<< This, the metal-mouthed menace Jaws, is the character most movie-goers around the world associate with Richard Kiel, the character from Bond movies 'The Spy who Loved Me' and 'Moonraker'..however, while such a classic role has guaranteed Kiel celluloid immortality, the actor has been on the cinema scene for a long time, and his partas Golob in the classic 1979 Italian Space-opera 'The Humanoid' remains his only leading-man role, and possibly his greatest accomplishment.


Here's what our 7ft 2, 315 pound and size 17-shoed golliath had to say on his finest hour.... 
"The Humanoid is  a $5million film..its very charming,a good story that nobody can mess up. Its such a strong story..a robodog,and a little boy..The Wizard of Oz, in outer space. Kind of what Star Wars might have been..Im not really comparing the two films, just saying The Humanoid has maybe a stronger storyline than Star Wars..The Humanoid's strength is not based on special effects alone.The effects are there..they're done by some of the people who did Superman and Star Wars.They spent a lot of money on them, but they're not relying on the effects.Here's where you have a good story,surrounded by special effects, rather than the effects being the entired film. Golob is victimised..I'm a protagonist again. Golob is a space sailor,just doing his job up there in outer space, with a Robodog to keep him company.He has this big brother image..not the 1984 image, more like any kid's big brother. When he's changed, his world isn't totally taken from him. The leaders of his world remove the sensors implanted in his wrist by the villain-the control-and then Golob is on their side,and ends up being a major factor in overthrowing the evil forces.The film ends with a full sunset shot,walking off to the sequel bit..Its another family film, really.It has fantasy and everything, and theres a kind of subtle romance between Corinne Clery and myself.At the end, I think you'll feel that Golob isn't going to be so much of a loner. He's found friends. It's a very good part for me."
"Barbara Bach plays the evil one, Lady Agatha..she chose the more dramatic of the two female roles.It required more acting than just being another beautiful heroine again.Arthur Kennedy is the power-crazed villain, hes very good..

Re:The complexities of Italian movies....

The big diference here was control,It was the Titanus company's interest in getting into the English-speaking market.It's difficult to make a film just for Italy these days and still make any return (or break even) on the original investment.So this film was pre-sold to a major television network in America.It was pre-sold to Colombia for European release and to America-International in the States.And that meant a lot of conditions.It was not to be a typically spaghetti Star Wars.It had to have a quality that the American and English audiences expect. I've seen some of the film and, again, its not an effects movie.The effects are just there.This is a story.It's about people.And it happens to take place in the future.So it needs special effects to achieve that look, and it looks pretty good.We had some difficulties.For instance, we tried to shoot it with direct sound,which is a departure for the Italians, who post-synch all the dialogue in their films,as you probably know.Very difficult to shoot direct sound.You tell an Italian that he can't make a noise on the set and he doesn't understand..
My conditions were having total script approval. But I'm not an unreasonable person, so I didn't have any problems in that area. The Director, George B Lewis
( his real name by the way is Aldo Lado ) is keen on becoming a world-wide director, not just another Italian film-maker. When I gave him a four page synopsis on my feelings towards my character of Golob, he jumped up and down with joy. There were a lot of ideas he hadn't considered, some of these sparked him off to other ideas - and they fitted in with what I had in mind. We got on fine. He was just delighted that, you know, I cared...."

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