MovieMorlocks.com – Richard Harland Smith

Richard Harland Smith

My grandmother Julia played piano in the Beckley, West Virginia silent movie house where my father Dick grew up watching the exploits of cowboy heroes Tom Mix, Buck Jones and The Three Mesquiteers. Raised in New England, I was a frequent attendee of the Danielson Cinema, built in 1900 as a playhouse and formerly called the Orpheum Theater. Due to my Dad's status as principal of our mill town's only high school, I was given a literal free pass to the movies and saw each new hit multiple times during its week-long run. Emancipated in my thinking and catholic in my tastes even by the age of 8, I would march the half mile to the Danielson Cinema to see such varied fare as DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE, AIRPORT, THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES' SMARTER BROTHER, RYAN'S DAUGHTER and THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE, initiating a cinematic education whose first term ended when the Danielson Cinema was destroyed by fire in 1978.

After obtaining a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre in New Haven, I moved to New York City to be an actor but switched gears to become an Off-Off Broadway playwright. My one act plays and full lengths have been performed at such varied Manhattan venues as The Grove Street Theatre, 29th Street Rep, Synchronicity Space, The Theatre-Studio, the Pulse Theatre, the Sanford Meisner Theatre, Raw Space and H.E.R.E. Performing Arts Center. In 2004, my wife and I relocated to Hollywood, where I currently write box copy, liner notes, talent bios and promotional material for several DVD companies and review DVDs for the Turner Classic Movies website. I am the author of several horror screenplays, am the former Euro-Cult film discussion moderator of the Mobius Home Video Forum and I have been a staff writer for Video Watchdog magazine since 1999. I'm a contributor to The Wallflower Press critical guides Contemporary North American Directors and Contemporary British and Irish Directors and to the upcoming Vampiros and Monstruos: The Mexican Horror Film of the 20th Century and The Book of Lists: Horror.

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Posts by Richard Harland Smith

Isn’t it SHOCKing?

Posted by Richard Harland Smith on May 25, 2012

If you are hooked up to the Internet you will, through no fault of your own and in inverse proportion to your native apathy or antipathy towards such things, have to sift through a gauntlet of celebrity gossip concerning people who have in their lifetimes achieved nothing beyond the dubious distinction of media focus. Why, [...]

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Remembering Woodrow Parfrey

Posted by Richard Harland Smith on May 18, 2012

I noted the death of Hollywood character actor Woodrow Parfrey with great sadness back in1984. Truth be told, I believe I learned of his passing the following year, with the publication of John Willis’ Screen World 1985, which cataloged every film (domestic and foreign) released in the United States in 1984 and concluded with a [...]

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Ten Habits of Highly Unsuccessful Film Geeks

Posted by Richard Harland Smith on May 11, 2012

I love film geeks. I love their obsessive affection for cinema, their need to see more, feel more, know more, understand more about their favorite films than anyone else, their gnawing compulsion to watch and rewatch, to freeze frame and grab, to study and mull, and to be transformed by the process, and to channel [...]

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What’s your logo?

Posted by Richard Harland Smith on May 4, 2012

My favorite moment in Charlie Kaufman’s ADAPTATION (2002) was when Nicolas Cage’s annoying alter ego, a dim-witted rival screenwriter, asks him “What’s your genre? Mine’s Thriller.” It tickled me to think of the world so divided, with each of us living, breathing, eating, and sleeping just one genre apiece. (Mine’s Horror.) Humanity is so diverse [...]

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Deriverance: Do parodies still rob genre film trends of their effectiveness?

Posted by Richard Harland Smith on April 27, 2012

My friend Mike Malloy is stealing my chair today to discuss one of my favorite subgenres: backwoods thriller and horror films. So pull up a stump and set a spell…

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The Tod Browning Version

Posted by Richard Harland Smith on April 20, 2012

At the 2012 TCM Classic Film Festival last week I got to revisit Tod Browning’s DRACULA (1931) … and fall in love all over again.

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Now I belong to the ages

Posted by Richard Harland Smith on April 13, 2012

The third TCM Classic Film Festival (aka The Turner Classic Movies Classic Film Festival Classic) got under way last night in Hollywood with gala festivities and some initial screenings (oi, THE WOLF MAN! On First Night!). Today is the first full day of the fest and as you read this I will be in the [...]

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Vampire’s Peak, or It’s Been Downhill Ever Since

Posted by Richard Harland Smith on April 6, 2012

The other day my 4 year-old son slapped a square of blue felt onto the top of his head and angled one corner down in line with the bridge of his nose. “Dad, look… I’m a vampire!” He had, of course, just approximated with devastating simplicity the classic “widow’s peak” that is synonymous with vampires [...]

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100 % Weird: Cult Kings & ‘Zine Fiends pick the Strangest Movies Ever Made!

Posted by Richard Harland Smith on March 30, 2012

Paul Gaita stands in for me once again, shaking out his Rolodex to bring you the weird and wonderful from his private collection of varied and sundry. -RHS The pursuit and study of cult and outré movies can be a bit like ocean diving – the deeper you go into the environment, the more bizarre [...]

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Master Class: Jonathan Rigby’s Studies in Terror reviewed!

Posted by Richard Harland Smith on March 23, 2012

Jonathan Rigby’s Studies in Terror: Landmarks of Horror Cinema (Signum Books, 2011) follows his genre overviews, English Gothic: A Century of Horror Cinema (Reynolds & Hearn, 2002) and American Gothic: Sixty Years of Horror Cinema (Reynolds & Hearn, 2007). While the earlier books focused on chronological histories of grotesque themes in British and American films, [...]

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