Recent Obituaries, Classic Films Only

Switching between westerns, comedies and thrillers, McKinney was seldom called upon for more than a few minutes of screen time but had the seasoned character actor's knack of making a memorable first impression. In Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), the first of his seven films with Eastwood, he appears as a gibbering driver with a caged raccoon by his side and a boot full of white rabbits. He was subsequently cast as the bloodthirsty Terrill, who oversees the massacre of Eastwood's family in The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976); as an oily, sex-crazed constable coolly ridiculed by Locke in The Gauntlet (1977); as a biker in a horned helmet, almost outclowning Clyde the orangutan in Every Which Way But Loose (1978) and its sequel, Any Which Way You Can (1980); as a one-handed circus performer whose shotgun act has misfired, in Bronco Billy (1980); and as a seen-it-all-before barman in Pink Cadillac (1989).

These thumbnail sketches were usually variations on a theme: southern good ole boys gone bad, men with moonshine on their breath and malevolence in mind. McKinney was mostly used as a comic foil for the perennial straight man Eastwood. But as zany as some of his performances were, there was often an undercurrent of genuine menace, especially for viewers who had seen him in John Boorman's Deliverance (1972).

Besides its duelling banjos soundtrack, Deliverance remains most famous for a queasily protracted scene in which McKinney (credited as Mountain Man) and Herbert "Cowboy" Coward (Toothless Man) set upon a couple of city slickers (played by Ned Beatty and Jon Voight) who have taken a wrong turn on a canoeing trip in the deep south. The wild-eyed, rotten-toothed Mountain Man brandishes a knife, taunts Beatty's character, forces him to undress and then rapes him, demanding that he "squeal like a pig" – perhaps one of the best-known lines in 70s cinema.