On Monday in prime time, TCM is running a bunch of movies featuring detective Philo Vance. The night starts off with The Kennel Murder Case at 8:00 PM. Philo was played by several actors over the years, and this movie is interesting in that playing the part of Philo is William Powell, a year before he'd become Nick Charles in The Thin Man. (In The Bishop Murder Case at 12:15 AM Tuesday, Vance is played by… Basil Rathbone, who of course would famously play Sherlock Holmes on screen. Lots of detectives there!) Getting back to The Kennel Murder Case, the story involves a dog-lover Archer Coe (Robert Barratt) who is found dead in a locked room following a dog getting killed at a dog show, which seems like an obvious suicide, although there are clues to indicate that it was actually murder! Unfortunately, pretty much everybody who knew Archer hated him and had good reason to kill him. Vance has to figure out why, and how. And before more murders happen. Eugene Pallette plays the police detective investigating the case; watch also for a young Mary Astor.
It's been quite some time since I recommended Star Trek: The Motion Picture. You can catch it this week at 11:25 AM Tuesday. The cast of the original TV series returns when they're called together by Starfleet. It seems that some sort of mysterious spacecraft destroyed a couple of Klingon ships, and then a Federation space station, and now it's approaching Earth! Obviously the folks on Earth are worried, so they call on the nearest starship, which is the Enterprise, although it's been undergoing renovations and may not be quite ready to go into service yet. Adm. Kirk (William Shatner) gathers chief engineer Scott (James Doohan), Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) and the rest, while Spock (Leonard Nimoy), who was back on Vulcan, had some sort of psychic revelation that Earth is in trouble and he's needed there. They go off to investigate, and find something calling itself VGer is causing all of these problems. But what is VGer, and why is it headed towards Earth? Some of the later movies in the series are generally considered better, but this wasn't a bad way to start off the movie franchise.
TCM is running a several Doris Day movies on Tuesday, including Starlift at 9:30 AM. They say the Korean War is the forgotten war, and this movie is a good example. The premise is one that was used in a bunch of World War II movies, that of the servicemen who are about to go off to war, and the entertainers who are working to given them some entertainment as part of the war effort. In this case, it's Ruth Roman who's trying to put together shows for the troops, with a bunch of her fellow stars under contract to Warner Bros. The other half of the flimsy plot involves a couple of those servicemen, who want to meet Warner Bros. new star Nell (Janice Rule), since she comes from their hometown. In fact, the two are doing stateside duty and things spiral out of control as everybody thinks the two are going abroad and they don't want to upset the apple cart. Day is one of the stars playing themselves, along with Roman, James Cagney, Virginia Mayo, and a bunch of others. It's no worse than its World War II equivalents, but since it's about Korea it's little remembered.
It's been quite a few years since I've seen My Cousin Rachel show up anywhere. It's on FXM Retro this week, at 9:20 AM Wednesday. Richard Burton plays Philip, a young man living with his cousin Ambrose (John Sutton) in 1830s England since his parents died when he was very young. Ambrose goes off to Italy, where he meets cousin Rachel (Olivia de Havilland) and marries her. Philip's worry turns to distress when he starts getting crazed letters from Ambrose who says he's in declining health and fears Rachel might be trying to kill him. Philip goes to Italy but arrives too late to save his cousin. Philip, thinking Rachel might be responsible, invites her to Ambrose's estate that he stands to inherit to try to find out the truth, and finds that Rachel isn't quite what he expected. He falls in love with her, although he still worries that she killed Ambrose and might be out to kill him too, especially when he gets the impression she's working with her Italian lawyer to some unknown end. This is based on a novel by Daphne du Maurier, which means that there have been several movie and TV adaptations. There was another one last year, and that will be on Cinemax at 10:05 AM Monday.
Wednesday's daytime TCM lineup is a bunch of police procedurals, more or less, concluding at 6:30 PM with The Big Combo. Cornel Wilde plays the police detective here, Lt. Diamond, who has spent the past several years obsessed with Mr. Brown (Richard Conte), trying to bring him down. That, and he's obsessed with Brown's showgirl girlfriend Susan (Jean Wallace). He's spent too much time and money on the case, leading his bosses to order him to stop. But then Susan tries to commit suicide, and mentions the name "Alicia" in hospital. This results in Diamond's reopening the case, involving Mr. Brown's old wife and a mob boss in Sicily. Meanwhile, Brown is trying to get Diamond to stop, by force if necessary. But he also has to deal with his henchmen fighting one another, with second-in-command McClure (Brian Donlevy) on one side and thugs Mingo (just pawn in game of life, played by Earl Holliman) and Fante (not Orange Fante, played by Lee Van Cleef) on the other. Mingo and Fante have an interesting relationship with one another.
