Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” thread, for the week of July 11-17, 2016. Euro 2016 ended on Thursday, so there's no real soccer to watch this week. With that in mind, why not enjoy some good movies? As always, I've used my good taste to select a series of movies that I know you all will love. There's star of the month Olivia De Havilland; more westerns, and more of TCM's look at the 70s. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
We'll start with this week's TCM Import: The Vanishing, which you can see at 3:45 AM Monday. This is the 1988 original, not the US remake from a few years later. Rex (Gene Bervoets) and his girlfriend Saskia (Johanna ter Steege) go on vacation to France in their car. But they bicker along the way and then, when they stop at a rest area in France, they both get out of the car. But Saskia never comes back. At first Rex of course thinks she's just playing a joke on him, but after a while he realizes she's disappeared and begins to obsess about what's happened to her, especially since the authorities don't seem to have much luck in cracking the case. Enter Raymond (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu), who seems to know something about the case. More than he should. But what is it that he knows, and will Rex ever find it out? For those who like a movie that will creep you out, this is a good choice.
I don't think I've recommended About Mrs. Leslie before. It's coming up at 8:00 PM Monday on TCM. Shirley booth plays the leading role, a woman named Vivien who is now running a boarding house, this being the era when rooming houses were still a thing. She's a lonely old lady now, but in the past… well, back in the 30s she was working back east, which is where she met George Leslie (Robert Ryan). He's a well-to-do businessman, but he's trapped in a lonely marriage. So he offers Vivien companionship for six weeks out of each year, with the agreement that he's going to go back to his marriage at the end of the time. Vivien takes him up on the offer, and of course the two fall in love. This continues throughout World War II, even after she learns the truth about George. Meanwhile, back in the present, Vivien's roomers have problems of their own.
I can't recall whether I've recommended Taxi Driver before, but you'll find it this week at 1:20 PM Tuesday on StarzEncore Classics. Robert DeNiro plays Travis Bickle, a Vietnam War veteran who is an insomniac, which is what enables him to drive a taxi by night, and curse the state of the world by day – New York of the 70s was a pretty skeezy place. Bickle meets Betsy (Cybil Shepherd), who is working for the political campaign of Senator Palatine (Leonard Harris) to become President, and falls in love with Becky. But the feeling is unrequited after Bickle screws up the relationship badly. Then he meets Iris (Jodie Foster), a 12-year-old who has run away from home and is working the streets as a prostitute being pimped out by Sport (Harvey Keitel). Travis wants to save Iris from this life, but seems unable to do that, either. It's enough to drive a mentally unstable man to utter madness.
TCM's look at 100 westerns continues on Tuesday and Wednesday. This week's set includes the interesting The Bronze Buckaroo at 10:00 AM Wednesday. This is one of the “race movies” of the 1930s, movies which were made on shoestring budgets by all-black production companies, only using a white actor if the plot specifically called for it. There were race movies in pretty much every genre, including the western, which here features black singing cowboy Herb Jeffries. The plot, such as it is, involves Bob (Jeffries) and his sidekick Dusty (Lucius Brooks) help find out what happened to a missing ranch owner. Buck (Clarence Brooks) and Pete (Spencer Williams) are behind it, as they're trying to get the ranch for themselves. There's a subplot involving Dusty being cheated over an alleged talking mule. And, of course, with Herb Jeffries being a singing cowboy, there's time for some musical numbers with him and the Four Tones. (Apparently, black audiences liked musical numbers even more than white audiences, so a lot of race movies have extraneous musical numbers.)
Away from TCM's look at the western genre is Seminole, which you can watch on StarzEncore Westerns at 6:00 AM Wednesday. Rock Hudson stars as Lt. Caldwell, a man fresh out of West Point who has been stationed at Fort King in Florida when it was still a territory and not a state. This is a time when President Jackson wanted to remove all of the Indian tribes, and the fort's commander, Major Degan (Richard Carlson) is more or less OK with that since he doesn't like the Seminoles. Their chief is mixed-race Osceola (Anthony Quinn). Caldwell knew Osceola, and both of them know the same woman, Miss Revere (Barbara Hale). Eventually the Seminoles come looking for a truce, but Degan is having none of it, and treats Osceola pretty badly. Ultimate Caldwell winds up on trial for murder, which is why the story is told as a flashback at court-martial. Location shooting was done in the Everglades, a fairly forbidding place to film.
A movie that's showing up again on FXM Retro after an absence is AWalk With Love and Death, which you can see at 7:45 AM Thursday. Assaf Dayan (Moshe's son) plays Heron of Fois, a university student sometime during the Hundred Years' War. However, one day he gets the idea that he just absolutely has to see the sea, so he just gets up from the lectures and leaves, heading out for the sea. What with a war on in the country, it's not an easy trek. One day, he stops at a castle where the young Claudia (Anjelica Huston) lives. She eventually decides that she's going to join Heron on his journey. But the France of this time not only has the war and all its horrors, but a fair number of people who aren't thrilled with the nobility. This was Huston's first film credit, directed by her father John. It's an interesting if flawed movie; unfortunately the last time I saw it show up on FXM Retro it was a panned-and-scanned print.
This month's TCM Spotlight is on America in the 70s, and continues on Thursday night with movies such as The Stepford Wives, at 10:00 PM Thursday. Katharine Ross plays Joanna, who moves from New York with her husband and two kids to the town of Stepford, in suburban Connecticut. There, she befriends Bobbie (Paula Prentiss), but the two of them find that there's something odd about the town. Many of the wives seem to be perfectly docile housewife types. As the two gal pals investigate, they get more alarmed, especially since some of the friends they've made have since changed into the docile type themselves. Joanna continues to investigate, and… well, you probably know the story since the term “Stepford wife” has come into common use. Which is a bit of a shame, since the movie is really good especially when you don't know how the story ends.
Olivia De Havilland's turn as Star of the Month continues on Friday in prime time into Saturday morning, with movies such as Gold Is Where You Find It, at 7:45 AM Saturday on TCM. After the gold rush in California petered out, there was still gold in them thar hills, but it was harder to get at. Meanwhile, a bunch of farmers, led by people like Colonel Ferris (Claude Rains) and his daughter Serena (De Havilland) have settled the place. Big mining companies led by people like Harrison (Sidney Toler) and his foreman Slag (Barton MacLane) are basically getting at the gold by blowing up the mountainsides (an early form of strip mining), using engineers like Whitney (George Brent) to do it. This of course, leads to runoff that's destroying all the good farmland. Whitney falls in love with Serena, which begins to change his views on the mining techniques. This film was shot in Technicolor before even The Adventures of Robin Hood, so it's a shame the print isn't in the best of conditions.
Another movie I think I haven't recommended before is Charley Varrick, which will be on TCM at 10:00 PM Saturday. The title role, played by Walter Matthau, is that of a stunt pilot turned crop duster who, not being very well off financially, gets the brilliant idea to rob a bank. So he gets together three of his friends and devises a plot to rob a bank in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico. Two of the friends die in the hold-up, and Charley and his surviving friend Harman (Andrew Robinson) find that they've taken in a haul of $750,000. That's a lot more than they expected, and that's because it turns out they picked the wrong bank to rob. The bank they robbed was being run by the mob as a money-laundering operation. Needless to say, the mob wants their money back, and mob leader Boyle (John Vernon) sends in hitman Molly (Joe Don Baker) to get that money back from the robbers. Watch this, and you'll find that it's had a clear influence on later movies in the genre.