Speaking of his 1988 film SALOME’S LAST DANCE, the late Ken Russell said of its inimitable lead actress Imogen Taylor (then known as Imogen Millais-Scott) that “I don’t think anyone else has ever given her a job. She’s too strange, too unique.” The particulars of that claim may be negligible (Taylor was in fact given another acting job in the 1987 film LITTLE DORRIT, and has suffered severe health issues that have doubtless played a part in her dearth of film work), but Russell’s overall sentiment is a pertinent one: in the film world it doesn’t pay to be too unique.
Take Rosie Perez, whose turn in 1992’s WHITE MEN CAN’T JUMP was so distinct that seemingly every woman I knew back then took to imitating her mannerisms and speech patterns. Perez, unlike Taylor, has had plenty of subsequent acting jobs, but the uniqueness of her work in WHITE MEN… has never been matched. And then there’s Edward Harry Dezen, better known to us as Eddie Deezen.
This now 63 year old actor is one you simply will not mistake for anyone else. His is a voice that sounds like, to borrow a particularly on-target online description, “A nasal Woody Allen sucking on a helium balloon,” with facial expressions and mannerisms to match. Deezen is by his own admission “not super-talented or versatile,” but has a screen presence that’s entirely unique, and entirely compelling.
That presence was enough to justify his presence in Robert Zemeckis’s directorial debut I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND (1978), in which Deezen played one of six young Beatles nuts attempting to see their idols in person on the Ed Sullivan Show, circa 1964. Deezen’s performance, containing all the near-otherworldly quirks that would come to typify his screen appearances, was, according to the man himself, “Just me being me.”
Zemeckis and producer/co-screenwriter Bob Gale were evidently so taken with Mr. Deezen that they took the unusual step of writing him into their screenplay for 1941 (1979). From the opening page of an August 1978 draft: “We HEAR the sound of an air raid siren…and then the voice of EDDIE DEEZEN, yelling!” The director of 1941, Steven Spielberg, was likewise quite enamored with Eddie D. (judging by behind-the-scenes footage showing Spielberg doing Deezen imitations), but didn’t utilize him nearly enough for my tastes.
The orientation of Deezen’s subsequent film, the Disney comedy MIDNIGHT MADNESS (1980), was outlined by Disney’s then President Ron Miller, who in a pre-release interview promised “a Disney version of ANIMAL HOUSE” containing “some really wild stuff.” Among that “wild stuff” was Deezen, playing one of several college twerps looking to win an IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD inspired after-hours scavenger hunt, saying “there’s nothing like having one of these mean machines between your legs” (in reference to a moped).
The film’s writers/directors Michael Nankin and David Wechter did at least evince a good eye for offbeat performers. Paul Reubens (whose Pee-Wee Herman 
act and wardrobe, Deezen claims, were patterned on him) and the Thompson sisters Betsy Lynn and Carol Gwynn (known for a memorable GONG SHOW appearance and HAMBURGER: THE MOTION PICTURE) make appearances in addition to Deezen (all that was missing was a young Crispin Glover, who Deezen did in fact work with a few years later on an episode of FACTS OF LIFE), but are similarly underutilized.
MIDNIGHT MADNESS is much like 1941 in its overtly “zany,” mayhem happy aesthetic, and Deezen would seem to be the ideal performer for such an approach. This is to say that in both films the major problem wasn’t that Deezen was too weird but, rather, that everyone else wasn’t weird enough.
There’s been some controversy about REVENGE OF THE NERDS (1984) not featuring Deezen, but perhaps its makers were right to leave him out of the line-up. There are, after all, not too many other performers who can match him (the only viable example I can think of is Toby Radloff of KILLER NERD and AMERICAN SPLENDOR, whose mannerisms are so extreme that upon viewing the former film I was convinced he was exaggerating, when he was actually playing down his nerdiness). For proof check out the 2012 short I LOVE YOU, EDDIE DEEZEN, in which Deezen, playing himself, is pined after by a disenchanted nerdette (the film’s writer-director Sherry Mattson) who travels to Hollywood to meet him. The film is endearing enough, but crippled by the fact that Mattson is far too normal to justify a match-up with the screen’s foremost nerd.
