Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” Thread, for the week of December 25-31, 2017. The Packers had a terrible loss to the team from the west last night, so why not wash away the bad taste with some interesting movies? (Well, washing it away with a Dom Capers firing would be better, but we can't always get what we want.) Christmas is on Monday so there's some Christmas stuff; there's more from Star of the Month Lana Turner; and we'll look back at some of the people who left us in 2017. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
Monday is of course Christmas, and everybody is showing Christmas stuff, already starting on Christmas Eve. TCM's Christmas fare includes a rare showing of The Cheaters, at 12:15 AM Monday. Eugene Pallette and Billie Burke play the Pidgeons, parents in a formerly rich family now struggling and trying not to show it. Their daughter is trying to impress her rich boyfriend so she suggests taking in a forgotten man for Christmas; that man turns out to be washed-up actor Mr. Marchaud (Joseph Schildkraut). Meanwhile, the Pidgeons' uncle Henry has recently died, but has bequeathed his fortune to an obscure actress he saw perform ages ago. There's a caveat, however, in that if the actress can't be found, the money reverts ot the Pidgeons. So of course they set out to find her and keep the news of Henry's death and the will provision a secret from her so that the lawyers won't find her. Needless to say, the two plot threads combine as everybody spends Christmas together in the country.
If you like your singing cowboys, then you'll enjoy The Cowboy and the Indians, which will be on StarzEncore Westerns a couple of times this week, including 8:08 PM Monday. Gene Autry plays the cowboy, who has just bought a ranch, only to find that the Indians are trespassing all over it by having their sheep graze on the land. Of course Gene is unhappy about it, but when he confronts the Indians he finds that they have a good reason for grazing their sheep on his land: the head of the trading post Smiley (Frank Richards) has been cheating them out of everything, to the point that they're malnourished and need to graze their sheep on private land just to survive. Gene being the good guy sides with the Indians and immediately sets about trying to see that justice is served. Clayton Moore, soon to become the Lone Ranger, plays one of the bad guys, while Jay Silverheels, who would become Tonto, plays a college-educated Indian. The movie also has Autry singing “Here Comes Santa Claus”, which he had written two years earlier.
After Christmas, how about some dark comedy? TCM has that for you in the form of The Trouble With Harry, at 11:00 AM Tuesday. Edmund Gwenn plays Albert, a retired captain who goes hunting out the the woods of Vermont one autumn day, and after shooting at a rabbit, finds a dead man (the titular Harry). So of course he thinks he's killed the guy. Meanwhile, struggling artist Sam (John Forsythe), Ivy the spinster (Mildred Natwick), and the son (Jerry Mathers) of a transplant Jennifer (Shirley MacLaine in one of her earliest roles) all come across the body too, and are all brought together as a result. The dead man turns out to be Jennifer's abusive ex-husband, and she may have been the one to kill him. But the four grownups aren't certain how to handle the situation, resulting in their burying the body to hide it and digging it back up repeatedly. Along with all of this, Sam and Jennifer fall in love, as do Albert and Ivy. This was directed by Alfred Hitchcock; although there's not much suspense it has all the hallmarks of Hitchcock's dark sense of humor.
Raiders from Beneath the Sea is back on FXM Retro this week at 4:45 AM Wednesday and 3:30 AM Thursday. Maury Dexter directed a whole bunch of short cheapies for Fox to distribute back in the 60s, and this one is no different. Ken Scott plays Bill, who is struggling financially as a Southern California apartment manager married to Dot (Merry Anders). Worse, Bill's brother Buddy (Garth Benton) lives with them, basically mooching off them while lusting after Dot. Bill decides he's going to make it in life by… robbing a bank over on Catalina! Now, as you may know, Catalina is an island well off the California coast connected only by ferry, so how the hell are they going to get the money off the island? Well, Bill's plan is to use scuba gear and powerful magnets to attach the bag containing the money the the ferry's hull and then collect it at the mainland end. Unfortunately, the older guy whose idea Bill stole is still around and wants in, and Bill's brother isn't so dependable. This is another one of those movies that's so bad it winds up being enjoyable. And you get to ogle Merry Anders in a bikini.
Tuesday is the last night of Lana Turner's turn as Star of the Month on TCM. This time they're showing some of her later movies, including the “let's try to keep up with the young kids in the 60s” mess The Big Cube, at 4:15 AM Wednesday. Lana plays Adriana, a glamorous actress who decides to give it up in order to marry wealthy businessman Charles Winthrop (Dan O'Herlihy). Charles is a widower with a grown-up daughter Lisa (Karin Mossberg) who is off at finishing school and returns to find she's got a stepmother she absolutely hates. Worse, Dad dies in a boating accident and stepmom gets control over the trust fund. Lisa just wants to swing with the 60s, especially with her boyfriend Johnny (George Chakiris), of whom stepmom most definitely does not approve. Ah, but Johnny has been studing better living through chemistry, and he knows how to make… LSD! That'll drive Adriana nuts, and once the kids get Adriana declared legally insane they can get control of the trust fund and get married. It's up to Frederick (Richard Egan), a playwright who wrote Adriana's hits and is in love with her, to save the day. This is a hilarious mess, although it was never intended to be a comedy.
