Welcome to another edition of Fedya’s “Movies to Tivo” thread, for the week of July 12-18, 2021. We’re into the middle of July, and I still haven’t said that much about TCM’s Star of the Month Elvis Presley. His movies continue on TCM on Thursday in prime time. But there’s other, more interesting stuff on this week, so I’ll mention all of that. For those of you who like more recent movies, sorry, but there’s nothing from this century getting a recommendation this week. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
I’m not certain if I’ve recommended Flesh before. You’ve got a chance to see it this week, at 7:30 AM Monday on TCM. Wallace Beery plays Polokai, a waiter at a German beer garden who’s also the star wrestler. Karen Morley plays Laura, who’s just gotten out of prison and can’t pay her bill. So Polokai takes her in and falls in love with her. She’s using him for his money, which she wants to buy her boyfriend Nicky’s (Ricardo Cortez) freedom, telling Polokai Nicky is her brother. In fact, Nicky’s already knocked Laura up, and gets her to convince Polokai that he’s the father so they can get married and bring Polokai to America where he can play the exotic German to try to become the world champion wrestler. And Nicky beats the crap out of Laura, too. Of course, Nicky wants fake, fixed wrestling while Polokai only wants to wrestle honestly, and doesn’t realize that Nicky is Laura’s boyfriend. The one big problem with the movie is that you’ll want to see Karen Morley’s flesh based on the title, but you get Wallace Beery’s instead.
Another of the movies that recently started showing up in the FXM rotation is The Frogmen. It’s going to be on again this week, at 6:00 AM Tuesday. Richard Widmark plays Lt. Cmdr. Lawrence, the new commander of a group of frogmen in the Pacific theater of World War II, whose job it is to infiltrate Japanese-held islands from underwater, for reconnaissance or sabotage missions. Lawrence is replacing a commander who died in the line of duty, and is keenly aware that the men under him, led by second-in-command Jake Flannigan (Dana Andrews) like the old guy more than they like him. Lawrence cares more about the success of the mission than he does about any one individual, which drives a further wedge between him and Flannigan. But Lawrence gets an infection that puts Flannigan in command for one mission, while the transport ship they’re on gets hit by a dud torpedo, and defusing that brings the two men closer together. The final mission involves sabotaging a Japanese submarine pen. Standard plot, but an interesting look at early underwater work.
A movie that for some odd reason is showing up at the dinner hour is Kisses for Breakfast, which will be on TCM at 6:30 PM Tuesday. Dennis Morgan plays Rodney, who marries Juliet (Shirley Ross). On the way to their honeymoon cruise, they plan to see Juliet’s cousin Laura (Jane Wyatt). But an old girlfriend shows up trying to blackmail Rodney, leading to him getting attacked and left with a concussion and amnesia. But he’s got Laura’s address, so he goes to see her, not knowing who she is. She falls in love with him, not knowing who he is since he’s using an assumed name, and the two get married. They could live happily ever after except for the fact that Rodney is declared dead, leaving Juliet free to remarry Lucius (Jerome Cowan). And Juliet invites Laura and her husband not named Rodney as far as Laura knows up to the wedding. You can guess what’s going to happen when Juliet meets her brother-in-law. Why the amnesia never cleared up, however, is a mystery.
I just noticed that Caveman shows up this week, at 7:30 AM Wednesday on Epix2. Ringo Starr plays Atouk, a member of the “Hostile” tribe led by Tonda (former football player John Matuszak). He falls in love with Tonda’s girl Lana (Barbara Bach, who’s now been married to Starr for 40 years), which Tonda can’t stomach, so Tonda throws Atouk out of the tribe. While wandering, Atouk meets Lar (Dennis Quaid), another outcast who survived an attack from a “macha”, their word for dinosaur. The two also meet Gog (Jack Gilford) and his daughter Tala (Shelley Long before Cheers). Tala falls in love with Atouk, but Atouk isn’t having any of it because he’s still thinking about Lana. Along the way, they learn about practically every cliche you can think of in those old prehistoric movies, meeting new people who become part of their tribe of Misfits. Eventually they’re going to run into the Hostiles again….
If you like completely off the wall comedies, a really good one is airing this week. That would be The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, at 8:00 PM Wednesday on TCM. Betty Hutton plays Trudy Kockenlocker, a small town working girl living with her dad (William Demarest) and kid sister Emmy (Diana Lynn) and having a nice boyfriend in bank teller Norval Jones (Eddie Bracken). There’s a military base nearby, this being the height of World War II, and one night Trudy goes out to a dance being held for some of the servicemen who are about to go off and fight. But Trudy gets blackout drunk, and when she wakes up the next day, she realizes she’s gotten married to one of those servicemen. Worse, after getting married, the guy got her pregnant. Dad knows that won’t do, and since Norval has been pining after her all this time, Dad tries to impose upon Norval to marry Trudy in a shotgun wedding. If that’s bad enough, wait until Trudy gives birth. It’s amazing that this movie ever got past the Production Code office, never mind doing so at the height of World War II.
