Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" Thread, for the week of April 25-May 1, 2022. The NFL Draft is this week, but since that's not until the end of the week, there's still a lot of time to watch some interesting movies. We've got one more night of Star of the Month Errol Flynn, one more night of time travel in the movies, and some more recent stuff as well, at least if you consider the 1990s recent. It beats all the superhero crap the studios are churning out these days. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned, which is important this week as there is a midnight start.
We get one more night of Errol Flynn movies on Monday in prime time on TCM. This again continues into Tuesday morning, with a comedy Flynn made with Olivia de Havilland, Four's a Crowd, at 6:00 AM Tuesday. However, we don't see either of those two stars first; instead we see Rosalind Russell, playing lady reporter Jean Christy. Her boss, publisher Patterson Buckley (Patric Knowles), is thinking of closing down the paper, but Jean thinks her boyfriend Bob Lansford (that's Errol Flynn) could save it. Bob, however, has gone into PR, and is trying to get a job representing wealthy Dillingwell (Walter Connolly). Dillingwell has a granddaughter Lorri (Olivia de Havilland) whom Bob immediately falls for. Bob gets the idea for Jean's paper that they should print a bunch of editorials decrying Dillingwell, such that Bob can get that PR job, which would involve becoming getting the newspaper to do a sudden volte-face on Dillingwell. Making things much more complicated both personally and professionally is that Lorri has a boyfriend in the form of... Patterson Buckley. An interesting little movie, although unfortunately only Rosalind Russell was really suited to screwball comedy.
Up against Four's a Crowd is Murder in the First, which starts at 7:00 AM Tuesday on Cinemax, although it also has a showing at 11:51 AM Thursday on 5Star Max. This is a highly fictionalized story about Henri Young, played by Kevin Bacon. The film Henri has been sent to Alcatraz thanks to a robbery that was bumped up to a federal offense (the real life Henri was a bank robber and murderer). He takes part in an escape that fails, and assistant warden Milton Glenn (Gary Oldman) sends him to solitary confinement for three years. On getting out of solitary, Henri kills one of the fellow attempted escapees, who had turned state's evidence. Since Henri has no money, he's given a public defender, James Stamphill (Christian Slater). Stamphill decides that the best way to defend Henri is an insanity defense, with the insanity being brought about by the harsh conditions of Alcatraz in general, and all that time in solitary in particular. The cast also includes William H. Macy as the district attorney prosecuting the murder case, and R. Lee Ermey as the trial judge.
A movie that I'm always pleased to see on the TCM schedule is The Marrying Kind. This week, it's got an airing at 6:15 PM Tuesday. Judy Holliday and Aldo Ray play Florence and Chet Keefer respectively. They're a married couple who at the start of the movie are on their way to divorce court for the pre-trial hearings. Judge Anne Carroll (Madge Kennedy) always wants to find out if the couples coming before her court are making a mistake, so she starts asking the couple questions about why they're here, since they obviously loved each other at some point in the past. So Chet and Florence start having flashbacks to their courtship in Central Park -- even if they disagree as to exactly what happened -- and then the marriage, and what went wrong along the way. Chet works for the post ofice, and has big ideas that he's somehow never able to get implemented, keeping him from getting ahead. But they start a family, and tragedy within that family unit is what really pushes them to the point they've wound up in front of Judge Carroll.
European actress Catherine Spaak died last week. She was one of those European types Hollywood brought over in the 1960s to try to make into a star (in her case, the movie Hotel), but for whatever reason didn't make it in Hollywood. She made an English-language spaghetti western called Take a Hard Ride in the 1970s, however, and that shows up this week at 6:07 AM Wednesday on StarzEncore Westerns. The star here is Jim Brown, playing Pike, foreman to a wealthy rancher Morgan (Dana Andrews). Unfortunately, after delivering the latest herd of cattle, Morgan dies, so it's up to Pike to transport the payroll back to the ranch in Sonora. Unsurprisingly, a bunch of bad guys learn that Pike has a lot of money, and they'd like it, with bounty hunter Kiefer (Lee Van Cleef) leading the way and a sheriff (Barry Sullivan) also on the case. Pike teams up with a professional gambler Tyree (Fred Williamson), more out of necessity at first. Spaak plays a prostitute who Pike meets along the way; has a martial-artist friend who could be useful to Pike (and is certainly useful in providing action scenes for the movie).
If you want a fun bad movie, try The Killer Shrews, which will be on TCM at 6:45 PM Wednesday. James Best plays Thorne Sherman, a ship's captain who has recently bought the rights to a supply route that brings goods to a relatively isolated island where scientist Dr. Craigis (Baruch Lumet, father of director Sidney) has a research station. Unfortunately, his first trip to the station coincides with a storm that means that everybody is going to have to stay on the island for an extra day or two. This really worries Dr. Craigis, who was hoping to get his eye-candy daughter Ann (non-actress beauty queen Ingrid Goude) off the island. It turns out that Dr. Craigis is worried, and for good reason. His "research" has led to the creation of a mutant strain of shrews, a rodent which is normally small, but now is extremely large and vicious, with a fatal bite and a voracious appetite. They have to eat a lot just to survive, and the humans on the island are the obvious source of food.
