Welcome to another edition of Fedya’s “Movies to Tivo” thread, for the week of December 27, 2021-January 2, 2022. For those of you old farts who still write paper checks, remember to start writing 2022 as the date. With the New Year coming up, it’s unsurprising that some channels will have some special programming. TCM is spending the daytime on New Year’s Eve with the That’s Entertainment movies, and prime time with all six Thin Man movies. The Saturday matinee will also be returning after a break for Christmas, and in the 10:00 slot they’ve gone back to the Bowery Boys movies. But there’s also interesting stuff on some of the other channels. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
On Monday in prime time, TCM is remembering some of the greats who left us in 2021. They’ll be showing seven movies with people who died this past year, although it’s more than seven people being remembered as at least one movie (The Group at 5:30 AM Tuesday) has multiple people who died in 2021. This gives me another chance to mention Bright Eyes, at 9:45 PM Monday. Shirley Temple stars as Shirley Blake, whose pilot father died and whose mom is working as a maid for the Smythes. They have a really bratty daughter Joy (Jane Withers, who died this year aged 95), and their wheelchair-bound uncle Ned (Charles Sellon) lives with them. They’re waiting for him to die so they can inherit his money. Meanwhile, Shirley’s godfather Loop Merritt (James Dunn) is a pilot, in love with the Smythes’ cousin Adele (Judith Allen). Shirley’s mom unfortunately gets hit by a bus and dies, and there’s the question of who’s going to get custody of orphan Shirley. You can probably figure out what’s going to happen. Along the way, however, Shirley gets to sing “On the Good Ship Lollipop”. And Joy gets her comeuppance in a finale that, 85 years on, seems surprisingly shocking.
For those of you who like the 80s action movies, we’ve got one this week in the form of Raw Deal, at 6:35 AM Tuesday on ActionMax. Harry Shannon (Darren McGavin) is an FBI agent whose son has followed him into working for the FBI, but the son was killed by the Mafia for being an informant. Mark Kaminski (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a former FBI agent who got drummed out for misconduct (he should have just said the right things about what a meanie Donald Trump is and then they would have forgiven all sorts of violations of people’s rights) and is now reduced to being the sheriff in a small jurisdiction, with a wife who is extremely bitter about it. Shannon finds that in Kaminski, he’s got the perfect person to try to infiltrate the Mafia organization of the Petrovita family, led by Luigi (Sam Wanamaker). So Kaminski fakes his own death and goes undercover, finding a big money drug ring, rival Mafia families, and all the tropes you’d expect in a 1980s cop movie.
Next up is Silk Stockings, at 4:00 PM Tuesday on TCM. Fred Astaire plays Steve Canfield, an American producer in Paris who is trying to get a Soviet composer to score his film project of War and Peace. However, Soviet authorities aren’t happy with the way the composer is acting, so they send three emissaries (Peter Lorre, Jules Munshin, and Joseph Buloff) to try to get the composer back to Moscow. They fail, and are beginning to fall in love with Paris, which is much nicer than Moscow, so the Communists send over one more emissary to get the original three back: Ninotchka Yoschenko (Cyd Charisse). She’s no-nonsense, and seems to be singularly focused on her job, to the point that she has no sense of humor. But you know that eventually, she and Canfield are going to fall in love with each other, and that this is going to cause problems because of Ninotchka’s political need to go back to the USSR. As you might have guessed, this is a musical remake of the Greta Garbo classic Ninotchka. Watch also for Janis Paige as Peggy, the star of Canfield’s movie.
The gunfight at the OK corral in Tombstone AZ has been set down on film on quite a few occasions, probably none of them anywhere near accurate. But some of them are still worth watching, such as My Darling Clementine, airing on StarzEncore Westerns at 4:15 AM Wednesday. Henry Fonda plays Wyatt Earp, who was a marshal in Kansas before heading west with his brothers and their cattle where they wound up in Tombstone. One of the brothers gets killed, which leads Wyatt to take the position of marshal in Tombstone and make his brothers Virgil (Tim Holt) and Morgan (Ward Bond) deputies so that they can avenge the other brother’s death. It’s the Clantons, led by the patriarch (Walter Brennan) who are causing all the problems, through sons Ike (Grant Withers) and Billy (John Ireland). Wyatt enlists the help of Doc Holliday (Victor Mature). Among the many inaccuracies here is the addition of love interests in the form of Clementine (Cathy Downs) and for Doc Holliday, Chihuahua (Linda Darnell).
