Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” Thread, for the week of January 25-31, 2021. The Packers have two weeks before they play in the Super Bowl, so there's a lot of time to catch up on movies. We've got more from TCM Star of the Month Miriam Hopkins on Thursday night, a British writer whose work was frequently adapted for the big screen, and several movies that are under 50 years old for those of you who only want recent stuff. As always, all times are in Eastern unless otherwise mentioned.
TCM is spending Monday morning and afternoon with a bunch of movies based on works by Somerset Maugham, as January 25 is the anniversary of his birth. The day kicks off with Our Betters at 7:00 AM. Constance Bennett stars as Pearl, an American heiress who goes to England and marries into the aristocracy in the form of Lord Grayston (Alan Mowbray). He has the title and she the money and together become the center of a section of the idle rich. Lady Pearl takes on a lover in the form of Pepi (Gilbert Roland), who has also been seeing a duchess friend of Pearl's; meanwhile, Pearl is also trying to get her sister Bessie (Anita Louise) to marry into aristocracy, although Bessie might rather marry for love. Some other American expats are around such as Thurston Clay (Grant Mitchell). They all wind up at one of those weekend-long parties common in movies about the rich in those days, with the illicit affair between Lady Pearl and Pepi finally being caught.
If you think the French New Wave classic Breathless is really just tedious and overly talky, you may be stunned to learn that somebody in Hollywood had the brilliant idea to remake in English and set it in America. That 1983 remake, also titled Breathless, is on Epix 2 at 1:45 AM Monday. Richard Gere plays Jesse, the criminal who at the start of the movie is in Las Vegas and looking to flee to Mexico. However, after stealing a car in Vegas, he drives off to Los Angeles to meet up with the girl he recently met, Monica (Valérie Kaprisky), who is studying architecture there, to try to convince her to go to Mexico with him. On the way to Los Angeles he shoots a cop who senses something is wrong with Jesse and the car he's driving, making Jesse even more hunted by the police since he's now a cop-killer. Jesse and Monica have a steamy romance while traipsing around Los Angeles trying to evade the police, something that you know from the original movie is futile.
The old Adam West/Burt Ward TV series Batman was insanely popular when it premiered at the beginning of 1966, so much so that the studio decided to capitalize on the popularity by quickly putting into production a movie with all-new material (a couple of TV series had already taken episodes and stitched them together into a movie). That 1966 movie of Batman shows up on FXM at 3:00 AM Tuesday. Most of the starts of the TV series reprise their roles here, with West and Ward as Batman and Robin. They're asked to rescue a kidnapped Commodore Schmidlapp (Reginald Denny), but it's really a plot by the United Underworld: the Joker (Cesar Romero), Catwoman (Lee Meriwether), The Riddler (Frank Gorshin), and the Penguin (Burgess Meredith) to get at Batman and Robin so that their real plot can go on unmolested. That fiendish scheme involves a “superdehydrator”, something that can suck all the moisture right out of any living being! OK, that's a silly plot, but the 1960s Batman was never meant to be taken seriously; that only came with the 1989 reboot.
For those of you who want your football fix, what with the Packers not playing until Feb. 7, you might enjoy Trouble Along the Way, airing on TCM at 2:45 PM Wednesday. John Wayne (who of course in real life played college football at USC) plays Steve Williams, a man whose life is a bit of a mess. A college coach who got canned from his previous job for ethics violations, he's also in a custody battle with ex-wife Anne (Marie Windsor) for custody of daughter Carol (Sherry Jackson). Into this comes Fr. Burke (Charles Coburn), head of St. Anthony's College. The place is struggling and threatened with closure, and he decides the way to help keep the doors open is to have a winning football team. And Steve is just the right man to take the helm of that team, thereby also having a chance to redeem himself. There are all sorts of complications as trying to win and stay within ethical boundaries isn't so easy. There's also a social worker/guardian ad litem Alice (Donna Reed) who's supposed to be looking out for Carol's best interests but falls in love with Steve along the way. One of Steve's assistant coaches is played by a young Chuck Connors, who doesn't use his trusty rifle to get opponents out of the way.
Among the movies I have this week is one that's less than 20 years old, having been released in February 2001. That movie is 3,000 Miles to Graceland, and you can see it at 12:58 AM Thursday on StarzEncore Comedy. Kurt Russell plays Michael Zane and Kevin Costner plays Thomas Murphy. They're a pair of criminals who have come up with a brilliant plan to rob one of the Las Vegas casinos by getting a gang together, dressing them up as Elvis impersonators, and showing up at an Elvis convention where everybody is dressed as Elvis. But as with any good heist movie, things don't quite work out according to plan, and one of the guys gets shot and killed at the casino. Then when they meet at Michael's motel room, there's more dissension over the $3 million loot. Further complicating matters is the proprietress of the hotel, Cybil Waingrow (Courtney Cox). Michael has fallen in love with her, but she may only be interested in the loot, not in Michael. And she's got a bratty son who threatens to bollix things too even as the US Marshals are closing in.
