Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” thread, for the week of June 12-18, 2017. We've got another night of Audrey Hepburn movies on Monday night for those who are into that thing, as well as a couple of TCM spotlights. And there are interesting movies on other channels. I've also actually selected a couple of relatively recent movies, at least in the sense that they were made after I was born. They were all selected using my good taste, of course. And as always, all times are in Eastern unless otherwise mentioned, which is important this week since I did pick a midnight start.
This week's TCM Imports is a double-bill of films by Japanese director Nagisa Oshima. I've mentioned Cruel Story of Youth before; that one about a college-aged couple in which the man has his girlfriend entrap rich men and then blackmails the rich men, kicks off the proceedings at 2:00 AM. That's followed at 4:00 AM by a movie with a similar theme that might be even more disturbing: Boy. Based on a true story, this one is about a married couple that fake car/pedestrian accidents, in order to fleece the unsuspecting drivers, who are willing to pay hush money in order to make the case go away. However, what makes it shocking is that the couple use their elder son as the pedestrian who gets hit! And the boy is very good at it. Of course, this all completely warps his perspective on life. Plus, the family has to move around constantly to stay one step ahead of the authorities, which leaves the boy rootless and without a sense of home or belonging. And Dad is brutal to everybody else, but lives off the fruits of their labor. The boy tries to run away from it all, but where can he run to?
A year before becoming a big star with movies like Sunset Blvd., William Holden was still making stuff like Streets of Laredo, which will be on StarzEncore Westerns at 7:29 AM and 11:27 PM Monday. Holden plays Jim, who along with Lorn (Macdonald Carey) and Wahoo (William Bendix) are a team of outlaws in the old west. (Yes, William Bendix as a western outlaw.) In one of the heists, Lorn gets separated from Jim and Wahoo. The latter two wind up reforming and joining the Texas Rangers, while Lorn continues with his criminal ways, becoming even harder than before. You just know that the three are going to meet again in the film's climax. You also know that there's going to be a conflict over a woman, and here that's provided by the alluring Mona Freeman, who falls in love first with Lorn, and then with Jim. Alfonso Bedoya, fresh off his success in Treasure of the Sierra Madre, is promoted by Lorn to be the new terror of Laredo.
I can't recall whether I've mentioned The Affairs of Annabel before. It's going to be on TCM at 8:30 AM Tuesday, so now would be a good time to recommend it. Annabel (Lucille Ball) is an actress who is constantly getting put into all sorts of crazy situations thanks to her studio's PR man, Lanny (Jack Oakie). First she gets put into prison (why would anybody agree to that), and then she becomes a maid because the studio's next project for her involves her playing a maid. Of course, the teenage son of the house falls for Annabel. And Annabel has no idea how to be a good maid But things really take a turn for the worse when a couple of guys come to the house and decide to hold everybody hostage, since they're criminals on the run and looking for a place to hide. Well, they wanted material for a movie, didn't they? Oakie and especially Ball are known for being zany, and this one really gets zany and wacky at times.
I see that The Sand Pebbles is back on FXM Retro this week, at noon Monday and 9:00 AM Tuesday. Steve McQueen plays Jake Holman, a Navy engineer whose job it is to keep the engine on his gunboat running. That gunboat is stationed in the Yangtze River in the China of 1926, a time of turmoil when the Chinese government wasn't particularly stable, and all of the western countries were trying to gain a bigger presence in the country, hence the US Navy gunboat. Frankly he likes his job and doesn't want to get involved in any of the political controversy going on in China around him, but of course he doesn't get to make that choice. There's a group of American missionaries that is in trouble, and it's the job of the men on the boat to go on land and make certain those missionaries get back to the safety of the boat. On land, Jake meets one of the missionaries, Shirley (Candice Bergen) and falls in love with her as well as learning to respect her way of life which is rather different from his. That's going to cause problems with the mission, of course.
On Tuesday night, TCM is running a bunch of Marlene Dietrich movies. One that I don't think I've recommended before is Desire, at 8:00 PM. Dietrich plays Madeleine, a jewel thief in Paris. She's just robbed another set of jewels, but there's the question of how to fence them. Fortunately, she meets Tom (Gary Cooper), an American auto engineer vacation in France and on his way to Spain. She secrets the jewels with him since he won't be suspected, and then she can follow him to Spain and collect the jewels. She gets to Spain and meets up with Tom again, but all sorts of problems develop, chief among them the fact that she's fallen in love with him. She wants the jewels back but can't tell him the truth because that would lead to her getting arrested and all that fun stuff. The other problem is the fact that Madeleine has partners in crime, who want the jewels because that was the whole point of stealing them. A fun little comedy.
