Under the Radar: Dick Miller

 

Quite possibly the most famous non-famous actor in the history of cinema (especially if that cinema was in the form of a grindhouse or drive-in theater), Mr. Miller was NOT born on this day in 1928, as I reported when this post first appeared (I offer an explanation to Shady in the comment section) but on Christmas Day of that year. The post stays up anyway, in the off-chance he was also born in a manger under an unusually large star. Now to the matter at hand. Appearing in what in the latest tally is an astonishing 180 movies, more often than not in bit parts, by the end of the 20th century Miller had become a favorite of directors who felt his five-to-ten-minutes cameos gave their films a certain back alley hipness. In the following clip, the Great Man himself talks about his surreptitious rise to cult stardom:

He played both a Cowboy and an Indian, and got to shoot himself? Now who would have him do that?

Why, this enterprising young filmmaker, that's who! Unfortunately, I can't show you that Miller-shooting-Miller scene (unless I show you the whole hour-and-a-half movie), but since Robert Corman above is known more for his science-fiction and horror films than his westerns, I'll instead give you this clip from 1957's Not of this Earth:

Such is the fate of the B-movie bit player, always getting offed by this monster or that alien, but sometimes even bit player gets to star in a classic all his own:

  

  I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz 

OK, Mr. Ginsberg wasn't talking about a movie when he composed the above lines, but still, it's as good as any a description of this particular one:

Written by Corman's main screenwriter of that period, Charles B. Griffith (the exploitation film's answer to Ben Hecht), 1959's A Bucket of Blood is both a humorous look at the Beat Movement and a genuine horror movie that seeks to cash in on 1953's House of Wax, with corpses-as-statues instead of corpses-as-mannequins. But the biggest difference between the two films is whereas the villain of Wax is an appropriately sinister Vincent Price, the villain of Blood doesn't seem much like a villain at all! Miller's Walter Paisley is just some poor schnook who stumbles his way into committing acts of real evil. You've heard of the bad guy you love to hate? This is the bad guy you feel sorry for, the psychopathic murderer that just couldn't get a decent break. There but for the grace of Satan goes I. A Bucket of Blood came and went (while still making a profit, thanks to its shoestring budget.) As with The Little Shop of Horrors, another Corman-Griffith collaboration, Blood's real effect was on a later generation of filmmakers, who likely caught both films in that cultural safety net of last resort, television. As a kind of tribute to this movie, Dick Miller would be asked to play a character named Walter Paisley five more times throughout his career. Though it technically wasn't the same Walter Paisley each time out, that's still more often than Daniel Craig played a character named James Bond.

A Bucket of Blood having failed (at least in the short run) to make him a star, Dick Miller went back to supporting roles, and not just on the big screen but...

...the small one as well.

 

The names have been changed to protect the innocent...from embarrassment.

Joe Dante got his start editing trailers for Roger Corman, which of course meant he spent much time watching Dick Miller. In 1976, Dante and Allan Arkush codirected Hollywood Boulevard, a satire of Corman's budget-conscious New World Pictures (for Corman's budget-conscious New World Pictures.) For the second time in his career, Miller plays a character named Walter Paisley, only now he's not a murderer, just a... 

...Hollywood agent, which has its own body count.

Remember this place? They say the Kindle drove it out of business, but I don't buy it. I think it would still be around if only an employee named...

...Walter Paisley had been recommending the reading material. From 1981's The Howling, directed by the aforementioned Joe Dante.

Speaking of aforementioned, I'd like to retreat back in time for just a second to remind you of this film, 1960's The Little Shop of Horrors. In it, Miller plays Burson Fouch, a man who likes to eat flowers (as compared to the film's main attraction, a flower that likes to eat men.) I would have loved to have shown you a clip from it, but the only one I could find was dominated by the man in the cap, actor Jonathan Haze (for just cause, as he played the movie's main character, Seymore Krelborn.) The man with the beard is Mel Welles, and the lithe young woman on the left is Jackie Joseph. In 1984... 

...Miller and Joseph were reunited during the filming of...

...Gremlins. Once again directed by Joe Dante, he gave Miller a break from the Walter Paisley moniker, and now plays a character named Murray Futterman, and Joseph is his wife Shelia.

You have to squint a bit, but as this chart illustrates, Joe Dante gave Miller a lot of work over the years.

Not that other filmmaker didn't take notice of Dick Miller's talents. The same year Gremlins came out, James Cameron had Miller perform this memorable cameo in The Terminator:

Perhaps instead of memorable, I should have said In Memoriam.

 Remember Fame? First it was a movie, then a TV series that ran for a number of years in the 1980s (which reminds me: RIP Morgan Stevens.) Seasons four through six, Dick Miller played Lou Mackie, the proprietor of a local diner where the students of the fictional New York City High School of the Performing Arts liked to hang out. In this clip Miller gets to do something that he was never asked of by American International or New World Pictures--perform a little song and dance:

That scene might have worked better had the Three Stooges sang backup for Miller.

It's Roger Corman again, this time with wife Julie, who is a producer in her own right. In 1986, she asked that audiences pay a visit to the... 

...Chopping Mall. Yes, Dick Miller is once again snuffed out, but that's just in keeping with family tradition.

Sixty years of bit parts add up, and as a result, Dick Miller received much recognition late in life. Still, you may want to ask:

Well, Dick Miller may have never received an Oscar, but in 2014 he was awarded...

...the HorrorHound Weekend Lifetime Achievement Award. Frequent employer Joe Dante was on hand to bestow the honor.

Corman and Miller also stayed in touch over the years.

Finally, on this day in 2019: