Borgnine on the Big Screen was Classic

His first one was in 1951, he played Bill Street in The Whistle at Eaton Falls but when he got the role of Sgt. "Fatso" in From Here to Eternity in 1953. From there he went on to actually even win an Oscar in 1955, imagine winning an Oscar four years after your first role, it was clear Borgnine had something.

For me there are seven movies of Borgnines that rank in my movies Rated BOOM. We'll work backwards in time going from newest to oldest.

1. Red starring Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Hellen Mirren, Mary-Louise Parker and Karl Urban with Borgnine playing Henry, the records keeper. While this is a personal cool one for me since I'm a huge Bruce Willis fan, the entire cast is amazing and Borgnine was 94 when he made this movie. 94!


2. Baseketball in 1998 Trey Parker and Matt Stone the creators of South Park created the film BASEketball, an insane weird over the top comedy with true South Park humor. Borgnine plays Ted Denslow the owner of a the BASEketball league. A sport that's a combination basketball and baseball, kinda like HORSE. Its a hysterical film, a classic, and if you haven't seen it and love dumb humor, you'll love this movie. 


3. Gattaca starring Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Jude Law, a weird quirky sci-fi movie a true classic of the 90s with some of the biggest stars of that era.

4. Escape from New York starring Kurt Russell as the icon Snake Plissken and Borgnine as Cabbie, if you haven't seen this classic, get off my page. This is another great movie of the 80s that some how lasts the test of time. Russell as Plissken is just priceless and really created a character that will forever be embedded in the history of movies.

5. Super Fuzz, if you haven't seen this one, I don't blame you. This was constantly on in the 80s on cable, and I must have seen it half a dozen times. It was about a cop that gets super powers but he loses them when he sees the color red. Its as bad as it sounds, but its one of those movies that's so bad its good.

6. The Poseidon Adventure, from 1972 with the incredible cast of Borgnine, Hackman, Red Buttons, Shelley Winters, Roddy McDowal, and Jack Albertson among others. This is a classic tragedy film of the 70s, like Towering Inferno and others The Poseidon Adventure however is by far one of the greatest films of all time, the rapport between Hackman and Borgnine is just fantastic. I could watch this movie once a week and not get bored with it. It was ahead of its time, its cast was all superstars and the effects for its time hold up today.

7. The Dirty Dozen, the original great war movie of a group of soldiers with whom movies like Rambo, The Expendables and others wouldn't be around today. Lee Marvin, Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, Richard Jaeckel and George Kennedy were the guys that gave us one of the toughest most bad ass drama war movies you will ever see.

In honor of Ernest Borgnine's passing, see if you can get these movies on Netflix or find an open Blockbuster. Or even head over to Amazon here and purchase any of these movies, you won't be disappointed.

In the words of Borgnine from The Poseidon Adventure:
"Alright! That's enough you!"