Richard Harrison was an United States B-movie actor (and occasionally a writer/director), born in 1935 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Harrison had a very prolific career and worked with most of the better-known actors and directors in European B-movies, westerns, peplums, crime films and exploitation during the 60's and 70's. He acted in films with Klaus Kinski, Fernando Sancho, Anita Ekberg, Al Cliver, Gordon Mitchell and others. He worked with directors ranging from established B-names like Margheriti and Marino Girolami to infamous Z-men like Paolo Solvay and Alfonso Brescia.
The spaghetti western/spy/peplum era of the 60's
During which Harrison appeared mostly in solid B-movies, many of which are now considered to be cult films.
Frustrated by his lack of success in mainstream Hollywood, he relocated to Italy and became a minor star in peplums, spy films, and spaghetti westerns. Arguably Harrison's most well known film from his early career is the western Gunfight at Red Sands AKA Duello nel Texas, directed by Ricardo Blasco in 1963. Gunfight at Red Sands is also noteworthy for being the first Italian Western to feature a Ennio Morricone score. The 1968 film Joko Invoca Dio...I Muori AKA Vengeance, directed by Antonio Margheriti, is another favorite among spaghetti western fans. Luciano Martino's 1965 movie Secret Agent Fireball, Harrison's first Italian spy film, is also often cited as his best film in the genre and one of his better earlier films.
He is also famous for refusing the title role in Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars and suggesting the name of his colleague Clint Eastwood instead, a fact that has guaranteed him a footnote in most books on spaghetti western or Eastwood.
The death of the spaghetti western and the exploitation era of the 70's
During which Harrison started to show up in more and more bizarre low-budget features all over the globe. Although the general quality of Harrison's 70's filmography is somewhat low, some films from the time have gone on to cult status.
Harrison's career dwindled slowly in the 1970's at the same rate as the spaghetti western died. He starred in more and more low-budget movies shot all over the world: In Egypt, working with Farouk "Frank" Agrama (You Can Do a Lot with 7 Women), (1971), with the Shaw Brothers in Hong Kong (Marco Polo), (1975), and in Turkey, (The Godfather's Friend), (1972), again directed by Agrama. Harrison even appeared in a Yugoslavian war film, the 1979 effort Pakleni Otok, directed by Vladimir Tadej.
Harrison made most of his better quality 70's films during the earlier half of the decade, like the comic spaghetti western Due Fratelli AKA Two Brothers in Trinity (1972), which he also directed. His co-star in Due Fratelli was the Irish-American actor Donald O'Brien, another veteran of Italian B-films. Other notable early 70's films were Churchill's Leopards (1970), directed by Maurizio Pradeaux and also starring Giacomo Rossi-Stuart and Klaus Kinski, in which Harrison got to play a double role, Acquasanta Joe (1971) directed by Mario Gariazzo and starring Ty Hardin and Lincoln Tate, an otherwise mediocre western worth mentioning for having Harrison cast against type as a villain, and Dig Your Grave, Friend...Sabata's Coming (1971), directed by Juan Bosch, a western livened up by the presence of Spanish actor Fernando Sancho. Harrison acted in several films with Sancho, the archetypal Mexican bandit of paella and spaghetti westerns, most of which were produced and/or directed by Ignacio F. Iquino.
Some of the arguably most dubious films Harrison made during the decade were Achtung! The Desert Tigers! (1977) for Paolo Solvay, Black Gold Dossier (1979), also by Solvay, and Voodoo Baby AKA Black Orgasm, (1980), by notorious Italian director Aristide Massaccessi, also known as Joe D'Amato. Achtung! The Desert Tigers, also starring Harrison's friend and frequent co-star Gordon Mitchell and featuring Mike Monty in a small role, was a collage of scenes from Solvay's previous WWII films mixed with somewhat tasteless prison camp torture footage and war action. Black Gold Dossier, again co-starring Gordon Mitchell, was a nonsensical spy epic set in a unnamed Middle Eastern country, spiced up by liberal use of stock footage and female lead Florence Guerin, who spends the majority of the film in different stages of undress. Voodoo Baby was a sexploitation film that Massaccessi added hardcore porno scenes to without Harrison's knowledge.
One of the more successful Harrison films from the latter half of the 70's was the Italian crime thriller La Belva Col Mitra (1977) AKA Beast With A Gun, directed by Sergio Grieco and also starring Helmut Berger and Marisa Mell. At star Berger's request, Harrison's scenes were cut down in the film. Footage of La Belva Col Mitra shows up on TV in the Quentin Tarantino film Jackie Brown.
Probably the most interesting curio in Harrison's 70's filmography is the 1971 film L'Explosion, directed by Marc Simenon (the son of Georges Simenon) and co-starring Mylène Demongeot. The 1978 martial arts/spy film Gymkata Killer is also of curio interest, if only for the presence of Bruce Lee copycat Bruce Le (who also directed the film, with a little uncredited help from Paolo Solvay), European softcore star Nadiuska and Harrison's son Sebastian.
The Z-movie period of the 80's to 90's: Godfrey Ho and Filipino action
Although generally considered the lowest point of Harrison's career, some of his 80's films have gained a cult audience of their own.
In the 1980's, he found himself mostly stranded in B-movie action films made in the Philippines and Hong Kong.
