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.
Posts by Richard Harland Smith

I don’t mean that literally, of course… it just feels that way sometimes, that there is a whole other side to Peter Cushing that no one ever talks about. Fans of the late and greatly missed actor are as one in their belief that the man was a consummate performer but it saddens me how […]

READ MORE

… that guys in movies will never again wear top hats.

READ MORE

We all know the drill: a mad killer, a disparate collection of potential victims, the first murder, then the second, a third follows, usually a fourth… and before you can say Jack Robinson the Ripper you’ve got yourself a good old fashioned stiff stack, a cadaver crop. A body count. We tend to think of […]

READ MORE

If I remember correctly I first heard about THE NAME OF THE GAME IS KILL (1968) in Michael J. Weldon’s The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, where Mike tagged it as “a weird one.” (He said more, but spoilers abound.) There was a beguiling accompanying photograph of star Susan Strasberg adoring a severed doll’s head, which […]

READ MORE

I hope you’ll forgive my absence from the blog today but I’m off covering the 4th TCM Film Festival in Hollywood. You can follow my reporting at the official festival website and live blog, where my Morlock brother Pablo Kjolseth, friends Jeremy Arnold, Stephanie Thames, John Miller, Nathaniel Thompson, and our bosses will be covering […]

READ MORE

And I quote… (In) 1973, a horror-porn film called SEXCULA went before the cameras. Costing something in the neighborhood of $85,000, SEXCULA was credited to a director named “Bob Hollowich” (actually John Holbrook, later thecinematographer of GHOSTKEEPER) and a producer named “Clarence Frog” (real name, Clarence Newfield). Holbrook is co-credited under his real name for […]

READ MORE

The consensus among Hammer horror fans and genre know-it-alls seems to be that Michael Gough’s performance in DRACULA (US: HORROR OF DRACULA, 1958) is the film’s one black mark, a detriment to what otherwise might be considered a perfect motion picture. The disdain generated by Gough’s contribution is best summarized, I think, by Jonathan Rigby, […]

READ MORE

Noir City, the annual festival of film noir, returns to the American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood and the Aero Theater in Santa Monica starting this Friday and kicking off three weeks of fate, fear, frustration, folly and femme fatales. I now quote from the official press release: “Whether you’re on the beat […]

READ MORE

It’s been long enough since I last wrote with any regularity for Video Watchdog that I feel certain I may speak critically of it without attracting charges of cronyism. I first contributed to the magazine in 1997, with an article on the black-and-white and 3-strip Technicolor versions of Michael Curtiz’ DOCTOR X (1932), and I joined its Kennel […]

READ MORE

These are exciting times for nerdish types such as myself. Here in the States, the Universal classic monster canon has been remastered recently for Blu-ray, teasing out details in the art direction of these seminal horror films that have long been obscured by nth generation revival house prints and substandard video tape and DVD transfers. […]

READ MORE
MovieMorlocks.com is the official blog for TCM. No topic is too obscure or niche to be excluded from our film discussions. And we welcome your comments on our blogs and bloggers.
Archives
Popular terms
3-D  Action Films  Actors  Actors' Endorsements  Actresses  animal stars  Animation  Anime  Anthology Films  Autobiography  Avant-Garde  Aviation  Awards  B-movies  Beer in Film  Behind the Scenes  Best of the Year lists  Biography  Biopics  Blu-Ray  Books on Film  Boxing films  British Cinema  Canadian Cinema  Character Actors  Chicago Film History  Cinematography  Classic Films  College Life on Film  Comedy  Comic Book Movies  Crime  Czech Film  Dance on Film  Digital Cinema  Directors  Disaster Films  Documentary  Drama  DVD  Early Talkies  Editing  Educational Films  European Influence on American Cinema  Experimental  Exploitation  Fairy Tales on Film  Faith or Christian-based Films  Family Films  Fan Edits  Film Composers  Film Criticism  film festivals  Film History in Florida  Film Noir  Film Scholars  Film titles  Filmmaking Techniques  Films of the 1980s  Food in Film  Foreign Film  French Film  Gangster films  Genre  Genre spoofs  Guest Programmers  HD & Blu-Ray  Holiday Movies  Hollywood history  Hollywood lifestyles  Horror  Horror Movies  Icons  independent film  Italian Film  Japanese Film  Korean Film  Leadership  Literary Adaptations  Martial Arts  Melodramas  Method Acting  Mexican Cinema  Moguls  Monster Movies  Movie Books  Movie Costumes  Movie locations  Movie lovers  Movie Magazines  Movie Reviewers  Movie settings  Movie Stars  Movies about movies  Music in Film  Musicals  New Releases  Outdoor Cinema  Paranoid Thrillers  Parenting on film  Pirate movies  Polish film industry  political thrillers  Politics in Film  Pornography  Pre-Code  Producers  Race in American Film  Remakes  Revenge  Road Movies  Romance  Romantic Comedies  Russian Film Industry  Satire  Scandals  Science Fiction  Screenwriters  Semi-documentaries  Serials  Short Films  Silent Film  silent films  Social Problem Film  Spaghetti Westerns  Sports  Sports on Film  Stereotypes  Straight-to-DVD  Studio Politics  Stunts and stuntmen  Suspense thriller  Swashbucklers  TCM Classic Film Festival  Tearjerkers  Television  The British in Hollywood  The Germans in Hollywood  The Hungarians in Hollywood  The Irish in Hollywood  The Russians in Hollywood  Theaters  Thriller  Trains in movies  Underground Cinema  VOD  War film  Westerns  Women in the Film Industry  Women's Weepies