That Guy Dick Miller

Aimed at nostalgia buffs and movie cultists, director Elijah Drenner's biographical profile pays scrapbook-ish tribute to character/cameo actor Dick Miller. The Brooklyn-born son of opera singer Rita Miller, the young Miller headed west to break into movies as a writer but found more gigs as an actor, starting in 1955 in Roger Corman's prolific low-budget features. Playing cowboys, Indians, astronauts, garbagemen, gangsters, cops, butlers, and even a medieval leper (and sometimes doing script doctoring on the side), Miller had a reliable regular-guy/hipster presence, best illustrated in his role as homicidal wannabe artist Walter Paisley in the dark 1959 beatnik comedy A Bucket of Blood (which made him recognizable for fans and a sort of good-luck-charm cast choice for younger filmmakers, especially Joe Dante). The long list of interviewees here includes actors Jonathan Haze, Mary Woronov, Robert Forster, and Corey Feldman; author Leonard Maltin; producer Jack Hill; and directors Corman, Dante, and John Sayles. Aside from residual pain over his parents' divorce (and his scene being cut from Pulp Fiction), Miller himself seems to have had few regrets (and enjoyed a long, happy marriage to a glamour girl). If the documentary lacks much in the way of dramatic fireworks, it still serves up some good B-culture history within an appreciation of a screen icon who made the best of being a bit player. A strong optional purchase. (C. Cassady)