The genre that “depressed” Michael Caine so much he avoided it forever: “I vowed never to do another one again”
While it’s true that certain actors become indelibly linked with a particular genre, from John Wayne and westerns to Arnold Schwarzenegger and action via Robert De Niro and gangster flicks, it wouldn’t be much fun if they didn’t try anything else. However, once was more than enough for Michael Caine.
Since first breaking through with Zulu in the early 1960s, the cavalier cockney never met a movie he wouldn’t tackle at least once. For the next six decades, he flirted between drama, comedy, biopics, thrillers, blockbusters, superheroes, sci-fi, fantasy, and much more, but there was one notable omission.
The two-time Academy Award winner had such a miserable experience that as soon as the production wrapped, he made a solemn vow to himself that he’d never again set foot in the genre that had left him so depressed. There were 42 years between the movie in question and Caine’s swansong in 2023’s The Great Escaper, and he remained true to his word.
The star was game for just about anything, having recently plumbed the depths of psychological madness with a scintillating against-type turn in Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill. Deciding to strike while the iron was hot, Caine took things several steps further when he agreed to make his horror debut in Oliver Stone’s sophomore feature, The Hand.
In his memoir, What’s It All About, he explained his reasoning: “I did it for two reasons,” Caine said. “One, it was a horror film and I had never done one before, and two, the director was a young man making his first feature film who impressed me so much that I wanted to join his team.”
A widely panned box office bomb at the time, The Hand has since gained cult status, ironically for two reasons: one, it’s batshit insane, and two, Caine’s unhinged performance as a cartoonist whose disembodied hand embarks on a murder spree is an absolute delight.
“Although it was well made, I supposed it was just too weird to gain acceptance,” he mused. It did eventually, but not from its leading man: “I was surprised to find that I did not actually enjoy the physical act of making a horror movie; it depressed me, and I vowed never to do another one again.”
While Caine would go on to appear in several titles that contained elements of horror, like the infamous Jaws: The Revenge, Vin Diesel’s dismal The Last Witch Hunter, and the instantly forgettable Stonehearst Asylum, he was never again spotted in an out-and-out tale of terror, underlining himself as a man of principle.
Caine was so adamant he never wanted to be in another horror flick that he submitted it in writing, twice, in two different memoirs, which would have made it incredibly easy for anyone to call him out for being a hypocrite if he ever backtracked. Of course, he didn’t, and he probably had plenty of chances to go back on his vow, seeing as he amassed well over 100 credits by the time he hung up his performative boots for good.
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