On Thursday night on TCM, we get one more evening of movies with Star of the Month Miriam Hopkins. The night kicks off with her in a supporting role in The Heiress, at 8:00 PM. Hopkins plays Lavinia, widow aunt to Catherine Sloper (Olivia de Havilland) whose father Dr. Austin (Ralph Richardson) is Lavinia's brother. They live in New York's fashionable Washington Square circa 1850, but Catherine isn't fashionable at all, instead being terribly introverted, something that distresses Dad greatly as he wants to marry off his daughter to someone suitable. Into this situation comes Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift). He's the first dashing suitor Catherine has ever met, and she falls in love with him, with the feeling being mutual. But Dad has a serious problem with the relationship as he thinks Morris isn't all that he seems, instead only being interested in Catherine for the family wealth. Dad even threatens to disinherit Catherine should she marry Morris. A movie with a bunch of extremely fine acting performances, earning de Havilland an Oscar and Richardson an Oscar nomination; Hopkins had to settle for a Golden Globe nomination.
Among the more-recent movies this week is Eye For an Eye, showing at 8:35 AM Saturday on Thriller Max. Sally Field plays Karen McCann, a Southern California mother married to Mack (Ed Harris) and with two adult daughters. The elder daughter is on the phone with Mom when a man breaks in and brutally rapes and murders the daughter. That man is Robert Doob (Kiefer Sutherland), but at the trial, he beats the charge on a technicality. This understandably pisses Karen off to no end, so she joins a support group for the families of crime victims. When Robert starts stalking another woman, Karen follows and tries to warn this other woman, but Robert is able to get the authorities to stop Karen for stalking him. Karen eventually concludes that the only way to deal with Robert is through vigilante justice, although this is illegal unless she does something in self-defense. She sets out to create just a situation, but that of course also causes all sorts of strains within her marriage.
Another true classic that's on this week is On the Waterfront, which you can see at 3:45 PM Saturday on TCM. Marlon Brando plays Terry Malloy, a washed-u[ boxer now working at the port of Hoboken (a lot of the filming was done on location) where his brother Charley (Rod Steiger) is high enough up in the corrupt union that he can help control who gets work and who doesn't. The Feds are investigating the union, and Charley tricks Terry into getting one of the witnesses bumped off so the witness won't testify. After the witness' killing, his sister Edie Doyle (Eva Marie Saint) and the local priest Father Barry (Karl Malden) meet Terry, with Terry falling in love with Edie in his own way, which isn't always so straightforward. Fr. Barry, meanwhile, tries to get Terry to do the right thing which will ultimately mean testifying in front of the federal prosecutors. This, of course, would put Terry in great personal danger from union boss Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb). But if Terry doesn't do the right thing, none of the other workers will stand up to Johnny either.
If you haven't seen enough about the James-Younger gang, there's another movie that I don't think I've mentioned before: The Long Riders, showing at 10:00 AM Sunday on StarzEncore (and three hours later if you only have the west coast feed). One of the interesting things is that the casting includes several sets of real-life brothers: James and Stacy Keach as Jesse and Frank James; David, Robert, and Keith Carradine as Cole, Bob, and Jim Younger; and Dennis and Randy Quaid rounding out the gang as Ed and Clell Miller. The gang starts off robbing coaches and trains in their home state of Missouri in the years just after the Civil War, they having served in Quantrill's Raiders and still having various levels of resentment toward the northerners. Eventually they roam further afield, climaxing in the disastrous Northfield, MN bank raid in 1876. Along the way, Jesse tries to settle down with Zee (Savannah Smith), while the Fords (Christopher and Nichols Guest) join the gang, with Robert ford of course ultimately shooting Jesse. But this movie is for the way the story is told, not the story that we all already know anyway.
Finally, we've got another movie that I haven't mentioned in a while: The Carey Treatment, at 4:15 AM Sunday on TCM. James Coburn plays Peter Carey, a pathologist who gets hired by a hospital in Boston (again, there's lots of location shooting here). Then disaster hits when the chief of staff who hired Carey, Dr. Randall (Dan O'Herlihy) loses his 15-year-old daughter to a botched abortion, this being the era when abortion was still illegal. The daughter, as she was dying from loss of blood, blamed Carey's colleague Dr. Tao (James Hong), but as Carey investigates, he gets the distinct feeling that Tao had nothing to do with it and there's a lot more going on than meets the eye. On top of that, the father seems to be perfectly OK with the case not being fully investigated. So what exactly is going wrong at the hospital? The movie is an interesting product of its time, based on a story by Michael Crichton and directed by Blake Edwards, who is not normally thought of for movies like this one.