TCM is running a bunch of Zero Mostel movies on Wednesday in prime time. One that I don't think I've recommended before is The Great Bank Robbery, which will be on at 1:30 AM Thursday. The bank in question is one in the town of Friendly, TX, circa 1880, and it's got state-of-the-art security, at least by the standards of 1880. This makes it impregnable enough that normal people have confidence in the bank's security while criminals see it as a challenge. And, in fact, there are three different groups of people plotting to rob the bank. Mostel plays one of the group leaders, as “Reverend” Blue leading a phony church that is really a collection of the people he needs to rob the bank; chief among them is the hot decoy Sister Lyda, played by Kim Novak. There's also a pair of Mexicans, Juan (Larry Storch) and his father (Akim Tamiroff); the third group is led by the outlaw Slade (Claude Akins) together with his sidekick Jeb (Elisha Cook Jr of films as diverse as The Maltese Falcon and Blacula). It's an all-star comedy although everybody below Novak is slightly B-level, with a screenplay by William Blatty of Exorcist fame.
I can't recall if I've recommended The Accused before, but it's going to be on StarzEncore Classics at 2:39 PM Thursday. Jodie Foster plays Sarah, a young woman who goes to a bar one night and eventually winds up drunk enough that she gets gang raped by a couple of guys in the bar, with several others watching on apparently approving of the whole thing. It also turns out that Sarah has a past, so a lot of people in the community take the view that perhaps she deserved what she got, which leads the prosecutor Kathryn (Kelly McGillis) to prosecute the three men on lesser charges. This enrages Sarah, so she rams her truck into a car driven by one of the onlookers. They can't reopen the rape case because of the constitutional protection against double jeopardy, but it is possible to sic the power of the state on the onlookers, some of whom get brought up on criminal solicitation charges. The movie won Foster an Oscar and is notable for its graphic depiction of the rape scene.
TCM has been running a spotlight on The Great American Songbook on Thursdays in prime time. Not quite in the spotlight, but with a memorable song, is The Strawberry Blonde at 12:15 PM Friday. James Cagney plays Biff, who pals around with Hugo (Jack Carson), although Hugo is a bit of a schemer who always tries to have somebody else holding the bag. First the two young men go out for an evening on the town with two young women, Virginia (Rita Hayworth) and Amy (Olivia de Havilland). Biff likes Virginia, but Hugo makes certain that he winds up with Virginia while Biff “only” gets Amy. Of course, Amy is going to prove to be the right woman for Biff, but not without a lot of tribulations along the way. Hugo winds up with a powerful patronage position and gets Biff a job, but Biff doesn't realize he's being used. Ah, but in the finale Biff is going to have the opportunity to get some revenge. The movie features the song “The Band Played On”, including in an audience sing-along after the closing credits.
On Friday in prime time continuing into Saturday morning, TCM will be remembering some of the people who died in 2017, one film for each of eight people. It's a diverse cast including Jeanne Moreau for Jules et Jim (8:00 PM); director George Romero for Night of the Living Dead (3:15 AM Saturday); Don Rickles for Kelly's Heroes (5:00 AM Saturday), and voice actress June Foray in The Phantom Tollbooth (9:15 AM Saturday). No Martin Landau, although North By Northwest is on at 10:00 PM Monday. I couldn't find any Jerry Lewis movies this week, although the Eddie Murphy version of The Nutty Professor is going to be on Starz In Black several times.
Randolph Scott made a lot of westerns from about 1950 on. One of the more unusual westerns he made was The Man Behind the Gun, which will be on TCM at 2:30 PM Saturday. Scott plays Ransome Callicut, a disgraced army officer who is given a chance to resurrect his career by working undercover for the US government. His mission is to go to Los Angeles in the early 1850s, which is a couple of years after statehood and a time when there are still people who would like California to secede from the Union. (Wait, there are still such people, aren't there?) Along the way he meets an Army Captain Giles (Philip Carey) who is going out to LA with his girlfriend Lora (Patrice Wymore, later Errol Flynn's widow), and gets in a love triangle with Lora. Well, there's another woman as well in Mexican songstress Chona (Lina Romay). As for the secessionists, there's Creegan (Morris Ankrum) who controls the water supply and wants California to become a slave state. Then there's the senator Sheldon (Roy Roberts) who is ostensibly faithful to the Union but would really like to run California as his own fiefdom.
Finally, Sunday is New Year's Eve, and TCM is going to be ringing in the new year with another marathon of all six Thin Man movies, starting at 8:00 PM with the 1934 original. The first one is certainly appropriate for the new year since there's a New Year's party at the climax, and William Powell and Myrna Loy are so much fun together that why not watch them all. But the other five don't really have anything to do with the new year.