The time travel movie spotlight also has one final night on TCM on Thursday in prime time. After the Packers trade down twice on Thursday evening, infuriating Packer fans everywhere, tune in to TCM to watch Orlando, at midnight Friday (or 11:00 PM LFT). Tilda Swinton plays Orlando, who at the start of the movie is a courtier to Queen Elizabeth I circa 1600 in an era when, as the movie says, all the men wanted to look feminine. Orlando receives a bequest from Her Majesty (played by Quentin Crisp) of an estate, and Elizabeth tells him not to fade, wither, or grow old. And indeed, Orlando doesn't. We see Orlando in 1610 falling in love with a Russian princess; in 1650 as a patron of the arts; and in 1700 as an envoy to a khanate somewhere in the Middle East, with this one being interesting in that, at the end of the episode, Orlando wakes up as a woman! There are a few more scenes in 1750 and 1850, although by 1750 Orlando is having serious legal issues with the estate as Orlando is supposed to be quite dead.
The current round of inflation reminds us that Things Are Tough All Over, and you can see the movie at 11:23 AM Friday on StarzComedy. Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong return as their usual stoner selves, this time in a limo someplace in the American southwest as the movie opens. But they're not in the limo because they're rich, as Cheech tells us. Flash back to the winter, and Cheech and Chong are never getting rich working at a car wash, but at least it's better than digging a ditch. (Wait, that's a different movie.) Their bosses are a pair of Arabs, Mr. Slyman and Prince Habib (also played by Cheech and Chong respectively). The bosses, dissatisfied with the pair's work at the car wash, send them first to a nightclub, and then come up with a plan to get Cheech and Chong out of Chicago. The Arabs have a business in Las Vegas, and they also have some money they need to launder, so they put it in that limo we saw Cheech and Chong in at the beginning of the movie and have the two drive it out to Nevada. Things don't quite go according to plan.
Another person for whom things are tough is Richard Harris in This Sporting Life, at 10:15 PM Friday on TCM. Harris plays Frank Machin, a coal miner in northern England who doesn't earn that much and rents a room from his widowed landlady, Mrs. Hammond (Rachel Roberts). What little Frank does make is spent on booze on his nights out, and one of those nights gets him in a fight with the captain of the local rugby league team. This, however, impresses the manager of the team, who gives him a tryout, and the team's owner, Weaver (Alan Badel) is also impressed. Of course, rugby, like American football, is a violent sport, and Frank is ultimately going to be destined to have a short career once Father Time catches up to him. But in the meantime, is making enough money that he can try to pursue young Mrs. Hammond. Because of Frank's fundamentally aggressive nature, however, Mrs. Hammond is a bit stand-offish in their on-again, off-again relationship. Will Frank ever mature?
I've actually got three movies from the 1990s this week (and none from the 1890s). The third is Michael, showing at 1:15 PM Saturday on Cinemax. Michael, played by John Travolta, is a man living in a small town in Iowa with landlady Patsy Milbank (Jean Stapleton). Michael has wings and has supposedly told Patsy that he is in fact the archangel Michael despite his love of earthly vices like booze and smokes. A national tabloid magazine that specializes in stories of the unexplained or the sort you might have seen Leonard Nimoy presenting onIn Search Of...two decades earlier hears of this, and editor Vartan Malt (Bob Hoskins) sends writer Frank Quinlan (William Hurt) out to Iowa with a crew to investigate. Unfortunately, Patsy dies, so Frank decides to bring Michael with them back to Chicago, although Michael claims that this is what he really wanted them to do, and that he's really there to play matchmaker between Frank and Dorothy (Andie MacDowell), a woman who claims to be an expert on angels.
Finally, I'll mention Cahill, US Marshal, which is on TCM at 10:30 PM Saturday. John Wayne plays J.D. Cahill, who as you might be able to guess from the title of the movie is in fact a US Marshal who is chasing bad guys through the territories out west. However, he's also a widower with two sons, and all that chasing criminals has kept him away from the kids long enough that he hasn't done a very good job raising them. Elder son Danny (Gary Grimes), almost a legal adult, has fallen in with gang leader Fraser (George Kennedy) and his gang who robbed the local bank, with younger son Billy Joe having been given the task of hiding the money. Things get complicated when Dad takes Danny out with him to find the bank robbers, unsurprisingly finding the wrong people. Meanwhile, Fraser would like to get his hands on the money, but Billy Joe has begun to think about double-crossing Fraser, which is an exceedingly stupid movie. But at least this leads Dad to finding out who the real bank robbers are.