John F. Goff rates highly as an extremely prolific, versatile and
shamefully underrated jack of all trades in the delightfully
down'n'dirty annals of 70s Grade B exploitation cinema. He was born on May 24 and was raised on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi in the small town of Kreole. Moreover, John attended Mississippi Southern College on a scholarship.
Big and burly,
with gray hair, a gentle twangy voice, and an engagingly low-key
manner, Goff bears a striking resemblance to a beefy Hal Holbrook. John
decided to forsake a promising athletic career to pursue acting instead
while attending college. He started acting in summer stock stage
theater productions and wrote movie reviews for both "Variety" and "The
Hollywood Reporter" prior to becoming involved with the film business.
Among Goff's most memorable roles are one of Ralph Meeker's vicious
flunkies in the brutal revenge potboiler "Johnny Firecloud," Millie
Perkin's vile abusive and alcoholic sea captain father in the deeply
disturbing "The Witch Who Came from the Sea," an excitable railroad
worker in the nifty sci-fi item "The Alpha Incident," a helpful
psychiatrist in Al Adamson's "Nurse Sherri," the Nashville music
producer who gets punched in the mouth by Gary Busey in "The Buddy
Holly Story," a redneck hunter in "The Capture of Bigfoot," a doomed
fisherman in John Carpenter's splendidly spooky "The Fog," a sleazy
lawyer in "Maniac Cop," a sarcastic police psychiatrist in "Relentless"
(Goff reprised this part in the first sequel), the arrogant alien at
the newsstand who's rude to Roddy Piper in "They Live," and Tracy
Griffith's weary rancher dad in "Skeeter." Goff has sizable supporting
roles in the first two notoriously nasty "Ilsa" pictures: he's the Nazi
prison camp guard who gets his throat cut wide open in the original and
an oil sheik in the second one. Goff has done guest spots on the TV
shows "L.A. Law," "The Dukes of Hazzard," and "The Big Valley."
Moreover, Goff and his longtime best buddy George "Buck" Flower
appeared in dozens of enjoyably trashy movies together; they even play
brothers in both "Berserker" and "The Devil and Leroy Bassett." The
dynamic drive-in flick duo of Goff and Flower collaborated on the
scripts for "Death Falls," "In Search of A Golden Sky," "Joyride to
Nowhere," "Drive-In Massacre," and "Teenage Seductress." Goff has
co-written screenplays for the Matt Cimber features "Fake-Out,"
"Butterfly," "A Time to Die," "Hundra," and the recent "Miriam." Goff
often has small roles in Cimber's movies as well. Goff also co-wrote
the script for William Lustig's entertaining action romp "Hit List" and
pops up in a small part as a prosecuting attorney. In addition to his
substantial acting and writing credits, John F. Goff has worked as a
grip on two Cimber films and handled second unit director chores on
both "My Boys Are Good Boys" and "Bad Georgia Road."