One of TCM’s spotlights for this month is on noir from after the traditional noir cycle, with the movies airing on Fridays in prime time. This Friday kicks off with Pulp, at 8:00 PM. Michael Caine plays Mickey King, a writer of trashy pulp novies currently living in Italy. One day, he’s approached by Ben Dinuccio (Lionel Stander), a PR man who tells Mickey he’s got a famous client and that client would like Mickey to ghostwrite his memoirs. The only thing is, Mickey isn’t supposed to know yet who he’s meeting or where he’s going; the contact will be made on a bus tour. But somebody on the tour gets bumped off. And then Mickey meets the guy, Hollywood actor Preston Gilbert (Mickey Rooney), who was deported from the US for his Mob connections. Preston is now living in Malta, where there’s a hotly disputed election going on; Preston has a bunch of odd hangers-on. And then Preston gets shot and killed, and whoever killed him is apparently also trying to kill Mickey for reasons Mickey can’t figure out.
I know I’ve recommended Beverly Hills Copbefore. I’m not certain if I’ve mentioned Beverly Hills Cop II, which will be on at 11:52 PM Friday, so I’ll mention it now. Eddie Murphy returns as Axel Foley, still a Detroit cop and working on a credit card case. He sees a report on the news about the shooting of Beverly Hills police captain Andrew Bogomil (Ronny Cox), who helped in during the first movie, so Axel feels he needs to go out to Beverly Hills and help his friends, including cops Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and Taggart (John Ashton). What he finds is that there’s a series of robberies going on at the high-end stores for which Beverly Hills is famous, as well as a changed political atmosphere inside the police department that will make investigating the case quite a bit more complicated. Never mind that Axel probably shouldn’t be on the case in the first place. Jürgen Prochnow plays Maxwell Dent, the man who owns the robbed stores but probably knows more about the robberies than he’s letting on.
Alastair Sim is generally best remembered on this side of the Atlantic for playing Ebenezer Scrooge in the early 1950s version of the Dickens Christmas story, but he was a fine actor with a whole bunch of roles, as you can see when you watch Green for Dangerat noon Saturday on TCM. Sim plays Inspector Cockrill, a Scotland Yard detective sent to a small English town because there’s an army hospital there where a mysterious death has occurred. During a minor operation performed by Dr. Eden (Leo Genn), the patient dies. One of the nurses, Sister Bates (Judy Campbell) claims that she’s got evidence this was not an accidental death but a murder. However, when she tries to procure the evidence, she too gets bumped off. One of the obvious suspects is the anesthesiologist, Dr. Barnes (Trevor Howard), along with Dr. Eden and perhaps Barnes’ ex-girlfriend Nurse Linley (Sally Gray). Cockrill naturally suspects everybody, and with a war going on and people needing to be treated, the medical staff isn’t always all that helpful to his investigaton.
The Spoilerswas a popular novel from the early 1900s. So popular, in fact, that it was made into a silent movie and then a talkie at least three times. The 1942 version of The Spoilerswill be on StarzEncore Westerns at 5:30 AM Saturday. Nome, Alaska is one of the jumping off points for the gold rush, and since it’s in the early days of settlement, there’s not much law going on. So the feds send Alex McNamara (Randolph Scott) north to be judge, and he brings his niece Helen (Margaret Lindsay) along. Roy Glennister (John Wayne) has a claim along with his friend Al (Harry Carey), and doesn’t realize that McNamara is actually out to swindle the current prospectors and get all the claims for his cronies. Roy is blinded in part by his love for Helen. This love is very distressing to Cherry Malotte (Marlene Dietrich), who runs the local saloon and who has been involved romantically with Glennister in the past. The movie’s climax is an extended fistfight that’s one of the longest in a Hollywood Studio-era movie.
A movie that I could recommend over and over again is the 1968 version of Yours, Mine, and Ours. TCM is showing it this coming Sunday at 6:00 PM, so I will recommend it this week. Lucille Ball plays Helen North, a Navy nurse whose officer husband died, leaving her a widow with eight children. One of the other officers on base, bringing in his daughter for a doctor’s visit, is Frank Beardsley (Henry Fonda). He’s a widow, and he’s got ten children. So you just know that somebody like Frank’s best friend, Warrant Officer Harrison (Van Johnson), is, in trying to help Frank find love again, going to hook Frank up with Helen. Because, after all, who else can understand what it’s like to be a single parent with that many children? The kids aren’t particularly happy about any of it at first (three of Frank’s sons get Helen rip-roaringly drunk), but eventually Frank and Helen marry and move into a house together with their 18 kids. Helen even gets pregnant, which is a miracle considering Lucille Ball was 56 when she made this movie. But will the step-siblings be able to come together as a true family?