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"That Guy Dick Miller" "A Bucket of Blood," and "Psycho"

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
16 replies | jump to latest

Ok, this is borderline OT..but not entirely. The "Psycho" connection to "That Guy Dick Miller" comes early in the Dick Miller career.

"That Guy Dick Miller" is a straight-to-streaming documentary about the multi-decade movie career of "that guy, Dick Miller."

He started in Roger Corman movies, and we have reason to believe that, along with Sunset Boulevard, Diabolique, and House on Haunted Hill, Roger Corman movies helped inspire Hitchock to make Psycho -- on the cheap, black and white horror.

In 1959, one year before Psycho came out (and evidently released around the time that Psycho was going into production, so it couldn't have been a DIRECT influence), Dick Miller got one of his only leading roles in a movie called "A Bucket of Blood." Now there's a title that even beats Psycho for horror statements.

"A Bucket of Blood" was filmed in four days. This strikes me as incredible and yet I know that Corman shot movies like that all the time -- and in fewer days, too(like "The Terror" , whipped up for Boris Karloff when he had a few contracted days left after finishing the more upscale "The Raven" for Corman. And oh, a "Raven" co-star named Jack Nicholson was in that too.)

I watched "Bucket of Blood" some years ago with this thought in mind: reviews of Psycho in 1960 often said it had "arguably the most violent murder ever filmed"(the shower of course, though the staircase one is pretty slash-in-the-face brutal too.) Arguably? I've spent many years looking at pre-1960 movies to see if one had something more brutal than the shower murder. And I don't THINK I've found it yet.

And yet..."Bucket of Blood" comes close. For the plot has nerdy Beatnik bar employee Dick Miller making clay sculptures out of his own murder victims(shades of 1953's House of Wax), and those murders ARE pretty brutal(if filmed too quick and cheap to match the shower scene.) The first victim is inadvertent -- a cat trapped behind the wall; Dick pushes a knife into the wall to help drive the cat out, and ends up killing it. The cat ends up as a sculpture WITH THE KNIFE still in the cat.

A male victim gets his forehead split open with a frying pan -- HIS sculpture has a deep crevice in the head. A female victim gets strangled -- its a bit Frenzy-ish.

And near the end, Dick Miller elects to kill a total stranger -- a guy working a buzzsaw -- because he needs a new victim fast, and acquaintences are out of supply. Its a scene of horror because its so ARBITRARY...the victim has no idea why he is being killed (buzzsaw blade to head, offscreen, ala Arbogast on the floor.)

The murders are not bloody at all, just quick and brutal. But we are reminded that cheapjack movies WERE doing a Psycho-level shock around the time that Hitchcock noticed and took the whole thing up to 11.

The very next year, Dick Miller was offered the lead in a movie called(after a change) "Little Shop of Horrors." Yep, that very famous title(with the famous retro musical and 1986) came out in 1960, the same year as Psycho. Miller turned down the lead and recommend his friend Jonathan Haze(then a young Jerry Lewis type) and that movie was filmed in...TWO DAYS? But it got famous with that plant demanding "FEED ME." (Haze kills victims for the plant much as Dick Miller killed his victims for his "art.")

Also famously in "Little Shop of Horrors," Jack Nicholson comes in to play a hayseed goofball who submits to a dentist's worst drilling because he gets off on the pain(Bill Murray hilariously took this part in the 1986 film.)

So you could say that "A Bucket of Blood," and "The Little Shop of Horrors" are yet more pieces in the mosaic of the "50's/60's cusp horror movies" that gave us Psycho as "the big one." But the little ones have their own creepy charms.

Flash forward from the early sixties to the mid-80's. Dick Miller -- a rugged, tough guy handsome New Yorker who definitely has a character guy's memorable face -- is suddenly "in vogue" for short parts. Spielberg's protégé Joe Dante put Dick Miller into ALL of his 80's movies: Gremlins 1 and 2(the first a true blockbuster and Miller's most famous movie?) , Explorers, Innerspace, The Burbs -- and one glorious 1993 movie, "Matinee" (in which John Goodman plays 1962 William Castle under another name -- hating being compared to Hitchcock and in Key West to debut his new movie just as the Cuban Missile Crisis comes along.)

The documentary has one great outtake from The Burbs. A group of characters are standing in a group. They include Tom Hanks, Bruce Dern...Dick Miller...and Young Corey Feldman, who by his own admission on the doc, was high most of the time. These actors are trying to get the take and Feldman keeps jumping up and down and singing songs.

It falls to Dick Miller to set Feldman straight: "Shut the F up kid. We're trying to do some acting here!" When Dick Miller tells you that .. you shut the F up. We don't get to see how Hanks and Dern react.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Dick Miller is also the gun shop owner who sells "The Terminator" a super-rifle. Arnold loads the gun with bullets in front of Dick Miller, who says "Hey, you can't do that in here." Arnold says "wrong," blasts Dick Miller into the wall. A very short, but VERY memorable Dick Miller scene.

The best bit of trivia in "That Guy Dick Miller" comes as we meet his wife. They've been married 55 years, they're a very handsome couple in their 80's...and we learn that Mrs. Miller has a very famous role to her own name: the stripper who keeps swinging her tassels into Katherine Ross's face in "The Graduate." Talk about a memorable scene in a blockbuster.
But Dick Miller in his youth was a fit, tough, handsome guy who merited a hot body wife...they made a good match in beauteous youth and a funny match in loving old age.

We learn this, though: between the ultra-low paying Roger Corman films and the lucrative cameos of the 80's, Dick Miller just barely hung on in the decades in between. His wife did some more acting, too. And somehow they made it through. Two "hotties on the fringe of Hollywood," the man becoming a legend, his wife something special , too.

I was very happy when I finished "That Guy Dick Miller." It was a 200 movie tour of that kind of career.

(Oh, one bit of sadness though: they showed the scene Dick Miller had in Pulp Fiction that was CUT: he was "Monster Joe" the junk car lot King. He had a scene with the great Harvey Keitel as Mr. Winston Wolf. I couldn't hear the dialogue in the brief snippet but hey -- Dick Miller did a QT. Its good to know.)

"That Guy Dick Miller" was made a few years ago. Dick Miller has since died, age 90. A pretty good and long life for a "struggling actor."

[–] swanstep (2640) 4 years ago

Dick Miller is also the gun shop owner who sells "The Terminator" a super-rifle.

I *love* Miller in that scene. He's really good with Cameron's hard-boiled dialogue: 'Hey, just what you see Pal.' I'm sure that that's what got QT interested in him for Pulp Fiction.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I *love* Miller in that scene. He's really good with Cameron's hard-boiled dialogue: 'Hey, just what you see Pal.' I'm sure that that's what got QT interested in him for Pulp Fiction.

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Miller seemed to just suddenly "appear" in the 80's. Joe Dante was his biggest fan, it seems, and also, it seems, he was noted by James Cameron. I'm guessing Cameron -- who also cut his teeth on some cheapo 70's genre films, was aware of Miller from somewhere.

Its rather like the sudden resurgence of Bernard Herrmann scoring the films of DePalma and Scorsese in the 70's. They knew how good his work had been for Hitch and others, they knew Hitch had fired him unceremoniously off of Torn Curtain -- they wanted to give Herrmann " a second act."

In Joe Dante's "Matinee" of 1993, the short and wiry Miller is paired with a very tall and muscular man who turns out to be John Sayles, famous maker of many an indie movie "back in the day." Sayles seems to have enjoyed the opportunity to get in front of the camera to do a "Mutt and Jeff" routine with Miller. Their characters are great -- "Moral crusaders" protesting the newest "Lawrence Woolsey horror movie" (John Goodman plays Woolsey, a William Castle clone). Turns out that Woolsey himself hired the two guys to protest outside the theater, to drum up publicity(and a family of left wingers who were against the horror buy tickets to defy the "protest.")

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I've seen Pulp Fiction many times, and the unseen character "Monster Joe" (who runs a junkyard where you can smash up cars with bodies in them for the Mob) is part of the Pulp Fiction legend. We meet Joe's DAUGHTER(played by SNL alum Julia Sweeney), who seems to have a relationship with Winston Wolf himself(Harvey Keitel.)

To have learned, just a few days ago, that "Monster Joe" got his own scene -- with Dick Miller playing him -- was a revelation. I guess QT cut the scene for a reason. I'll try to look at the brief snippet again...I could barely hear the dialogue over the narrator's voice.)