For those of you who want something a little more recent, I think I'll mention Frankenhooker, which will be on Flix at 9:45 PM Wednesday. Jeff Franken (James Lorinz) is a medical student in love with Elizabeth (Patty Mullin), until she dies in a freak accident involving a lawn mower. What's a poor despondent med student to do? Well, he decides to find a new body to go with Elizabeth's head! If you've seen The Brain That Wouldn't Die, you'll recognize a good deal of this madness. Franken looks for the right body for his girlfriend by cruising the streets of the city picking up prostitutes. The only problem is that, once he finally gets his girlfriend together, she isn't quite the same as the girlfriend he had before. In addition to Frankenstein and other other reference above, there's shades of Mad Love here. Except that this time, it's all played to be deliberately absurd. Witness Mom's reaction to Jeff losing his girlfriend, or what the girlfriend turns into. Oh, and exploding hookers.
Back on TCM, Wednesday night is given over to the movies of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. I've recommended most of the night's movies before, but I don't think I've recommended Hour of Glory (also known as The Small Black Room). That one is on at midnight Thursday (ie. 11:00 PM Wednesday LFT). Sammy Rice (David Farrar) is a man in 1943 Britain who is no longer fighting in the war because he suffered a badly injured foot. Now, his fight is with the bottle, as he's become a hopeless alcoholic also depends on pills to get him through his days. At least he has some help from his live-in girlfriend Susan (Kathleen Byron). However, it turns out that Britain still needs him. It seems the Germans are dropping booby-traps on Britain, and Sammy is the best man around for figuring out what makes them work and ultimately disarming them. Or, he was before descending into drink. This one isn't as well known as the other Powell/Pressburger movies, but is just as much worth watching.
I think I might have recommended Nowhere to Go before, but it would have been some years back. It's back on TCM at 2:15 AM Friday. George Nader plays Paul Gregory, a Canadian in the UK who is imprisoned for stealing a collection of rare coins from an older lady (silent film star Bessie Love). But he figures that he's the only one who knows where the money he got from fencing the coins is. His partner in crime Victor (Bernard Lee before becoming M in the James Bond films) breaks Paul out of prison, but it turns out that Paul can't get the money without being spotted by the police. Victor thinks Paul has double-crossed him, and a dispute ensues that results in Victor winding up dead. Paul was going to have trouble getting back to Canada with all that money, but now he's really going to have trouble getting out of the country as a wanted murderer! A young Maggie Smith appears in her first movie as the girlfriend of an owner of one of Paul's hiding places.
Another movie that's back on TCM and worth watching is The Defiant Ones, which you can catch at 6:00 PM Saturday. Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier star as John and Noah respectively. They're a pair of prisoners who are part of a group being transported to a work site for chain-gang work. But there's a hitch in the ride along the way that gives the two a chance to escape, which they take. They take it together because they have to, having been handcuffed together for transport. That's a problem in the obvious sense that the two can never go anywhere apart from each other unless they can remove the cuffs, but there's also the other obvious problem. This is the south of the 1950s, which means there's still a lot of racism, not least on the part of John, who has to deal with being chained to a black guy. Escaping may mean having to stand up to other white people's racism. Theodore Bikel plays the sheriff leading the search for the two escapees, with a bunch of other character actors (Charles McGraw and Claude Akins among others) rounding out the cast.
Sunday is Fathers' Day, and it's not surprising that TCM will be running a bunch of father-themed movies. If you want something different, then you might want to switch over to StarzEncore Classics to watch Leaving Las Vegas at 1:10 PM Sunday. Nicolas Cage plays Ben, a man who feels he no longer has anything to live for now that his wife and child have left him. So he heads for Las Vegas, where he plans to drink himself to death. Things aren't going to be quite so simple, though, as he meets Sera (Elisabeth Shue). She's taken by Ben's story but she told Ben she wasn't going to do anything to try to change him. Besides, she's got a difficult life of her own. She's a high-priced call girl, but she's also got an abusive pimp in Yuri (Julian Sands) she has to deal with. This one makes films like The Lost Weekend and The Days of Wine and Roses look like frothy comedies.