Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" Thread, for the week of April 18-24, 2022. The NFL Draft still isn't here, although there's apparently basketball playoffs (insert Jim Mora here) going on for those of you into that sport. But for normal people, there's a lot of interesting movies to be seen, starting with TCM's Star of the Month Errol Flynn and going on from a movie about the silent era through to movies made in the 1970s. As always, all times are in Eastern unless otherwise mentioned.
We get more Errol Flynn movies on Monday night on TCM leading into Tuesday morning and even Tuesday afternoon, including Edge of Darkness at 12:30 PM Tuesday. This one has the Australian-born Flynn in the interesting casting of playing a Norwegian. That's because the movie was made in 1943, at a time when Norway was occupied by the Nazis, and deals with the Norwegian resistance movement. Flynn plays Gunnar Brogge, the head of the resistance movement in a small Norwegian fishing village. There, one of the prominent families is the Stensgards. Dad Martin (Walter Huston) is a doctor who at first just wants to survive without having to collaborate or risk his life fighting the Nazis. But he's got a brother-in-law who runs the local cannery and is collaborating with the Nazis. Meanwhile, his daughter Karen (Ann Sheridan), despises the Nazis and has fallen in love with Gunnar. Son Johann (John Beal) returns home but begins to sympathize with the Nazis. Eventually, the Nazi brutality is going to force the resistance to act and overreact, and you can guess how the Nazis deal with that. Obvious propaganda, but what audiences on the home front in America needed.
Just for Goldie, I'll mention the chick flick Love Story, at 8:45 AM Monday on Flix. Ryan O'Neal plays Oliver Barrett IV, from one of those patrician families, who has everything he could want on a silver platter, including his attendance at Harvard. But at Harvard, he meets Jennifer Cavilleri (Ali McGraw), a student at Radcliffe since I don't think the full co-educationalizion of Harvard had been completed yet. They fall in love despite their class differences, and this pisses off Oliver III (Ray Milland), who threatens to cut off his son should he marry Jennifer. But he does marry Jennifer, and tries to make his own way in the world with Jennifer, making it through Harvard Law School and getting a reasonably good job with a high-class law firm. When Oliver isn't able to knock Jennifer up, medical tests determine that Jennifer is actually stricken with some sort of incurable disease that, while it may kill her, will never leave her looking less than glamorous. There's the infamous line "Love means never having to say you're sorry", and the mawkish theme song which is bad enough in the original movie version that doesn't have the lyrics:
There's a morning and afternoon of Robert Mitchum on TCM on Wednesday, even though his birthday is in August. The afternoon concludes at 6:00 PM with The Wrath of God. Mitchum plays Fr. Oliver Van Horne, who shows up at an execution in an unnamed Latin American country in the 1920s. But he's not really a priest. Other foreigners in the country are Keogh (Ken Hutchison), an Irishman of dubious repute; and Jennings (Victor Buono), who shanghais Keogh into transporting what Keogh thinks is moonshine but is actually arms. When Col. Santilla (John Colicos) finds the three men, he has them arrested but doesn't execute them. Instead, he needs the three foreigners for his plot to deal with the brutal dictator De La Plata (Frank Langella). Santilla is actually a revolutionary and cant get to De La Plata's stronghold, but westerners can. It seems like a suicide mission, but then the other choice is to be executed by Santilla. Rita Hayworth plays De La Plata's mother; this was her final film as she was already having trouble remembering her lines thanks to the early stages of the Alzheimer's that would kill her 15 years later.
The time travel movies continue on TCM on Thursday in prime time, with an interesting earlier movie: Berkeley Square, at 10:00 PM Thursday. Leslie Howard plays Peter Standish, who at the start of the movie is an American in 1784, just after the Americans have won the war of independence. He's relatively well off, but he's got British relatives who don't have money and instead have the social standing he seeks. So he's gone to London to find a wife and solve the problems for both sides of the family. Fast forward to 1933 when the movie was made. There's another Peter Standish (unsurprisingly again played by Howard) who has recently inherited the house in Berkeley Square and is interested in learning about the past of both his family and of his relatives who were living in the house back in the 1780s. The gives his new fiancée some concern, as sure enough the scene goes back to 1784, only this time with the modern-day Peter Standish being in the house and knowing what happened there 150 years earlier.
For other movies people made toward the end of their career, you could try Ruth Gordon in Harold and Maude, over on The Movie Channel Xtra at 6:00 AM Friday. Gordon obviously plays Maude, not Harold, but we meet Harold first. Harold Chasen (Bud Cort) is a seemingly aimless young man with a morbid hobby of being interested in death: faking suicides, driving a hearse, and attending random funerals of people he's never even met. His mom (Vivian Pickles) is concerned, and perhaps she should have tried to get him to become an undertaker so that he could channel his hobby in a profitable way but instead she tries to break him of the habit. At one funeral, however, Harold meets 79-year-old Maude, who has the same hobby of going to funerals. She's a bohemian who had an interesting life, including now living in a disused railroad car. Her radically different personality sparks something in Harold, who falls in love with Maude. But there's a catch, which is that Maude has decided she's not going to live past 80, as she's had a full life.