One Wednesday, we get one more night of Ingrid Bergman’s movies as part of her time as TCM’s Star of the Month. This includes her third and final Oscar win, in Murder on the Orient Express, at 8:00 PM Wednesday. Albert Finney plays Hercule Poirot, the detective who desperately needs to get on the Orient Express to get to London in December 1930. Having secured a first-class berth, he’s approached by businessman Ratchett (Richard Widmark), who is looking for help because he’s received many death threats. It turns out that he does get killed in his sleep, and there are a bunch of people in first class who all had a relationship with him in the past. There’s his secretary McQueen (Anthony Perkins) and valet Beddoes (Sir John Gielgud); Swedish missionary Greta (that’s Bergman); British colonel Arbuthnott (Sean Connery); widowed socialite Belinda (Lauren Bacall); Count and Countess Andrenyi of Hungary (Michael York and Jacqueline Bisset); British teacher Mary (Vanessa Redgrave); and more. Since the train is stuck in a snowdrift in Yugoslavia and the conductor doesn’t want to involve the Yugoslav police, he asks Poirot for help.
Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell are actually both fairly capable actors. A movie that shows this is Swing Shift, on TCM at 8:00 PM Thursday. Hawn plays Kay Walsh, a woman happily married to Jack and living in one of those bungalow housing developments in Los Angeles in the first week of December 1941. Now, if you know your history you know what happens that Sunday, and Jack responds to Pearl Harbor by enlisting. Kay has nothing to do with her days, so she decides to do her part for the war effort along with her neighbor and best friend Hazel get jobs at one of the defense plants in the area, quickly becoming good at her new and fulfilling work. Her supervisor Lucky (Kurt Russell), a musician with a heart defect that prevented him from enlisting. With few men around, Kay finds that she likes Lucky’s physical presence. Of course, there’s the slight issue of her already being married and the fact that Jack is bound to come back sooner or later. How are their relationships going to play out?
For a belated Christmas movie, try You Better Watch Out(aka Christmas Evil), on Flix at 5:30 AM Friday. Harry Stradling (Brandon Maggart) is a man who works in a toy factory and who had a rather depressing Christmas one time as a child. He learned that Santa Claus isn’t real when he caught his parents sexual role-playing involving a Santa costume. In part because of that, he’s decided that he’s going to spend his life being the Santa he never had, although it leads him to go to some pretty bizarre lengths to determine who’s been naughty and who’s been nice. And then one year at Christmastime he learns that pretty much everybody at the toy factory has been taking advantage of him. That leads him to finally snap, and he responds by going on a killing spree on Christmas Eve dressed as Santa. How many people is this bad Santa going to be able to kill before people figure out who’s committing the murders?
Another Fox film that’s showing up someplace other than FXM is Twelve O’Clock High, which you can see at 5:30 PM Saturday on TCM. Dean Jagger plays Major Stovall, who at the start of the movie is in London some time after World War II. In a second-hand store, he finds an old mug that reminds him of his time in the war, leading him to go to the now-abandoned air base where he served, and the flashback begins…. Not long after the US got into World War II, the US sent lot of men over to England, where they were stationed as pilots to carry out bombing raids on Nazi Germany. But one of the problems is that these raids, especially those carried out in daylight, are extremely difficult and deadly to the flight crews. The current base commander, Col. Davenport (Gary Merrill) has become too close to the crews. So a higher-up, General Savage (Gregory Peck), is sent in to restore discipline. He does so, but at the seeming cost of the mental state of the men under his command. Of course, they aren’t supposed to see the mental toll it’s taking on Savage; that’s the job of his adjutant Stovall.
A search of the site claims that it’s been over five years since I last mentioned The Alligator People. This one is in the FXM rotation, and you can ring in the new year with it at 4:40 AM Sunday. Beverly Garland plays Joyce Webster, a woman who has recently gotten married to Paul (Richard Crane). The only thing is, on their honeymoon he gets off the train and just disappears. So Joyce goes looking for her husband at his last known address, a clinic in a bayou in a middle of nowhere part of Louisiana where he had been treated for some war injuries. The head doctor there, Dr. Sinclair (George Macready), is rather non-committal about Paul, and is obviously trying to get Joyce to stop investigating, which only piques her curiosity further. It turns out that this place was doing experimental medicine that involved injecting patients with a serum made from alligator blood, and you can probably guess from the title what’s happening to the patients and why Sinclair would like to see Paul.
Noir Alley returns to TCM after a week off for Christmas. And this first edition of the new year is a movie that suitable for the day: Repeat Performance, at 10:00 AM Sunday. Joan Leslie plays Sheila Page, a New York stage actress married to Barney (Louis Hayward) and about to ring in the new year of 1947. However, she shoots Barney dead and in a rush runs off to her favorite club where she meets her friends. The only one she can really trust is poet William Williams (Richard Basehart), who suggests she go see her producer, John Friday (Tom Conway). But on the way there, something funny happens and by the time she gets to Friday’s apartment, he’s about to ring in the new year… of 1946! Sheila is the only one who thinks it’s about to be 1947 and who retains any knowledge of the year 1946. So perhaps, having a year to live over again, she can relive it in such a way that will end with her not killing her husband, as she goes home to find Barney very much alive. But Sheila’s actions, which make sense to her since she knows what happened the last time she lived through 1946, baffle everybody else who has not yet gone through the year.
