Welcome to another edition of Fedya’s “Movies to Tivo” Thread, for the week of January 10-16, 2022. The Packers have done well enough that after today they don’t have another game for two weeks, unlike the Minnesota and Chicago teams who have done so well that they don’t have a game after today for another seven months. But that week off gives all of us a time to catch up on some good movies. There’s more from Star of the Month Kay Francis; some films honoring recently deceased legends of Hollywood; a couple of films based on true events, and a lot more. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
Monday night brings another night of Star of the Month Kay Francis to TCM. A movie that’s interesting for one scene is Living on Velvet, at 1:45 AM Tuesday. George Brent plays Terry Parker, a man who lost the rest of his family in a plan crash, and doesn’t really have any desire to do much of anything in life after that. That is, until he meets Amy Prentiss (Kay Francis) and falls in love with her. Terry’s best friend Gibraltar (Warren William) is Amy’s boyfriend, but he realizes that the only way Terry can ever live again is if he gives Amy up to Terry and lets the two of them have their relationship. Terry and Amy do get married, but Terry finds that he’s still unable to live a normal life, leading to a hand-to-mouth existence that Amy eventually can no longer bear. Her leaving Terry threatens to destroy him, until the melodramatic climax. The more interesting thing about this movie is that there’s a scene in which Terry makes fun of Amy’s inability to pronounce the letter R. It’s amazing that Kay Fwancis let this scene stay in the movie since that was her real speech impediment. Oh, there’s also an extremely backless dress that Francis wears.
If you want something more recent, we’ll go all the way back to Shakespeare for our next film, Much Ado About Nothing, at 1:12 PM Tuesday on MovieMax. Claudio (Robert Sean Leonard) and Benedick (Kenneth Branagh) are a couple of noblemen who had returned home from war, perhaps ready to settle down. Claudio is in love with Hero (Kate Beckinsale), and they’re set to be married soon. Meanwhile, Benedick had met Hero’s cousin Beatrice (Emma Thompson), and the two seem to hate each other, constantly hurling insults at one another. Claudio and Hero decide that they’re going to try to repair the relationship between Benedick and Beatrice and make them fall in love. Meanwhile, another nobleman, Don John (Keanu Reeves), conspires to spoil the wedding between Claudio and Hero. But will all these shenanigans be much ado about nothing? Branagh directed, and Thompson was his real-life wife at the time.
Actor Sidney Poitier died last Thursday at the age of 94. But in addition to acting, he also did some directing later in his career, including the comedy Stir Crazy, at 12:01 PM Wednesday on Starz In Black. Harry (Richard Pryor) and Skip (Gene Wilder) are best friends in New York. Both of them get fired from their day jobs, and Skip comes up with the idea of going west to California, which was still a magnet for newcomers in those days. However, they’re short of money along the way, and Skip gets the two of them a job “in banking”, which turns out to be playing corporate mascots in a live ad campaign. Bank robbers realize this ad campaign is a perfect ruse for robbing the bank and leaving Harry and Skip as the prime suspects. They get tried and convicted, and are spectacularly unsuited to prison life. That is until Skip is good on the mechanical bull and could take part in the prison rodeo. This also gives them a chance to escape. Personally, I don’t think this is as good as the pairing in Silver Streak, but I know a lot of people really like it.
We’ve got a couple of Richard Attenborough movies this week. The first of them is The Great Escape, at 8:00 PM Wednesday on TCM. Attenborough plays Bartlett, an RAF commander who is currently a POW at a special camp in Nazi Germany, one that was built for all the POWs who have tried to escape multiple times and is one from which they simply can’t escape. Yeah, right. The multinational motley crew of POWs, including Canadian Hendley (James Garner) and a newcomer American Hilts (Steve McQueen), immediately set out to effect an escape. But this one is planned to be a mass escape, the purpose being to divert as much of the Nazi resources as possible into finding them and away from the war effort. They need forged documents, which Blythe (Donald Pleasance) is tasked with producing, while Danny (Charles Bronson) is the best of the tunnel-builders. Eventually the time comes for the actual escape. But it’s going to be hard to get to Allied territory, and the Nazis plan to be brutal with anyone they capture.
Director Peter Bogdanovich died on Thursday at the age of 82. I haven’t seen anything yet about a programming tribute from TCM, but I do notice that there are a couple of his films coming up on other movie channels. Bogdanovich’s first feature film was Targets, airing at 2:30 PM Thursday on Showtime Showcase. Two seemingly unrelated stories come together for the finale. In the first, Boris Karloff stars as Byron Orlok, an aging actor who is surprised to know that people care about his old movies and has agreed to make what he figures is going to be one of his final public appearances at a drive-in theater showing one of his old movies. In the other, Bob Thompson (Tim O’Kelly) buy ammo at a store just across the street from Orlok’s hotel. He doesn’t shoot Orlok; instead, he goes home and shoots up his family. Then he takes his gun and ammo, climbs up a water tower that has a view of the highway, and starts shooting the people in random passing cars. Eventually, his getaway takes him to the drive-in where Orlok is scheduled to appear.
