Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” thread, for the week of August 17-23, 2020. The UEFA Champions League reaches its climax this week, and I'm sure everyone is as nervous as I am since I know we're all Bayern München fans. So calm down with some good movies. Summer Under the Stars continues with seven more stars, including Natalie Wood on Saturday. There's also interesting stuff on other movie channels, so you get several films from the 70s and 80s as well. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
This week's honor roll in Summer Under the Stars kicks off on Monday with Maureen O'Hara. This means you get a chance to catch At Sword's Point, which will be on TCM at 2:00 PM Monday. After the death of Louis XIII in France, young Louis XIV took the throne with a regent. Dowager Queen Anne (Gladys Cooper) has a daughter who can't ascend to the throne, and the evil Duc de Lavalle (Robert Douglas) is trying to marry this daughter to arrogate more power unto himself at court. To prevent this, Anne calls on the Three Musketeers, who had helped Dad in the past. But by this time, the original musketeers are old and not capable of doing what Anne wants. However, all of them just happen to have children! D'Artagnan Jr. (Cornel Wilde, in real life a world-class fencer) assembles Porthos Jr. (Alan Hale Jr.) and Aramis Jr. (Dan O'Herlihy). But Athos Jr.? Well, there's a slight catch. Athos' kid is Claire (Maureen O'Hara), a she! Ah, but she can supposedly pass herself off as a man when necessary. So the four go to save Queen Anne's honor, and keep the rightful heir on the throne.
Elsewhere on Monday, Action Max is showing The Dogs of War, at 4:32 PM Monday. Christopher Walken plays James Shannon, a mercenary who, on returning from a Central American civil war, a British businessman named Endean has a job for him. Apparently minerals have been discovered in the otherwise forgotten African country of Zangaro, which is ruled by a nasty dictator named Kimba. Endean wants Shannon to go to Zangaro and do reconnaissance to see if it would be possible to overthrow Kimba in a coup. This is dangerous work but Shannon takes it; unfortunately, in taking a photo of one of Kimba's mistresses outside the army garrison, he raises the ire of the authorities, who detain and torture him in a prison where Kimba's old political rival (and a civilian, not a soldier) is incarcerated. When Shannon gets deported, he tells Endean that the coup won't work at this time, but Endean decides to go ahead with it anyway. Shannon assembles his own force, but has his own ideas about how the coup should proceed.
Back on TCM, Tuesday brings us a day of the films of Warren Beatty. This includes Lilith, at noon. You can probably guess that Beatty does not play Lilith. Instead, he's Vincent, a soldier who has returned home from duty and, transitioning back to civilian life, gets a job at the nearby sanitarium. It's there that he meets Lilith (Jean Seberg), who is one of the patients. Of course he has to spend time with the patients, and as Vincent spends time with Lilith, who's created a fantasy world of her own, he begins to fall in love with her. This is highly against the institution's policies, so Vincent has to keep it more or less a secret. Lilith, for her part, has complicated relationships with everybody else. There's a possible lesbian relationship with Yvonne (Anne Meacham), while Stephen (Peter Fonda), who also loves Lilith, commits suicide after Vincent engineers Lilith's rejection of him. But this may be even more dangerous for Vincent.
Among our more recent movies (although it's only from the 1980s) this week is Nighthawks, which you can see at 11:20 AM Wednesday on Showtime (or three hours later if you only have the west coast feed). Sylvester Stallone plays Deke, a New York police detective who has been working together with partner Matthew Fox (Billy Dee Williams) for years, and the two work together well. They're about to get a change of assignment, however. Wulfgar (Rutger Hauer) is a terrorist bomber who has been setting off bombs in London. However, the folks in British counterterrorism have good reason to believe that Wulfgar is about to decamp to the US, having already gone from London to Paris. So they send Hartman (Nigel Davenport) to the States to warn the Americans. An interagency force is created, and the NYPD think that Deke and Matthew would be perfect on the force, not that they're particularly happy about being selected. If bombs should start going off in New York, however, they might just change their tune.
Getting back to the early movies, we've got Dolores Del Rio on TCM all day Wednesday. Heading all the way back to the 1930s, she stars in Bird of Paradise at 9:45 PM. Joel McCrea plays Johnny Baker, who's working on a yacht sailing the South Seas. He falls overboard and gets saved by Luana (Dolores Del Rio), daughter of a chieftain on the island. Despite the language differences, Johnny falls in love with Luana, because of course she's gorgeous. So he decides to stay on the island until the yacht shows up for the return trip. I suppose he's hoping he can bring Luana back to America with him, but her culture has other plans for her, which involves sacrificing her to the god they believe inhabits the volcano on their island. Johnny is horrified, but what can he do? Especially when he gets sick just as the yacht is returning to the island heading back to America. The plot may be trite now, but back in the pre-Code era it was new and exotic.
