With the Valentine's Day holiday coming up, horror fans will soon be revisiting director George Mihalka's classic 1981 slasher MY BLOODY VALENTINE… but this year viewings of the film will have a new touch of sadness to them, as the actor who portrayed one of the film's most memorable characters has passed away.
Actor Alf Humphreys was one of those Canadian actors who seemed to show up in pretty much everything that was shot in Canada. Over the course of thirty-two years, he racked up 120 credits on films and television shows, including FIRST BLOOD, The Twilight Zone, The X-Files, Millennium, The Outer Limits, Highlander, Sliders, Supernatural, FINAL DESTINATION 2, X-MEN 2, and THE UNINVITED. His second credit was on the 1980 horror film FUNERAL HOME, but more popular than that one is MY BLOODY VALENTINE, where he earned his fourth screen credit playing goofball prankster Howard.
Howard is a typical slasher character, but Humphreys worked to make sure his character would become one of the best goofball slasher types in slasher history. After you've seen his performance, it will come as no surprise to hear that Humphreys was once fired from a pre-acting job as a tour guide for "acting like a lunatic".
Before that tour guide job, Humphreys worked as an usher at the Odeon theatre in North Bay, Ontario, a job that was an extension of the passion he had for film and television for as long as he could remember. One of the films shown in the theatre during his usher days was 1972's THE VALACHI PAPERS, starring his childhood hero Charles Bronson. Just fourteen years later, Humphreys would be playing Bronson's son in the film ACT OF VENGEANCE – an experience he would go on to say was the most exciting moment of his career.
Born in 1953, Humphreys passed away yesterday due to brain cancer at the age of 64. He is survived by his wife, their son, and three brothers.
It's sad to have such a recognizable and likeable character actor taken away, but he left behind a lot of work that will continue to play out on our screens.