Very few people’s careers start with someone abandoning their car at the corner of Hollywood and Vine and shouting, “We need you for a movie!” On the other hand, there are very few people whose first movie is Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, so it all works out. I guess it’s nice that something came out of the movie. Not that I’ve seen it, you understand. (Though you could pay me enough if you contribute to my Patreon or Ko-fi!) Still, I can imagine seeing Carel Struycken and knowing right away that you needed him for a movie, especially if you didn’t worry about whether he could act or not. To my knowledge, that’s not something anyone involved in Sgt. Pepper would worry about.
Struycken has acromegaly, as did Ted Cassidy, whose role he reprised. It makes Struycken seven feet tall. This means he’s played two characters solely known as “The Giant,” one known as “The Titan,” “The Brute,” “The Monster,” “Tall Monster,” “The Stranger,” “Gregor the Giant,” “Lester ‘Gargantuan’ Smith,” and even “a big, ugly Polynesian fella.” Which is strange for a man whose family is from The Netherlands and who was born in The Hague. And, frankly, is not ugly. Unusual-looking, sure, but not ugly.
The three roles I, personally, think of him from are all in fairly rapid succession. Obviously, one of those Giant roles is from Twin Peaks. He was Lurch in two Addams Family movies. (And, eventually, a made-for-TV movie that I’ve never seen because no Raul Julia.) And, for our purposes here, he was also Mr. Homn, Lwaxanna Troi’s manservant. As Mr. Homn, his job was to be tall, silent, and competent. He didn’t even have the emotional range of Lurch, who also doesn’t talk. Still, those episodes wouldn’t have been the same without Homn’s looking presence.
His Lurch, on the other hand, was given much more emotional range than I remember from Cassidy’s version. That’s no slam on Cassidy, of course. It’s all about the writing. Struycken was expected to do more. No, you don’t get the plot where suddenly he’s a harpsichord superstar. But his reactions to things is a lot of the comedy in the movie. The movies are so exquisitely cast, and Struycken is very much part of that. Sure, he was a seven-foot-tall guy who looked right in the quasi-Frankenstein makeup they put him in, but also he’s a skilled actor.
The Giant from Twin Peaks might be the only role I’ve seen him in thus far where he speaks—well, I haven’t gotten to Doctor Sleep yet. Therefore it is the only role where his native accent appears, or at least I assume that’s just his normal voice. But since it’s the only role I’ve seen him in where he speaks, I wouldn’t know. He’s a multi-talented man—he’s done some writing, some directing, some composing, some art. He has a brother who’s an acclaimed artist. It seems Struycken has a voice worth hearing.