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[–] jasonbourne (1027) 4 years ago

I see what you did there. Dick Miller didn't work with Hitchcock. Probably signed to a different studio, but he seems like a guy who is well remembered for his scenes and could just come in and do his scene and leave. IOW, he was a pro, so could have played a scene in Rope, for example, and we would remember his role. Hitch would've probably liked that and I can see him using Dick Miller. In Terminator, which seemed like a cheap movie for the time, he did a great job. He had more lines than, "Hey, you can't do that in here," but that's what he's remembered for. I can see him doing that cold and in one take. They may have to get that, "Wrong" by Arnold a few times so he's blown away just right -- https://youtu.be/X1hLe8rSir0

I think the guy who worked with Corman and also Hitch was Ray Milland. I don't know how he was able to do that though.

[–] swanstep (2640) 4 years ago

I think the guy who worked with Corman and also Hitch was Ray Milland. I don't know how he was able to do that though.

It's easy to go from working on A-list productions to working on C- or D-list productions - just go out of fashion, get old, fall onto the C-list oneself, etc.. It's the *other* direction that's normally tricky. Bruce Dern is the best example: he did AH Presents + Marnie for Hitch, then Wild Angels + The Trip for Corman, then Family Plot for Hitch again.

Note too that while Milland almost certainly needed to be hurting for work & cash to work for Corman on The Man with X-ray Eyes, the film's *quite good* and it's a great looking, polished piece of work. Corman was at his best around then, and Milland ended up with a role and a film he could be proud of.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I see what you did there. Dick Miller didn't work with Hitchcock. Probably signed to a different studio,

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Indeed, Dick Miller didn't work with Hitchcock(well, in movies -- perhaps he had a bit on a TV show)...and that different studio was ...whatever Corman called his outfit. "Corman Pictures," maybe?

The most famous star to arrive out of Corman Pictures was Jack Nicholson. I recall reading that Nicholson had made about 14 movies in Hollywood with nobody caring...because they were all Corman movies and his full pay for all of them TOGETHER was about $10,000. But somehow these movies positioned Nicholson to be "ready" in 1969 when Rip Torn quit Easy Rider and Nicholson got the role and stardom. (Nicholson also rather famously hitched up with, of all people, The Monkees, co-wrote their one movie, "Head" and developed a friendship with their director Bob Rafelson that led to Five Easy Pieces. Hollywood!)

Meanwhile, Dick Miller did NOT catch fire like Nicholson, but held on(I guess he worked in a lot of 70's schlock) and Joe Dante and James Cameron were waiting in the 80's.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

but he seems like a guy who is well remembered for his scenes and could just come in and do his scene and leave.

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That was his claim to fame as "somebody you want to hire"; that and a funny, tough presence(I say he was handsome, but also a little geeky looking especially as he grew older).

In the documentary, someone says that Miller's gift was to create a character for one scene and you could imagine that character having his own life, his own movie, that went on after you never saw him in THIS movie.

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IOW, he was a pro, so could have played a scene in Rope, for example, and we would remember his role. Hitch would've probably liked that and I can see him using Dick Miller.

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I found a quote from Hitchcock somewhere where he said, "You're pretty locked into the persona of your leading man, but in your character men you can really be creative." I suppose the "old time Hitchcock" version of that was twee Edmund Gwenn(who at 80 something, was the LEAD in The Trouble With Harry.") My vote (of course) for the best of them all was Martin Balsam that one time in ...what was that movie? You could add in Roscoe Lee Browne in Topaz; Hume Cronyn in Shadow of a Doubt; the twinned duo of John Williams and Leo G. Carroll; Wendell Corey in Rear Window(the REAL hero of that movie, you ask me). And surely Dick Miller could have been fun somewhere in Hitchcock. I just don't know where.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

In Terminator, which seemed like a cheap movie for the time, he did a great job. He had more lines than, "Hey, you can't do that in here," but that's what he's remembered for. I can see him doing that cold and in one take. They may have to get that, "Wrong" by Arnold a few times so he's blown away just right -- https://youtu.be/X1hLe8rSir0

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Its a great scene...establishing Arnold's humanoid robot as uncaring and violent, and sacrificing a guy as interesting as Dick Miller in moments. Plus, Miller looks and sounds like...a gun dealer.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I think the guy who worked with Corman and also Hitch was Ray Milland. I don't know how he was able to do that though.
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It's easy to go from working on A-list productions to working on C- or D-list productions - just go out of fashion, get old, fall onto the C-list oneself, etc..