On Thursday, we a day full of the films of William Powell on TCM. One that I'm not certain I've 1recommended here before is High Pressure, which concludes the day at 4:45 AM Friday. Powell plays Gar Evans, a publicist whose promotional methods are at best skirting the limits of the law, and in some cases probably fraudulent. He's so into his work that his long-suffering girlfriend Francine (Evelyn Brent) is finally thinking of leaving him for another man. Gar is juggling this with a new client, Colonel Ginsburg (George Sidney). Ginsburg claims to have met an inventor who has figured out a way to turn sewage into synthetic rubber, which would have been a big thing in 1932 since in real life synthetic rubber hadn't been invented yet. Gar goes about setting up a company to produce the rubber and sells shares, but then Ginsburg tells him that the inventor has gone missing – and if they can't produce the inventor, there's a high chance they'll face securities fraud charges Guy Kibbee plays the fake president of the company, while Frank McHugh plays Gar's right-hand man.
Another movie that recently began showing up on the FXM schedule is The Hot Rock. It's going to be on this week, at 3:00 AM Friday. Robert Redford plays Dortmunder, a man who at the beginning of the movie is just being released from prison. On his way out, he's accosted by Kelp (George Segal), a locksmith with a storefront who jut happens to be Dortmunder's brother-in-law. Kelp has a proposition for Dortmunder, which is another heist. Dr. Amusa (Moses Gunn) the UN Ambassador from some African country, has noticed that the Sahara Star, a famous diamond, is currently on exhibit in a New York museum. His country and various of the country's neighbors have fought for the diamond, and Amusa wants it back for his country. He's willing to offer $100K to get that diamond back. So Dortmunder gets an explosives guy, Greenberg (Paul Sand) and a driver Murch (Ron Leibman) to take part in the plot. But things go wrong when Greenberg can't escape the museum, so he swallows the diamond. Further difficulties in getting the diamond back ensue, in part thanks to Greenber's father (Zero Mostel), a shyster lawyer.
Friday's star on TCM is British bombshell Diana Dors. Among her movies is Man Bait (also known as The Last Page), which TCM will show at 11:30 AM Friday. George Brent was brought in from Hollywood so that Hammer Films could get better distribution in America, something that was not uncommon in 1950s Britain; here, he plays John Harman, owner of a used book store. Dors plays Ruby, the “bad girl” employee who keeps showing up late to work. One day, she catches a man, Jeffrey Hart (Peter Reynolds), trying to steal one of the books. Instead of telling her boss, she goes out on a date with Hart! Meanwhile, Harman has been putting the moves on his female employees because he's got a sick wife and needs some affection. When Jeff learns about Harman's advances towards Ruby, Jeff decides he's going to embroil Ruby in a scheme to blackmail Harman! Ruby's no dummy and wants some of that sweet blackmail money for herself, but this enrages Jeffrey, who kills her, although when Harman finds out he realizes the police will center on him, not Jeffrey. Based on a play by Frederick Knott, who also gave us Dial M for Murder and Wait Until Dark.
Despite the fact that you probably know the urban legend, you'll probably still enjoy When a Stranger Calls, which come on Flix at 4:30 PM Friday. Carol Kane plays Jill, a student babysitting a couple whose two kids are already sleeping upstairs. When the parents are out, the phone rings, with a creep asking Jill if she's checked on the children. This keeps happening, and eventually the police determine… the calls are coming from inside the house. A British sailor has gotten in and murdered the kids, so he gets sent to an insane asylum. Seven years on, he escapes. Former police detective John Clifford (Charles Durning), now a private investigator, is hired to find the escapee, Curt Duncan (Tony Beckley). His search first leads him to Tracy (Colleen Dewhurst), who came across Duncan in a bar; Duncan followed her back to her apartment and eventually tried to attack her. But Duncan's real plan is revealed when Jill, now married with two kids of her own, goes out for a night at a restaurant with her husband. While at the restaurant, she's called to the phone, and…. The first act is great, the third pretty darn good, but everybody says the middle tends to drag, even though Durning and Dewhurst give capable performances.
Bette Davis was supposed to be in the spotlight in Summer Under the Stars on Sunday. But then her old friend Olivia de Havilland up and died, meaning TCM was going to have a 24-hour tribute for her at some point. That point is this coming Sunday, and one of the movies is one with both Davis and de Havilland in the cast: In This Our Life at noon. Olivia plays Roy Timberlake, sister of Stanley (Bette Davis) and married to Peter (Dennis Morgan). Spoiled, selfish Stanley is engaged to Craig (George Brent), but she decides she's going to run off with Peter! Stanley's selfishness ultimately drives poor Peter to kill himself, at which point Stanley returns home to find Roy now married to Craig, a successful attorney. Stanley wants to steal Craig from Roy now (why didn't you marry him in the first place?), but her selfishness causes her to drive off one day and cause a fatal hit and run accident, which she then tries to pin on a young black man working for Craig who wants to better himself by becoming a lawyer too! Great character actor Charles Coburn plays Roy and Stanley's uncle, and gets to be the victim of one of Bette's screen rants when he tells her he's terminally ill.