Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” Thread, for the week of January 11-17, 2021. The Packers finally play again this weekend, but there's still a wait, so as alwys, it's a brilliant idea to spend that downtime watching some good movies. There's a lot worth mentioning this week, and I didn't have to get to the Rod Taylor birthday salute on TCM on Monday morning and afternoon, or the Miriam Hopkins movies on Thursday in prime time. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
There's a second night of the movies of London Films on TCM on Monday in prime time. This gives you a chance to get the lovely Technicolor movie The Thief of Bagdad, at 12:15 AM Tuesday (which is of course still Monday night out in LFT). John Justin plays Ahmad, the young sultan of Bagdad who is concerned about his people. So his adviser, the Vizier Jaffar (Conrad Veidt), suggests that Ahmad go out among the people dressed as a commoner so he can view their condition up close. However, this is a trick to get Ahmad out of the palace so that Jaffar can take over, getting Ahmad arrested. While imprisoned, Ahmad meets Abu (Sabu), th titular theif who is able to get Ahmad out of prison and safe to Basra in the south, where they can plot to put Ahmad back in his rightful place in the palace, with the help of a lovely princess (June Duprez) and a djinni (Rex Ingram; this is the same root word as “genie” although Rex Ingram isn't quite as easy on the eyes as Barbara Eden was back in the day). As I said, the color here is absolutely gorgeous.
A movie that's back on FXM after a break is The Salzburg Connection. You can see it at 9:50 AM Monday. Barry Newman plays Bill Mathison, a lawyer for a publishing company on vacation in Switzerland, where he's asked to contact a man in Austria writing a book on the lakes of the Salzburg region. Of course, we know that man has been killed after finding something at the bottom of one of the lakes, because that's the opening scene of the movie. Bill finds the man's wife (Anna Karina) and her brother Johann (Klaus Maria Brandauer), who clearly know more than they're letting on. Eventually, Bill gets chased and involved with CIA agents when it turns out that the dead writer found a box containing a top secret list of Nazi collaborators that everybody and their brother wants for their own reasons; not just the uncaptured Nazis but the CIA and KGB. The plot isn't terribly original, but it's modestly interesting, and the movie was shot on location which is a big plus.
Who knew that Michael J. Fox could star in a big role in a serious movie and do well? To see the movie in question, watch Casualties of War, at 12:14 PM Tuesday on StarzEncore Action. Fox plays Max Eriksson, who sees a young Vietnamese woman get on a train and suddenly has flashbacks to his time serving in Vietnam…. Eriksson was part of a squad led by Sgt. Meserve (Sean Penn) which gets ambushed by the Viet Cong on multiple occasions, resulting in one of the squad members dying of his gunshot wound. Sgt. Meserve, frustrated by this and the squad's leave getting cut short, says that he's going to get revenge on the Viet Cong by “requisitioning” a local girl for the squad. Eriksson is aghast and goes above Meserve's head but is told this is only dark humor. However, Meserve wasn't joking, and the rest of the squad commits an atrocity, using the threat of phyiscal force to keep Eriksson from doing anything about it. No wonder he has PTSD flashbacks.
Producer Bert Gordon made some entertaining ultra-low-budget stuff in the 1960s. A good example of this is Picture Mommy Dead, which you can watch at 6:45 AM Wednesday on TCM. Bert's real-life daughter Susan plays Susan Shelley, who is just getting out of an institution several years after her mom Jessica (Zsa Zsa Gabor) died horribly in a house fire, seen in a fun opening sequence. Susan returns home to her father Edward (Don Ameche), who in the meantime has remarried. The only thing is, the new wife, Francene (Martha Hyer) is Susan's former governess. That, and she was Dad's mistress when Mom was still alive! Talk about screwing with your kid's head. Worse for poor Susan, Mom left her all the money in a trust, while Dad and Stepmom don't have so much to live on, so they'd like to get at that trust fund. Susan seems to be having visions of her dead mother, and if Dad and Francene can get her declared insane, perhaps they can get at that trust fund. Swedish actress Signe Hasso plays a nun, while Wendell Corey, near the end of his life, plays the family lawyer.
Literary adaptations are common, with a lot of famous books getting multiple film versions. I don't know that I've mentioned the 1948 British version of Anna Karenina before, although I'm pretty certain I've mentioned others. At any rate, the 1948 version is on this week, at 10:15 AM Thursday on TCM. Vivien Leigh plays Anna, married to Karenin (Ralph Richardson) and sister of Stefan Oblonsky (Hugh Dempster). When Stefan asks Anna to come to Moscow, she meets Mrs. Vronsky (Helen Haye, no “S” on the end) on the train. She, of course, is the mother of Count Vronsky (Kieron Moore), universally described as dashing. Anna and Vronsky keep meeting and, of course, falling in love, something which unsurprisingly pisses Karenin off to no end. The Karenins separate and, since Anna was the guilty party here, Dad keeps the kid and won't let Mom see the kid. Anna tries to find happiness with Vronsky, but if you know that novel and Tolstoy's morals, you know that's not going to work in the end.
