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

“Pleasant dreams… heh heh heh heh…”

Posted by Richard Harland Smith on September 23, 2011

For years, I was unsure as to whether SH! THE OCTOPUS (1937) was a real movie. Long before the IMDb, when all I had to go by was the odd reference book and the occasional muttered remark, I convinced myself that this Warner Brothers-First National release was bogus, the celluloid equivalent of urban myth. Maybe [...]

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Eye caramba!

Posted by Richard Harland Smith on September 16, 2011

Often shortlisted as one of the greatest science fiction movies of all time, Larry Buchanan’s THE EYE CREATURES (1965)… nah, I’m just messing with you. Nobody says it’s one of the greatest science fiction movies of all time. Some would argue that it isn’t really science fiction; others might suggest it doesn’t deserve to be [...]

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“Remember Buck Rogers?”

Posted by Richard Harland Smith on September 9, 2011

The nifty indie outfit Synapse Films has released the grindhouse classic THE EXTERMINATOR (1980) in an extended (gorier) director’s cut as a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack. Though the care and professionalism that the Michigan-based outfit has brought to bear since it was founded in 1996 have always been conspicuous in their obscure and cult film acquisitions, [...]

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“A fancy name for multiple murder!”

Posted by Richard Harland Smith on September 2, 2011

In honor of James Coburn’s birthday yesterday, and my own birthday tomorrow, I’m going to talk a bit about one of his more obscure projects – the Allied Artists thriller THE INTERNECINE PROJECT. I first heard about the film when it was included in John Willis’ Screen World 1975, as a foreign feature picked up [...]

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Motorin’ … or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love a Bomb like DAMNATION ALLEY

Posted by Richard Harland Smith on August 26, 2011

In 1977, 20th Century Fox released a big-budget, star-studded science-fiction extravaganza and a cheap piece of crap chock-a-block with nobodies. The cheap piece of crap was George Lucas’ STAR WARS, which cost the studio a measly $9,000,000 and could boast among its cast no big names, unless you counted Debbie Reynolds’ daughter and the guy [...]

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Diagnosis: Moxie – Joan Blondell in NIGHT NURSE (1931)

Posted by Richard Harland Smith on August 19, 2011

During her first full year in Hollywood, Joan Blondell made 15 films! The former Miss Dallas and WAMPAS Baby Star had just come off of the Warner Brothers-Vitaphone production THE PUBLIC ENEMY (1931), starring James Cagney. Blondell and Cagney had met on Broadway the previously year, in William Keighley’s short-lived production of the Marie Baumer [...]

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Forgiving Leonard Maltin

Posted by Richard Harland Smith on August 12, 2011

If you love movies, particularly horror, science fiction, fantasy, European, cult, Psychotronic, obscure, rare and anything other than THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, CASABLANCA and DUCK SOUP, then at one time or another you have wanted to bust Leonard Maltin right in the kisser. I know I have.

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It’s almost Ann Dvorak Day!

Posted by Richard Harland Smith on August 5, 2011

Christina Rice is a Los Angeles-based librarian, film historian and new mother who is currently writing a biography of Hollywood actress Ann Dvorak (1911-1979) while maintaining the website Ann Dvorak: Hollywood’s Forgotten Rebel. This busy lady was kind enough to spend a little time with me on what would have been Dvorak’s 100th birthday in [...]

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Warts and all

Posted by Richard Harland Smith on July 29, 2011

Few horror movies scream summer quite like FROGS (1972). Released in the spring of 1972, the film was poised midway between Alfred Hitchcock’s proto-revenge-of-nature thriller THE BIRDS (1963) and JAWS (1975) but took its direct inspiration from WILLARD (1971), in which rats wrecked havoc at the behest of a societal malcontent. WILLARD beget its own [...]

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Streep v. Huppert: Ultimate Grudge Match!

Posted by Richard Harland Smith on July 15, 2011

To be honest, I’m not really suggesting that Oscar-winning American actress Meryl Streep has any kind of grudge against César-winning French actress Isabelle Huppert, or vice versa. It’s just that I’ve been thinking about their respective careers lately and it seems to me that stating a preference for one over the other says a lot [...]

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