For a western I haven't recommended before, try Night of the Grizzly, at 8:08 AM Thursday on StarzEncore Westerns. Clint Walker plays Jim Cole, a lawman who is retiring to move to a ranch he's inherited from a relative, along with his wife Angela (Martha Hyer) and children. Some of the townsfolk don't like the newcomer; more specifically, they'd like all that land he inherited. Jed Curry (Keenan Wynn), who owns the majority share of the town bank, is the chief bad guy in this regard. Jed sees his chance when the titular grizzly bear shows up and starts slaughtering livestock. Cole needs money to replace his destroyed livestock, and Jed pretty much says no, I'm not going to lend you that money. Thankfully for Cole there's a bounty on the bear so if he can kill it he can kill two birds with one stone, to mix metaphors. But Cass (Leo Gordon), whom Cole put in jail some years back and who vows revenge, shows up, willing to kill the bear just to spite Cole.
Thursday night on TCM brings the new Star of the Month to the channel: Dick Powell. Powell started his career in the 1930s as a crooner in light musicals, before doing an abrupt switch in the mid-1940s to dark noir and detective movies, eventually branching out into directing and straight drama as well. This being the first Thursday in the month, we're going to be getting a lot of those crooner roles. 42nd Street is the one that really made him a star, and that's going to be on at 9:30 PM Thursday. But I've recommended that one enough, so I'll mention an even earlier film, Blessed Event, which kicks off the night at 8:00 PM. Lee Tracy is the star here, as brash gossip columnist Alvin Roberts, who's inherited the column from the original reporter on vacation (Ned Sparks), and turned it into a prototype of TMZ, reporting on the more scandalous doings of celebrities. The title comes from Roberts' reporting on rumors that a celebrity has gotten knocked up out of wedlock here, but there's a subplot involving a mobster sending a henchman (Allen Jenkins) to threaten Roberts, and Powell as a crooner whose career Roberts tries to hinder because Roberts just doesn't like crooners. (His mother does, however.)
If you want to feel old, consider that it's been 40 years since The Deer Hunter hit cinemas. It's going to be on StarzEncore Classics this week, at 10:53 PM Saturday. In a Pennsylvania mill town, a bunch of friends gather for a wedding just before three of them: Michael (Robert De Niro), Nick (Christopher Walken), and the groom Steven (John Savage) get set to join the Army to fight in Vietnam because they're from the patriotic part of the country that volunteers for this sort of thing. Of course, war is hell, and our three friends are going to find this out when they get taken POW by some crazy Vietnamese who are running games of Russian roulette. It affects all of them: Steven loses both of his legs after getting shot in the escape attempt and doesn't want to face his wife; Michael becomes even more quiet and withdrawn, not wanting to see his old friends when he gets back from Vietnam; and Nick goes AWOL, prompting Michael to go back to Vietnam to look for him. Meryl Streep plays Michael's on again/off again girlfriend. And good luck finding mountains like that in Pennsylvania.
A few months back, I mentioned a movie called Hell's Heroes, which was the first talkie version of the story "Three Godfathers" The story was done again in 1936 under the title Three Godfathers, and that version is going to be on TCM at 2:15 PM Saturday. (There was yet another remake in 1949 that will be on later in the month). Four men come to the town of New Jerusalem at Christmastime with the intention of robbing the bank. They do, but one of the men gets killed. Gang leader Bob (Chester Morris) leads college man Doc (Lewis Stone) and uneducated Gus (Walter Brennan) into the desert to escape, but the first watering hole is poisoned, and the second is now dry. Worse, at the second they find a dying mother with an infant child. The only way to get the child to safety is to take it to New Jerusalem, which is a problem since if the men go back there, they'll face hanging for having killed the bank president in the robbery. Morris and Stone aren't thought of as western stars, but they're both excellent here.
With Christmas being this month, TCM is running Christmas double features every Saturday and Sunday in prime time. One of this week's selections is O. Henry's Full House, which will be on at 10:15 PM Sunday. Now, you should probably remember the name O. Henry from his Christmas story "The Gift of the Magi", and that is indeed why this is in a lineup of Christmas movies. But the movie is actually an anthology of O. Henry stories, introduced by John Steinbeck, with "The Gift of the Magi" being the finale. Farley Grainger and Jeanne Crain play the husband and wife. Before that, there's a story of homeless Charles Laughton trying to get arrested so he'll have a place to spend the winter even if it's in jail. The second story has Richard Widmark as a wanted criminal owed money by an honest cop. The third, "The Last Leaf", has Anne Baxter as a sick woman who insists she'll die when the last leaf falls from the tree outside her window -- but that leaf never falls. And in "The Ransom of Red Chief", Fred Allen and Oscar Levant play con artists who kidnap a young boy for ransom, only to find they've gotten far more than they've bargained for.