Up against Anna Karenina is the second half of High Plains Drifter, which starts on StarzEncore Westerns at 8:47 AM Thursday. Clint Eastwood plays the Stranger, who comes into the old west mining town of Lago one day, finding a place that's not very happy, because they've had to hire a bunch of guns to protect them from, well, that comes later in the movie. Unfortunately, three of the gunmen they've hired think that this new Stranger is one of the men who's a danger to the town, so they get in a gunfight with the Stranger, who summarily shoots all three of them dead. Not that the townsfolk are happy, but they at least have the good sense to realize that this new Stranger might be a pretty competent gunman himself. So they ask him to stay on and deal with the existential threat to Lago, which is three other gunman who killed the previous marshal and are just about to get out of prison, presumably to come back to Lago and get their revenge.
Another story that has had a whole bunch of adaptations is Madame X. The 1937 movie version is getting a showing on TCM this week, at 2:30 AM Friday. Gladys George plays Jacqueline Fleuriot, a woman married to wealthy lawyer Bernard (Warren William) and bearing him a son. However, she decides to have an affair that Bernard finds out about, and Bernard throws Jacqueline out of the house. No longer able to live the life to which she is accustomed, Jacqueline sinks to the bottle and to prostitution. Many years pass, and the kid grows up to become a man, Raymond (John Beal). He follows in Dad's footsteps and thinks Mom has been dead for years. However, a blackmailer Lerocle (Henry Daniell) comes on to the scene threatening Jacqueline after he discovers her true identity; she winds up kiling him. And wouldn't you know it, but she winds up getting young Raymond as her defense attorney, with him not knowing that in reality he's defending his mother!
It might be tough to believe, but City Slickers turns 30 this year. If you want to see it, you can tune in to HBO Signature at 7:00 AM Friday. Mitch (Billy Crystal), Ed (Bruno Kirby), and Phil (Daniel Stern) are three friends who have been going on a lot of adventures, some embarrassing, as a way to try to deny getting older. It's Mitch's birthday, and they've gotten him the gift of a dude ranch vacation with real cattle drive. Eventually Mitch agrees to go along. Preparing for the cattle drive, they and the other paying guests meet Curly (Jack Palance), the trail boss for the drive who seems a bit over the top and nuts. But Mitch gets to know Curly a bit better and realizes there's more to Curly. Well, at least until Curly drops dead. Unfortunately, without a trail boss, the guests are going to have to complete the cattle drive themselves, learning a lot about who they really are along the way. Jack Palance won an Oscar for his role; even though his character dies, a sequel was made.
I probably recommended Charade relatively recently, but it's such a fun movie that it's always worth mentioning again. This week, it's going to be on at 8:00 PM Friday on TCM. Audrey Hepburn stars as Regina Lampert, a Frenchwoman on vacation in the Alps who is approached by a gentleman calling himself Peter Joshua (Cary Grant). She returns home to Paris to find that her secretive husband has, in fact, been killed, thrown off a train, with a plan to flee France for South America supposedly carrying $250,000. At her funeral, three strangers come to pay their respects, of a sort, played by James Coburn, George Kennedy, and Ned Glass. Some time later, Regina is informed by the CIA's man in Paris, Bartholomew (Walter Matthau), that the three men at the funeral had served in World War II with her husband, and that the squad is obviously in on a theft of that $250,000 somehow. Peter also hass some connection to the squad, but what? Everybody is less than honest, and Reggie has no idea whom she should or shouldn't trust.
This week's Noir Alley selection is Witness to Murder, which airs at 10:00 AM Sunday on TCM. Barbara Stanwyck plays Cheryl, a single woman of a certain age who lives alone. She gets up to pull the shade down one night, and through the window, she sees into the apartment rented by Albert (George Sanders). And he's killing somebody! Obviously, Cheryl calls the police, but thwn they investigate, they can't find any evidence that there's been a killing. To make matters worse, now Albert knows that there was a witness to the killing and that he has to do something about it. Cheryl keeps insisting she saw a murder, and finally she's able to convince police detective Matthews (Gary Merrill) to investigate more seriously. But Albert has more tricks up his sleeve, and works on convincing the police that Cheryl is harassing him and that she's actually mentally unstable! And then there's a plot twist…. The plot is a bit of a mess at times, but the acting makes this one worth a watch.