Director Peter Bogdanovich died back in January. TCM is finally getting around to doing its programming tribute, which is a bit different than normal since it's going to be held over two nights. In the first half of Friday night before TCM Underground, we're getting three movies that he directed. I'll mention What's Up, Doc?, on at 12:15 AM Saturday (which of course is still Friday night LFT), because I mentioned Love Story earlier. At the end of What's Up, Doc?, Ryan O'Neal's musicologist character is on an airplane, where he's badgered one last time by Barbra Streisand, who tells him "Love means never having to say you're sorry." This time, O'Neal responds, "That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard!"
Then, on Saturday before the first showing of Noir Alley, there are two more Bogdanovich films, although the second of them is a documentary, The Great Buster: A Celebration, at 10:00 PM Saturday. This one details the life of Buster Keaton, from his silent film days to his downfall in the early days of the talking picture era, to the comeback later in life when he finally became appreciated again. Then the second half of the movie has a lot of clips with people discussing what makes those clips so great.
Over on FXM, we've got another airing of The Innocents, at 8:15 AM Saturday. Deborah Kerr plays Miss Giddens, a governess who at the start of the movie is talking to the man who is going to be her nominal boss, the uncle (Michael Redgrave) of the two children she's going to be looking after. The children's parents died, leaving them an estate out in the country where Uncle doesn't want to live. So Miss Giddens goes out to the estate, meeting first the daughter Flora (Pamela Franklin), and then older brother Miles (Martin Stephens) once he gets back from boarding school. However, Miss Giddens starts hearing voices, naturally assuming that these are the children's voices even though they insist it wasn't them. That's because there's a possibility the house is haunted by the ghosts of a previous governess and the servant that governess loved. Or maybe not, since it turns out that Miles was actually expelled from the boarding school for being a bad little boy, one who may be exerting that bad influence on the people at the estate. Based on the Henry James story The Turn of the Screw.
The theme for TCM Underground this week is singers who probably shouldn't have tried their hand at acting. One of the movies is Look in Any Window, at 3:30 AM Saturday. The singer in question is Paul Anka plays teenaged Craig Fowler, living in suburban California with his parents (Ruth Roman and Alex Nicol). The parents have adult problems, Dad having lost his job and gone on a drinking binge to deal with it. But they're not the only parents in the neighborhood with problems. There are the Lowells (Jack Cassidy and Carole Matthews), who have a teenaged daughter Eileen (Gigi Perreau), and infidelity going on in the family. Since the movie has two teenagers of opposite sex living close to each other, you can guess that they'll wind up boyfriend and girlfriend. (As may some of the parents in the neighborhood, but not with their legal spouses.) Except that poor Craig has a dark secret. To deal with all his problems at home and the feelings that none of the adults understand him, he... becomes a peeping Tom!
A search of x4 is not yielding any hits on Bullet for a Badman, so I'll point out that you can see it this week at 7:36 AM Sunday on StarzEncore Westerns. Another Audie Murphy western, this one has him playing former Texas Ranger Logan Keliher. While in the Rangers, he was good friends with fellow Ranger Sam Ward (Darren McGavin). But both left the force, and Ward decided to go rob a bank, something which got him a prison sentence and a divorce from his wife Susan (Beverly Owen). Susan decided to get married again... to Logan, who is also raising the son that Susan and Sam had together. So when Sam breaks out of prison and finds out what happened, he's pissed. He forms another gang and plans to rob another bank and kill Logan. But Logan foils the robbery, with Sam being the only member of the gang who survives, and it's up to Logan and a posse to find Sam and bring him to justice. Other members of the posse seem quite interested in the money, and they may just want to kill Sam on the spot, too.
A film that could be in a double feature with Look in Any Windowis this week's Noir Alley selection: The Window, at 10:00 AM Sunday on TCM. Bobby Driscoll plays Bobby Woodry, a kid living in a cramped apartment with his parents (Barbara Hale and Arthur Kennedy). Bobby likes to tell tall tales, which gets him in no end of trouble and has his parents at their wits' end. It's a hot summer night, so Bobby decides to take his mattress and sleep out on the fire escape. He climbs the stairs, and in the window one floor above, he sees the Kellersons (Paul Stewart and Ruth Roman)taking advantage of a drunken serviceman, and then strangling the poor guy to death! So of course he tells his parents, and of course they don't believe him. Tommy tells the police and they don't believe him, but word of the investigation gets back to the Kellersons, who for fairly obvious reasons are well aware that Bobby is in fact telling the truth. They'd like to silence him, even though you'd think that would make them rather more suspect.