We’ve just learned of the passing of prolific character actor Dick Miller (b. 1928).
I first knew Miller from his role as the man who eats flowers in Roger Corman’s original The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), which, for a time, was my favorite movie. It wasn’t until years later that I discovered A Bucket of Blood (1959), also by Corman and Charles B. Griffith, in which Miller starred. But most of Miller’s role were of the walk-on variety.
Bronx born Miller had started out playing bit parts for Corman’s low budget horror, sci-fi and delinquent pictures around 1956. He worked for Corman and American International Pictures in scores of films, including The Terror (1963), The Wild Angels (1966), The Trip (1967) and Big Bad Mama (1974). He also got story credit on two pictures in these years: the low budget western Four Rode Out and Jerry Lewis’s WWII comedy Which Way to the Front? (both 1970). As Corman and his alumni grew more famous and mainstream, Miller continued to play bit parts in their films. Thus he is in almost every film ever made by Joe Dante, including The Howling (1980), the Gremlins films, Innerspace (1987) and The ‘Burbs (1989), and Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York (1987) and After Hours (1985). Quentin Tarantino cast him in Pulp Fiction (1994) but most of his scenes wound up on the cutting room floor.
Miller was recently the subject of a documentary called That Guy Dick Miller (2014). See his long list of credits here.
He was a hip old dude.
(Travalanche) 