rhsmith
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 rhsmith

The great thing about Christmas is that it’s yours to do with whatever you like.  Some people just can’t abide the holidays and my heart goes out to them.  I understand.  I’m an atheist, a secular humanist, a realist, at times even a cynic.  I get how galling the prefab mirth [...]

READ MORE

There are a sackful of ways to celebrate, or at least appreciate, Christmas but as I grow older and less dependent on the acquisitive bells and whistles of the Yuletide I grow more interested in the holiday as a popular meditation on the challenges presented to our collective sense of perception.  Hymns and carols through [...]

READ MORE

I’m not talking about real hippies because I never knew any.  By the time I was of an age to identify and disparage lifestyle choices, all the good hippies, the real hippies, were gone… off to their ashrams or their turnip farms or serving life sentences for murder, and all that was left was a [...]

READ MORE

Have you ever looked at a word with which you’ve been familiar all your life as if you were seeing it suddenly with new eyes… and it just looks weird?  I had that experience yesterday with the word “thing.”  Isn’t the word thing… well, a thing?  It says nothing, and yet it says it all. 

READ MORE

I have many things about which I feel thankful this year.  I’m thankful for the love of my wife, for the gift of my two children, for the continued health of my family through some trying times, for my circle of close friends, cohorts and cronies, for an interest in something that has sustained me [...]

READ MORE

In the spring of 1993, I spent ten very happy days in Rome.  It was my first trip abroad and I was the guest of a friend of a friend, an architect who owned a sprawling apartment in the heart of Old Rome.  Walking out of the door of his place on the Piazza Aracoeli, [...]

READ MORE

When I was a kid in wool knickers and a collarless shirt, hitching rides on the trolley and selling “papes” with my fellow newsies… wait a minute, why is Morlock Jeff’s life flashing before my eyes?  That was weird.

Anyway, when I was a kid, a child of the 70s during the trouble-free days of the [...]

READ MORE

I could never imagine actually being beaten up by Robert Ryan and yet I’ve always been a little afraid of him – and never more so than when he smiles. 

READ MORE

With All Hallows Eve just a day away, I thought I’d reverse the bitter tone of last week’s post and embrace my inner MonsterKid… and talk about the things that put the Happy back in Happy Halloween.  Better than talking, I’m going to sing about them, to the tune of that immortal Richard Rogers classic [...]

READ MORE

I sometimes wonder why I’m a horror fan.  Can I be the only MonsterKid, the only TerrorGeek, the only FrightFreak who thinks 95% of every title included in the genre is crap?  That’s how it seems on some days, invariably after I’ve watched something new.  My wife and I were very excited to get Sam [...]

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  Actors  Actors' Endorsements  Animation  Anthology Films  Awards  Books on Film  British Cinema  Character Actors  Chicago Film History  Cinematography  Classic Films  College Life on Film  Comedy  Comic Book Movies  Czech Film  Dance on Film  Digital Cinema  Directors  Disaster Films  Documentary  Drama  Early Talkies  Editing  Educational Films  European Influence on American Cinema  Exploitation  Family Films  Film Composers  film festivals  Film Noir  Film Scholars  Filmmaking Techniques  Food in Film  Foreign Film  French Film  Gangster films  Genre spoofs  Guest Programmers  HD & Blu-Ray  Holiday Movies  Hollywood lifestyles  Horror  Horror Movies  Icons  independent film  Italian Film  Martial Arts  Melodramas  Method Acting  Mexican Cinema  Monster Movies  Movie Books  Movie locations  Movie Stars  Music in Film  Musicals  Outdoor Cinema  Parenting on film  Polish film industry  political thrillers  Pre-Code  Producers  Race in American Film  Remakes  Road Movies  Russian Film Industry  Scandals  Science Fiction  Screenwriters  Semi-documentaries  Silent Film  silent films  Social Problem Film  Sports  Sports on Film  Stereotypes  Studio Politics  Suspense thriller  Swashbucklers  Television  The British in Hollywood  The Hungarians in Hollywood  The Russians in Hollywood  Theaters  Underground Cinema  VOD  War film  Westerns  Women in the Film Industry  Women's Weepies