy Metal.

Culture Shock 01.20.11: Voice-over announcers are unsung heroes (it's harder than it sounds)

Long after he alienated almost every producer in Hollywood, Orson Welles became even more infamous for taking almost any acting job that came along.

Welles was hoping to funnel some extra cash into his growing list of unfinished movies. He never did. But he did leave behind some interesting artifacts, among them his hammy TV commercials for winemaker Paul Masson. Outtakes from one ad surviving on YouTube feature an obviously inebriated Welles fumbling his lines, when he remembers to say them at all. Had he been sampling the Paul Masson on set? Maybe not. As the story goes, the company later fired Welles, but only after he announced on television that he never drank their product.

Yet Welles could make just as much of an impression without appearing on camera. In his later years, he was an in-demand voice-over performer, lending his authoritative baritone to everything from commercials for frozen peas and documentaries about Nostradamus, to his final role as the planet-sized robot Unicron in 1986's animated "Transformers: The Movie."

Welles, who died before the film's release, described his "Transformers: The Movie" role as "a big toy who attacks a bunch of smaller toys."

Meanwhile, outtakes from Welles' commercials for frozen peas, frozen fish sticks and frozen hamburgers are making the rounds. And if there is one thing I've learned about voice-over artists, it's that they're never happy with the writing.

"This is a very wearying one to read — unrewarding," Welles complains in one outtake after having given his director a long dissertation on the impossibility of beginning an English sentence with the word "in" and emphasizing it.

And later in the same outtake: "But you can't expect me to emphasize the word ‘beef!' That's like wanting me to emphasize ‘in' before ‘July!' Come on, fellas, you're losing your heads!"

Few voice-over announcers, however, have Welles' notoriety. They're unsung heroes whose voices surround us, but their names and faces are anonymous except to a few devoted fans, like the ones who successfully lobbied for Peter Cullen to reprise the role of Optimus Prime, which he originated in the 1980s "Transformers" TV cartoon, in Michael Bay's live-action movies.

And as easy as it may seem to sit in a sound booth and read from a script for a living, the voice-over outtakes you find on the Internet make it seem anything but. It's not all Morgan Freeman calmly discussing the habits of penguins, that's for sure.

Even before there was a YouTube, outtakes from the cartoon series "Thundercats" were causing a minor storm, if for no other reason than it was odd to hear the voices of familiar cartoon characters flubbing their lines and wondering what the bleeping bleep they were talking about.

Which brings me to the outtake that inspired this column in the first place.

The late Ernie Anderson, who died in 1997, was one of the greats. He started out on local TV in Cleveland, where he also was the influential horror-movie host Ghoulardi. But in the late 1960s, he moved to Hollywood, where he eventually became the voice of ABC, including serving as announcer for "America's Funniest Home Videos" and "America's Funniest People."

So it came to pass that "America's Funniest People" gave birth to the greatest voice-over outtake ever.

Apparently confronted with the worst script he has ever read, Anderson struggles to slog through, argues with his director and lets loose the most blistering stream of profanity ever caught on tape.

The YouTube video is titled "Ernie Anderson Out Takes ABC." But be warned: It's not safe for children, pets, small woodland creatures or people who think "The Lawrence Welk Show" is a bit racy.

Doing voice-overs is hard work — something to remember when next an anonymous voice reminds you about that very special episode of "90210."

That announcer guy from the movies dies at 68

In a world where a movie’s opening weekend could mean the difference between a blockbuster or a flop, one man held the key to box office gold.

You probably don’t know his name, and you probably never saw his face, but you know his voice.
Don LaFontaine was the voice of Hollywood. Not just any voice, but  “a deep voice that sounds like a 7-foot-tall man who has been smoking cigarettes since childhood,” as he put it when parodying himself in a movie trailer for “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

But that voice fell silent Monday, when LaFontaine died of complications from a lung-related illness. He was 68.

Still don’t know who I’m talking about? If that’s the case, I have three words for you: “In a world.”
With those three simple words, LaFontaine became more than a man, more than a voiceover artist, more than the Picasso of movie marketing hyperbole. He became a legend.

In a gravelly baritone that made even romantic comedies seem ominous, LaFontaine narrated more than 5,000 movie trailers and more than 350,000 television commercials, according to his Web site. Some of his best known trailer voiceovers include “The Terminator,” “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” and “Batman Returns.”

LaFontaine’s voice was everywhere, as was his “In a world …” catchphrase, which became such a running gag that he parodied it himself, playing “that announcer guy from the movies” in a TV commercial for GEICO insurance: “In a world where both our cars were totally underwater …”

In a 2007 interview, he explained why he came up with his “In a world…” gimmick.

“We have to very rapidly establish the world we are transporting (the audience) to,” he said. “That's very easily done by saying, ‘In a world where ... violence rules.’ ‘In a world where ... men are slaves and women are the conquerors.’ You very rapidly set the scene.”

In a world where you have only 60 seconds to grab people’s attention, LaFontaine was king. He redefined what it meant to be a voiceover announcer. So, if he wasn’t narrating a particular trailer for some upcoming movie, nine times out of 10, it was someone who sounded a lot like him.

Probably his closest competitor in the voiceover business was the somewhat mellower East Coast announcer Hal Douglas, who for years was the voice of Miramax, A&E, The History Channel and The WB. Before The WB merged with UPN to become The CW network, you could always count on Douglas to alert you to that “very special episode of ‘The Gilmore Girls’ ” airing later that night.

In one of those showbiz twists, Douglas probably has gotten just as much mileage out of “In a world…” as LaFontaine did, which is why they’re both known, depending on whom you ask, as the “In a world” guy. And when Jerry Seinfeld wanted to parody over-the-top movie trailers in the trailer for his 2002 documentary “Comedian,” he turned to Douglas, who dutifully rattled off such movie clichés as “In a world,” “In a land,” “In a time” and “In a land before time.”

In 1997, LaFontaine and Douglas teamed with four other voiceover artists for the short film “5 Men and a Limo,” which was shown before the 26th Annual Hollywood Reporter Key Art Awards and satirized each artist’s various catchphrases.

“5 Men” is now a popular video on YouTube, as is a short film about LaFontaine himself, “Don LaFontaine: The Voice,” which opens with LaFontaine solemnly intoning these words:

“Throughout history, man has marveled at the vast complexity of the universe. Without a single unified voice, humanity has been left searching for answers to the unknown. Now one man has the power to change that and to spread his voice across the Earth for all of mankind to hear. One man — me!”

In a world without Don LaFontaine, the movies are going to seem a lot less exciting.