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And sadly, the fall looked WORSE back then when all that was available after A movies were...B and less. Or TV back when it wasn't "respectable."

Ray Milland giving himself over to American-International(which , I guess, was sorta "Corman Pictures") was a humiliation for him in the 60s, but "X" is a sort of classic(his X-ray vison starts cute, as when he sees everyone around him naked, and then deteriorates to horror....), and Don Rickles has a straight part in it. Seeing Ray Milland and Don Rickles share a scene....wow.

A-I also allowed Milland to DIRECT (and star) in a well-regarded film about post-nuclear war survival called "Panic in the Year Zero." What's good about the film is how Milland's "family man"(with a sitcom perfect family of dad, mom, daughter and son) uses his military background to go immediately ruthless in protecting his family in the new "dog eat dog" world into which they have been thrown. Milland gets a gun immediately and uses it to TAKE food from a grocer when he doesn't have all the money to pay for it. He recruits his son to join him as a kill-or-be-killed man, and protects the women in the family against rape(which he sees coming before it can happen.) Tough little post-apocalyptic movie.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

It's the *other* direction that's normally tricky. Bruce Dern is the best example: he did AH Presents + Marnie for Hitch, then Wild Angels + The Trip for Corman, then Family Plot for Hitch again.

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As we know, Dern rather "shadowed" his friend Jack Nicholson as a Roger Corman star who made good, but Dern was working steadily in TV(where Nicholson was considered "too weird") and A movies(Marnie) long before Nicholson hit.

Though Nicholson's stardom accelerated in the 70's past Dern's , Jack tried to help "Dernsie" out with the lead in "Drive, He Said"(Nicholson directing)and the co-lead in Rafelson's "King of Marvin Gardens." Dern finally got brief over-the-title stardom in the 70's, often taking leads Nicholson turned down -- like Family Plot(alongside Karen Black, from Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Note too that while Milland almost certainly needed to be hurting for work & cash

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We need to remember that "old time" Hollywood leading actors and actresses got paid well, but not all THAT well. When Jack Warner rejected Cary Grant to play the villain in Dial M for Murder, Hitchcock settled for Milland(a Best Actor Oscar winner) for $125,000. And that was probably one of Milland's biggest paydays. Didn't stretch very far given the Hollywood lifestyle.

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I reminded that in this era of pay-cable movies on HBO and the like, and streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon Prime and Hulu(well, one giant, two lesser), NO actor has to be too humiliated, and if they have a name, they work forever.

Al Pacino got the ball rolling with various HBO roles. Netflix keeps Adam Sandler at A list level to star(he has never really "declined") by making their littleish movies for high pay. Sandra Bullock did a Netflix lead; Jennifer Lawrence is going to, and we know from The Irishman.

And yet: a number of "names" now do straight-to-streaming C-level work: Nick Cage. Bruce Willis(HIS are awful, but I read he gets top pay for them.)

I watched one of these "straight to streaming" movies the other night with a certain ruefulness on "the state of the movie star today"(my current obsession, as another thread demonstrated.)

The movie was called "The Poison Rose." One lead who used to be a leading man: John Travolta. One lead who used to be a character star: Morgan Freeman. In their scenes together and apart, the two men showed "they sill have it." Its just that Travolta can't headline an A movie in theaters anymore...and I guess the now-aged Freeman is pretty much for hire.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Travolta's career fascinates me:

TV star(Welcome Back Kotter) .
Superstar courtesy of two back to back blockbusters : Saturday Night Fever and Grease.
A few years of superstardom (Urban Cowboy was the biggest.)

...and then, rapid decline, fueled with a weird symmetry by a "doppelganger" bad versions of his greatest hits:

Stayin' Alive(a horrible 80's sequel to Fever)
Some movie with Olivia Newton John(though he and she passed on Grease II)
Perfect(a movie about aerobics from the Urban Cowboy writer.)

Travolta declined straight through the 80's and then came back with the "talking baby" movie Look Who's Talking(Travolta wasn't even on the poster) and its sequels.