In the Philippines, Harrison appeared in several ultralow-budget, amateurish, Z-grade actioners, produced by K.Y. Lim for Silver Star Film Company. He worked with directors Teddy Page (Teddy Chiu) and John Gale (Jun Gallardo), and actors Mike Monty (a mutual friend of Harrison and Gordon Mitchell from the Italian days), Romano Kristoff (with whom Harrison became friends and had him come over to Italy to act in a film he directed and acted in, Three Men On Fire, 1986), and James Gaines. He also wrote some of the scripts for the Filipino films, using a pseudonym. Although Harrison remembers Teddy Page fondly, he doesn't have too many kind words for Lim and the entire Silver Star experience. The Filipino period Harrison films like Fireback and Intrusion Cambodia AKA Rescue Team have gained some infamy among Z-movie fans.
In Hong Kong, Harrison starred in "ninja" movies directed by Chinese filmmaker Godfrey Ho, who later reedited his scenes in several more films. Harrison found himself the unwilling star of almost a dozen different movies, with titles like Cobra Vs. Ninja, Golden Ninja Warrior, and Diamond Nínja Force. Like the Silver Star productions, the "ninja" films have become cult films in bad movie fandom.
Disgusted with that outcome, Harrison returned to the United States and quit acting in the early nineties. His last films to date were the 1993 erotic thriller Angel Eyes, directed by the prolific cinematographer/director Gary Graver and starring Erik Estrada, John Phillip Law and Monique Gabrielle, and the 2000 film Jerks.
Some of the more interesting movies in Harrison's later career were the Moroccan film Amok (1982) and Dark Mission (1987). The latter was directed by the both revered and despised Spanish director Jesus Franco, and also starred Christopher Lee, Christopher Mitchum and French porno star Brigitte Lahaie (also known from the horror films of Jean Rollin).
Although Harrison remains little known in the English-speaking world, he is a cult figure among spaghetti western, peplum and Eurospy fans. He is often somewhat unfairly labeled as a camp (style) Z-actor based on the Godfrey Ho-Silver Star films, but prior to that Harrison had a long, solid career in European B-movies.
He has now founded with his son Sebastian a multisystem electronics company named Gladiator Electronics.
Memorable quotes
"In my opinion, it is a death wish for an actor to be in too many B or should I say C movies. Maybe my greatest contribution to cinema was not doing Fistful of Dollars, and recommending Clint for the part."
"It was a sad way to make films." -On Fireback and the Filipino action films.
Partial Filmography
- South Pacific (1958)
- Master Of The World (1961)
- I Sette Gladiatori AKA Gladiators 7 (1962)
- Duello nel Texas AKA Gunfight at Red Sands (1963)
- Secret Agent Fireball (1965)
- El Rojo (1967)
- Joko Invoca Dio...I Muori AKA Vengeance (1968)
- Churchill's Leopards (1970)
- You Can Do a Lot with 7 Women (1971)
- Lo Chiamovano King AKA His Name Was King (1971)
- L'Explosion (1971)
- Reverendo Colt (1971)
- Due Fratelli (1972)
- The Godfather's Friend (1972)
- Marco Polo (1975)
- Achtung! The Desert Tigers (1977)
- La Belva Col Mitra AKA Beast with a Gun (1977)
- Gymkata Killer (1978)
- On a nanarland.com interview Bruce Baron, who acted in Fireback, says that he made no Filipino films before the 80's. In the book Gods in Polyester, Richard Harrison credits Fireback as a 1978 film, as does the IMDb. Different video editions of the film credit different years. As with Harrison's other Filipino films, there's no final word on which of the multiple years Fireback is credited under is correct. In all likelihood all his Filipino films were made sometime in between 1980 and 1985.
- Black Gold Dossier (1979)
- Voodoo Baby AKA Orgasmo Nero (1980)
- Amok (1982)
- Blood Debts AKA Eliminator (1983)
- Intrusion Cambodia AKA Rescue Team (1984)
- Ninja Thunderbolt (1985)
- Three Men on Fire (1986)
- Operation Las Vegas (1988)
- Dark Mission (1988)
- Angel Eyes (1993)
- Jerks (2000)
Some of the people Harrison worked with
Actors:
- Erika Blanc
- Al Cliver
- Mylène Demongeot
- Brad Harris
- Dagmar Lassander
- Bruce Le
- Livio Lorenzon
- George Wang
Directors:
- Farouk "Frank" Agrama
- Steve Barkett
- Sergio Bergonzelli
- Mario Bianchi
- Juan Bosch
- Alfonso Brescia
- Cheh Chang
- Alberto De Martino
- Marino Girolami
- Gary Graver
- Sergio Grieco
- Aristide Massaccessi AKA Joe D'Amato
- Norbert Meisel
- Maurizio Pradeaux
- Fred Olen Ray
- William Witney
- Naki Yurter
Further reading
Gods In Polyester, or, A Survivors' Account of 70's Cinema Obscura (2004) -Harrison provides (often cynical) commentary on most of his 70's films and anecdotes on some of the directors and actors he worked with.
External links
- IMDB page
- Nanarland French B-movie website which hosts reviews and other media on some Richard Harrison's movies, especially the Ninja flicks
- Interview Interview with Richard Harrison about his career
- Brian's Drive-In TheaterA B-movie website with a section on Richard Harrison
- European Film ReviewHas some reviews of Richard Harrison films
- Gladiator Electronics Harrison's company website