Dick Miller in Rock All Night

Dick Miller, the legendary character actor who appeared in everything from Apache Woman to Gremlins to The Terminator, has died.  He was 90 years old.

Dick Miller started his career in the 1950s and he was still working in 2018.  If you’ve watched more than a dozen of movies over the course of your life, chances are that you’ve seen Dick Miller.  Maybe you saw him as the friendly flower eater in the original Little Shop of Horrors or perhaps you’ve come across Bucket of Blood, in which he played the homicidal artist, Walter Paisley.  If you’re a fan of Martin Scorsese’s, you may have seen Miller in either After Hours or New York, New York.  Director Joe Dante loved Dick Miller and found a role for him in almost all of his films.  In The Howling, he explained how to kill werewolves.  In Gremlins, he provided comic relief.  In Piranha, he refused to surrender to a bunch of carnivorous fish.

Dick Miller in The Terminator

But that’s not all.  According to the imdb, Dick Miller had 182 acting credits.  He played mobsters and he played cops.  He played gamblers.  He played bartenders and prohibitionists.  In his debut film, Apache Woman, he played both an Indian and a cowboy.  In Executive Action, he shot JFK.  In honor of his first starring role, he played a lot of different characters named Walter Paisley.  In Chopping Mall, he was killed by security robots.  In The Terminator, he was shot by Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Quentin Tarantino claimed that his performances in Grindhouse were meant to be a tribute to Dick Miller.  One wonders how Miller would have reacted to that as he wasn’t reportedly wasn’t particularly happy when Tarantino left performance in Pulp Fiction on the cutting room floor.

(Miller discussed his feeling about Pulp Fiction and Tarantino in an interview he did with the AV Club.)

Gremlins

Dick Miller had one of those faces that you couldn’t forget.  It was a face that worked just as well for comedy as it did for drama.  Miller was originally from the Bronx and some of his best performances epitomized the type of tough, no bullshit, blue-collar worldview that we tend to associate with New York City.  One look at Miller and it was easy to imagine him driving a cab and complaining about the Yankees.  At the same time, Miller was just as believable when cast as a Nevada sheriff in Far From Home or as a Pennsylvania high school teacher in All The Right Moves.  Dick Miller just had it, whatever it may be.  When he appeared onscreen, you believed in him.  No matter who he was playing, he was real.  He was just one of those actors.

After Hours

There was always something comforting about seeing Dick Miller in a movie.  Miller appeared in his share of bad movies but he was always good.  More importantly, you always knew he was going to be good.  As soon as he appeared onscreen, you know that he was either going to elevate a bad film or make a good one even better.

From what I’ve read and heard, Dick Miller was a genuinely humble man who appreciated his fans and whose talent went hand-in-hand with his generosity of spirit.  The world of film is going to be a little bit sadder without his presence.  The Academy damn well better remember him at this year’s Oscars.  Dick Miller’s long career represented everything that there is to love about the movies.

Dick Miller, RIP

The Howling