"Bill McKinney, the actor who played one of crazed mountain men in Deliverance and famously ordered one particularly unfortunate camper to 'squeal like a pig,' died Thursday at the age of 80." Michael O'Connell for the Hollywood Reporter: "A prolific artist up until his death, McKinney's career included dozens of film credits (including 7 Clint Eastwood titles) and appearances on television series such as In the Heat of the Night, Baywatch and Walker, Texas Ranger." But as O'Connell notes, McKinney will always be remembered for his role in Deliverance as "Mountain Man" — and didn't seem to mind. His own official site is Squeal like a pig.com, where you're greeted by the "man that Leonard Maltin described in his review of the movie Deliverance as, 'one of the most terrifying film villains in history.'"
"But it was his long association with Clint Eastwood after the two costarred together in 1974's Thunderbolt and Lightfoot that landed him yet another in a long line of great cinematic sickos," writes Josh Grossberg at E! "McKinney earned critical plaudits two years later playing Captain Terrell, commander of the Red Legs in the film legend's acclaimed Western The Outlaw Josey Wales, which Eastwood also directed. McKinney then went on to join the latter's stock company, dubbed the Malpaso Players, and appeared in four more of Clint's movies: The Gauntlet, Bronco Billy, Any Which Way You Can and Pink Cadillac. McKinney's other film credits include Don Siegel's The Shootist starring John Wayne, First Blood, Against All Odds, Back to the Future Part III, and The Green Mile."
Update, 12/8: "Many of Clint Eastwood's hit films of the 1970s and 80s were made with a stock company of distinctive supporting actors," writes Chris Wiegand in the Guardian. "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."
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