Other noteworthy Deezen roles can be found in Randal Kleiser’s 1978 GREASE (Eddie’s debut) and its woeful 1982 sequel, and also WAR GAMES (1983). Beyond that viewers in search of Deezen appearances will have to go where Howard Stern once claimed Dan Aykroyd got his scripts: the garbage. Deezen’s unfortunate difficulty with remembering lines (for which he was fired from a recurring role in PUNKY BREWSTER), coupled with the fact that 1941, MIDNIGHT MADNESS and GREASE 2 all flopped, appear to have consigned him to the grade-Z realm for much of the remainder of his career.
SURF II (1983), which attained some minor popularity in my So Cal hometown (due to the fact that a great deal of it was filmed there), featured Deezen’s first “starring” role as a dweeb attempting to get revenge for the fact that he was administered a female growth hormone by bullies, resulting in the line “how’d you like to be the only guy in the school with tits?” Quality-wise the film is pretty much what you’d expect.
Deezen was also seen in drag near the end of DELTA PI (1984), the unfortunate acting debut of the late pop star Laura Branigan (understandably, she didn’t go much farther in that profession). About sorority girls who travel to Las Vegas to take part in a mud wrestling competition, it features Deezen as a dweeby tag-along who somehow ends up in a dress during the climactic mud wrestling match, but doesn’t take part (his having done so would require far more inspiration than this lame movie possesses). An equally promising possibility occurs in CRITTERS 2 (1988), in which Deezen, as a fast food restaurant manager, has his guise assumed by a shape-shifting intergalactic hunter of the eponymous critters. Of course the sequence doesn’t last very long.
It seems the makers of these movies had the same problems as those of GREASE, 1941 and MIDNIGHT MADNESS in casting Eddie Deezen. Even a promising turn in the 1987 Dino de Laurentiis production MILLION DOLLAR MYSTERY, in which Deezen took part in yet another IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD inspired scavenger hunt, this time as an incitement for an actual million dollar prize (the winner of which only got a fraction of the loot after de Laurentiis’s outfit DEG went bankrupt), feels overly perfunctory. Director Richard Fleischer (who Deezen has dubbed a “mean, vindictive little prick”) instead devotes a puzzling amount of screen time to unfunny ad-libbed banter by Rich Little as a survivalist and Kevin Pollack as a goofy cop.
Trashmeister Fred Olen Ray, at least, gave Deezen meaty roles in BEVERLY HILLS VAMP (1989), MOB BOSS (1990) and TEENAGE EXORCIST (1991). Those films, in which Deezen’s acting was accompanied by cartoon sound effects to enhance his nerdiness, were entirely in keeping with M
r. Ray’s filmography—i.e. they’re all completely worthless. I will, however, confess to a liking for BEVERLY HILLS VAMP, or at least its final twenty minutes, when Deezen, as one of a trio of wannabe actors stuck in a mansion packed with bloodsucking babes, becomes a most unlikely Fearless Vampire Killer.
Since the turn of the millennium the vast majority of Deezen’s film work has consisted of voice-over roles. KIM POSSIBLE, SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS and TRANSFORMERS are among Deezen’s vocal credits, as is a turn in the motion capture animated wonder THE POLAR EXPRESS (2004), directed by his old collaborator Robert Zemeckis. As for Steven Spielberg and Randal Kleiser, I’m not expecting them to be casting Deezen in any future film projects.
For that matter, he may not be doing any future projects, period. Deezen’s final film credit was in 2016, with recent health issues having taken a rather severe toll on his life and career (the hair-raising details of which are outlined in this Facebook post. Here’s hoping he feels better, but whatever happens I can say with certainty that Eddie Deezen’s cinematic legacy is secure.