TCM has a spotlight on “true crime” this month, airing on Thursdays in prime time. This gives me the chance to recommend a really good movie, 10 Rillington Place, at 4:45 AM Friday. Richard Attenborough plays John Christie, who lives at the titular address and is a washed-up doctor in 1944 London who now provides illegal medical services. He actually uses this as an opportunity to kill women, however. After the war, Timothy Evans (John Hurt), an illiterate man who has a wife Beryl (Judy Geeson) and young child, and always has some scheme to try to get money. When Beryl gets pregnant again, Christie agrees to perform the abortion, killing Beryl and leaving Timothy to take the rap for it since Timothy couldn’t well tell the truth about the abortion and nobody would believe him anyway. When the truth came out about Christie, it only further ignited the debate on the death penalty in the UK (although that’s not the focus of the movie).
The second of the Peter Bogdanovich movies airing this week is The Last Picture Show, which will be on Flix at 5:45 PM Friday (among other airings). Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane (Jeff Bridges) are teenaged best friends in the west Texas town of Anarene in the early 1950s. It’s the sort of town modernity is passing by, with people who can do so picking up and leaving for greener pastures. Over the course of the next year, both young men grow up in various ways. Sonny is asked by coach to do a favor for coach’s wife Ruth (Cloris Leachman) driving her to a doctor’s appointment, which leads to the two having an affair. Duane has a girlfriend Jacy (a young Cybill Shepherd) whose parents struck it rich in the oil boom, and whose mom wants her to pursue a rich guy’s son, not some schlub like Duane. And Sonny and Duane’s best adult friend, Sam (Ben Johnson), who runs the local pool hall and movie theater, suddenly dies. Duane gets a job out of town, and when he returns, the friendship between him and Sonny has changed.
TCM’s Friday night lineup is a night of movies with British actor Stanley Baker. One that I don’t think I’ve recommended before is Hell Drivers, which kicks off the evening at 8:00 PM. Baker plays Tom Yately, a man who’s recently gotten out of prison and who is having trouble getting a job because who wants to hire an ex-con. However, a trucking company run by Cartley (William Hartell) does hire him on as a driver, although it’s difficult work trucking gravel. If you don’t make enough runs, you’ll be out on your butt. Red (Patrick McGoohan) is the guy who seems to be able to make the most runs in a day, and Tom would like to be as good at trucking as Red is. This, however, seems to cause some resentment among the other drivers. (Watch for a young Sean Connery among the other drivers.) And then the payroll secretary Lucy (Peggy Cummins), with whom Tom has become friendly, informs him that there might be something hinky going on with the firm’s books, with Cartley and Red being behind it. Watch also for a young David McCallum as Tom’s kid brother. McCallum also appears with Baker in the night’s following movie, Violent Playground at 10:00 PM.
I see that Fathom is back in the FXM rotation. This week, there’s an airing at 6:00 AM Saturday. Fathom is the name of an acrobatic parachute artist, played by Raquel Welch. She’s in Europe with an American troupe, at least until she gets waylaid into the world of international espionage. It seems as though a USAF plane crashed into the Mediterranean with a new nuclear trigger device on it. Intelligence believes the Chinese are trying to get it, and have an impregnable compound from which they’re operating. They realize that the one way to get in is from above, so an innocent like Fathom could just drop in and start spying, since a background check is going to reveal no previous spy experience. Meriwether (Anthony Franciosa) is a westerner working with the Chinese at the compound, and as Fathom goes around investigating, she realizes that things aren’t quite what they seem, and that the trigger device might not be a military device at all. Frothy 1960s spy stuff, but it’s got Raquel Welch at the height of her beauty.
Finally, for something a little more serious, try East of Eden, at 5:45 PM Sunday on TCM. Based on the book by John Steinbeck, the story tells of young Cal Trask (James Dean), a young man in Salinas CA in the time just before the US entered World War I. He’s got an older brother Aron (Richard Davalos), and is convinced that dad Adam (Raymond Massey) loves Aron more than Dad loves him, which his left him bitter and constantly trying to win his father’s approval. Worse is that Cal discovers Dad has been lying to the two sons for years, telling them that Mom died, when in fact mom Kate (Jo Van Fleet) is running a brothel in nearby Monterey. Meanwhile, Aron has a girlfriend in Abra (Julie Harris), but Cal finds himself falling in love with her, and the feeling seems to be mutual. Cal makes money growing beans he expects to sell to the US Army for the war effort, but this only pisses Dad off further since he thinks Cal is a profiteer. So Cal finally decides he’s going to blow up all the family relationships for good.