Obituary: Reginald Cheam
Horror film actor,
director and producer born 13 April 1935, Bootle died 31 October 2007,
Crouch End The death of Reginald Algernon “Algae” Cheam—apparently following a freak accident involving three different kitchen appliances—will not go unnoticed in the world of British cinema, especially since it offers a resolution to the mystery of Dolores Munro’s disappearance.Cheam is best, if still rather hazily, remembered for his roles in minor British horror films of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Nightmare Bats from Mars and The Thing from the Black Bog were hardly classics, and Cheam was unlucky enough to ply his trade in the long shadows of Lee, Cushing and Price in their prime. Rejected by Hammer Films as “too wee to be scary”, he had to make do with its poverty-row rival, Sickle Productions.
Following Sickle’s liquidation in 1975, Cheam turned to full-time drinking. His erratic behaviour on Parkinson led to him being banned after an appearance in 1976. Mercifully, most of Cheam’s contribution was edited out, but he could still be heard snoring through Kenneth Williams’ anecdotes, and a few frames showed his hands grabbing at Raquel Welch’s legs as he was dragged away—something he was to use later in The Hands of Father Sinister.
After that film’s failure, Cheam tried his hand at creature features in The Cabinet of Doctor Calamari. This was the first film he produced on his own, and its minor success was probably due to its female lead, Dolores Munro. Cheam had met her at RADA, and tempted her away from a successful season at the RSC playing Ophelia to Olivier’s Hamlet by means unknown.
A luminous star of stage and screen, Munro was once described as the Hartlepool Audrey Hepburn. Outsiders could never understand why, under Cheam’s Svengali-like influence, she wasted her talents on such substandard fare as Calamari or its even more pathetic sequel, Love Is a Many Tentacled Thing.
Fortunately, contractual disputes spared Munro an appearance in Chainsaw Slut Apocalypse, Cheam’s 1980 so-called “masterpiece”, which has still to receive a certificate from the British Board of Film Classification. Its commercial and critical failure overseas bankrupted him.
Cheam recovered his losses by becoming the face of a well-known salami sausage in a long-running advertising campaign. Its tagline of “You don’t have to be big to be scary” gave him enough resources to defend himself against allegations of involvement in Dolores Munro’s disappearance in 1989.
At the time, Cheam claimed that the smell of rotting flesh in the house was caused by his collection of orchids of the Bulbophyllum species which turned out to be true. However, it seems ludicrous now that the authorities were unable to search his house properly because officers had to keep going outside to
be sick.
Cheam’s final contribution to cinema was a series of Tartan Shorts, funded by Scottish Screen. Typically, this led to his arrest whilst making the self-penned Confessions of a Justified Window Cleaner. The sight of the elderly Cheam, clad in a red wig and capering about the Edinburgh rooftops, was too much for some Old Town residents. He was subsequently found guilty… two charges of breach of the peace and three of shameless indecency.
The auteur’s body was discovered after neighbours saw his Rottweiler, Colin, chewing a human ear. This led in turn to the discovery of Dolores Munro’s body in a freezer in the garage—partially decomposed, it would appear, as a result of an inability to pay his electricity bills on time.
A journal discovered in the master bedroom claimed that the actress had died of fright after Cheam had revealed himself to her in his “full satanic glory”. Early examinations appear to suggest that the actress died of heart failure. Her face, police sources say, “was frozen in an attitude of utter disgust”.
Cheam is survived by seven sons, all to other men’s wives, and his Rottweiler, Colin. His passing will be mourned by few, and certainly by none connected with the British film industry.
Andrew C. Ferguson