And then, 1994: Pulp Fiction. THE comeback, and Travolta did something fascinating with it:

Since Travolta knew he was a "brand name," needing no build-up, he signed on -- at $20 million a piece -- to something like five movies IN THE FUTURE (he knew his decline might return.) Travolta was one of the biggest stars of the 90s but...that was 20 years ago, and the decline returned. But he's still a name with a history. The A-list just doesn't matter.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Travolta and Freeman in "The Poison Rose" are in a noir mystery set in the South in 1978 (why, I don't know.) Travolta's a former high school football star, NFL player...current private eye. There's a mystery. It doesn't matter.

Here is what does:

Famke Janssen's in it. A beauty of the 90's and oo's. Still is...but age comes for us all.

Brendan Fraser's in it. A MALE beauty of the 90's and 00's. And...wow. His appearance has gone all to hell. Look, weight gain's an issue for many of us out here(me included) but on movie stars it is demoralizing to see. Travolta himself fought weight gain over the years(and used it to his advantage in "big guy" roles that hid it.) But Fraser simply looks unwell. And plays his role as a potentially villainous asylum doctor with a way-over-the top Southern accent with a decided "stage gay" tone that is borderline offensive.

Oh, well, everybody got work out of this, and I'm glad for them.

And there is true sweetness in a scene that Travolta plays with his real-life daughter. You realize just what a GOOD actor Travolta can be in that scene with a person he obviously loves. (And in this movie, hell, I'll SPOIL it, it turns out that the character IS his daughter..happy ending.)

Anyway, with poor 'ol Ray Milland stuck at American International(doing Frogs and The Man Who Two Heads near the end) in HIS waning years, Travolta, Freeman and even Fraser (let alone Famke) all acquit themselves nicely in the minor "Polson Rose."

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

In Joe Dante's "Matinee" of 1993, the short and wiry Miller is paired with a very tall and muscular man who turns out to be John Sayles, famous maker of many an indie movie "back in the day."

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I wanted to separate this out from above and make note that I really, really liked "Matinee" on first viewing back in 1993, and when it comes on from time to time these years, I usually watch it.

The film is set in 1962, which puts it on the far end of the 50's/60's cusp -- one of my favorite eras for movies -- and it not only understands the horror movies of those years(generally harmless fun for pre-teens), it understands the REAL world of those years.

For it is 1962 in Key West, a sunny , breezy Florida locale that is - - suddenly -- in great danger as the Cuban Missile Crisis takes hold. This all-American seaside community SHOULD be paradise, but given its promixity to Cuba, its in danger of nuclear annihilation and its large group of Navy families are "temporarily" losing their men to battle-ready status.

And into this charged atmosphere ambles -- John Goodman as "Lawerence Woolsey" -- William Castle under another name -- a big guy(hey, I forgot Goodman under a recent discussion of "big guys" in the movies -- Goodman's surely one), a cigar-smoker, a promoter -- but overall a good guy, and one who slowly realizes that his fictional horror movie ("Mant" - half man, half ant") is being overshadowed by a REAL horror(the Cuban Missile Crisis.) In his own weird, hucksterish way, Woolsey offers adult leadership and comfort to some scared kids (but with the great line, "Kid, let me let you in on something: us adults don't know what to do anymore than you do, we're making it up as we go along" or something like that.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

There's an early scene where Goodman(with his sexy girlfriend in tow -- she stars in "Mant" and dons nurse's attire at the theater to help with any "fainting) pulls into Florida for gas and is asked for his autograph by the young attendant. As Goodman/Woolsey happily signs, the attendant says, "I just love your movies, Mr. Hitchcock!" In 1962, Psycho would be most recent.

Speaking of Hitchcock, the man himself in 1969 famously made HIS movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis(Topaz) so...Hitchcock looms over "Matinee" along with William Castle and teenage horror movies and everything else.

"Matinee" is sweet and funny and filled with young innocent teenage romance(a boy's first-in-the-movie gave POV close-up of the pretty girl he loves from afar, takes your breath away) -- and yet resonant of the Nuclear Age. It also manages to turn the local premiere of "Mant!" into a mini-disaster movie as the theater balcony collapses (the "theater gimmick rumble machine misfires) that gives the film an exciting movie climax of its own.

And Dick Miller is great in it.

Recommended.