Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” thread, for the week of March 26-April 1, 2018. Baseball season begins this week, which means months of tedium until football training camps open. Why not break up that tedium by watching some good movies? I've picked out another batch of movies that I know all of you will find interesting, including one suitable for the Easter holiday at the end of the week. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
I don't think I've mentioned Murder in the Clouds before. It's going to be on TCM at 1:15 PM Monday. Lyle Talbot gets the chance to star, this time playing Bob “Three Star” Halsey, the best pilot the airline could have and in love with stewardess Judy (Ann Dvorak). However, Bob has been grounded because he likes to show off just how good a pilot he is by constantly doing stunts. (Imagine a 777 pilot doing stunts.) It turns out, though, that the government needs him because there's a scientist who's come up with a new explosive he wants to transport to Washington to demonstrate. (You'd think transporting explosives by air isn't the best idea.) However, bad guys knock him out at the bar and sabotage the flight such that it explodes in mid-air, although presumably the vial of the scientist's explosive isn't what caused it. So now there's a race to find that explosive before the bad guys can get it out of the country. I've said it in the past, but I've always thought that Warner Bros. have the best B movies.
Lakeside aren't around, but FXM Retro have brought back Fantastic Voyage, which will be running at 11:15 AM Tuesday. A scientist who specializes in miniaturization with defense purposes has been the victim of an assassination attempt that failed, but the guy requires brain surgery that would be too risky via normal means. However, the military, led by General Carter (Edmond O'Brien), gets the brilliant idea of miniaturizing a medical team and then sending them into the guy's body to do the operation from the inside! Dr. Duval (Arthur Kennedy) leads the crew, with his assistant Cora (Raquel Welch, obviously in the movie for how she looks in a wetsuit), Dr. Michaels (Donald Pleasance), the ship's captain, and a military attaché (Stephen Boyd) because you just know that one of the people is going to be a malignant presence. Oh, and the effects of the miniaturization only last one hour, so time is of the essence. The effects are actually pretty good for the 1960s, and Raquel Welch is always a nice visual effect.
O common Ben Johnson! TCM will be highlighting the work of western character actor Ben Johnson on Tuesday in prime time. One of Johnson's starting roles was in Wagon Master, which kicks off the night at 8:00 PM. Johnson plays Travis, who together with his friend Sandy (Harry Carey Jr.) are horse traders who are approached by the Elder Wiggs (Ward Bond). Wiggs is leading a group of Mormons west to Utah, and he wants Travis and Sandy to serve as guides for the wagon train. They accept that assignment, and of course all of the typical problems you can think of in a wagon train/pioneer movie show up: there are Indians, a crooked gang led by the Cleggs (James Arness plays brother Floyd), and the worries with the desert and its lack of water. But since there are a bunch of Mormons, there are some other problems, like the medicine show man (Alan Mowbray), and a couple of prostitutes (Joanne Dru gets second billing as Denver). You'd think the Mormons could take the hookers on as sister wives or something.
The Turning Point is on this week, at 8:30 AM Wednesday on Movie Max, part of the Cinemax lineup if you've got that. Shirley MacLaine plays Deedee, a ballerina who left the company to start a family and now has three kids and a dance school in Middle America. Her old dance company is on a tour, and one of the stops is in Deedee's home town. This gives her a chance to catch up with her old rival Emma (Anne Bancroft). Emma became a star but, like with pro athletes, a prima ballerina's career is a short one, and she's to the point where she's going to have to face going on to the next stage of her life. Old hard feelings between the two women come to the surface, complicated by the fact that Deedee's daughter Emilia (Leslie Browne) is becoming an extremely accomplished dancer herself. Tom Skerritt (remember Picket Fences) plays Deedee's husband, while Mikhail Baryshnikov is basically playing himself. Watching the movie, it's easy to see why it got 11 Oscar nominations, but it's also easy to see why it didn't win any of them.
Wednesday night on TCM brings a night of World War II biopics. This includes an all-too-rare showing of Carve Her Name With Pride, at 3:30 AM Thursday. This one tells the true story of Violette Szabo (née Bushell), the daughter of an English father and French mother, living in England when World War II breaks out. At the park on Bastille Day, she meets Étienne Szabo, a Free French soldier. The fall in love, marry, and have a child together. Étienne gets killed in action, and when it's discovered that Violette speaks excellent French, the British spy masters discover they've got a great asset in their midst, and recruit her to spy in France for the British. On the home front, there's the impression from people who know her but can't know she's in training to become a spy that she's not doing her part; once she gets to France she's going to face all sorts of danger. If you're in the UK in the summer, you can visit the Violette Szabo museum.
Every three months, we get another installment of Treasures from the Disney Vault on TCM, with Leonard Maltin presenting some cartoon shorts and some feature films. We finally get this quarter's installment on Thursday in prime time. Among the films is The Sword and the Rose, in the 8:00 PM slot Thursday, although apparently after one short. This movie may sound familiar because it's a remake of an old silent, When Knighthood Was in Flower which itself was based on a hugely popular book from the end of the 19th century. Mary Tudor (Glynis Johns), sister of Henry VIII of England (James Robertson Justice), is in love with adventurer Charles Brandon (Richard Todd). But Henry being a free-range a**hole and having political plans, decides she needs to be married off to French King Louis XII. Mary ultimately agrees, reluctantly, under one condition: once Louis dies, Mary gets to choose her second husband, which is obviously going to be Charles. Louis, being an old fart, dies rather quickly, leaving Mary free to marry Charles. Except that the Duke of Buckingham (Michael Gough) has his own plans for Mary.
Friday night on TCM means a night of movies starring British actress Diana Dors. These include The Long Haul at 10:00 PM. Victor Mature is the star here, it being a not uncommon thing for British movies of the 50s to bring in a Hollywood star whose career wasn't quite so hot now, so as to have a bankable name to distribute the movie in the US. Mature plays Harry, a former GI who married British woman Connie (Gene Anderson). She wants to stay in the UK, so Harry reluctantly takes on a job driving a truck long-haul. The only problem is that Harry is an honest man, while the British trucking industry is run by a bunch of dishonest people like Joe Easy (Patrick Allen). Joe has no qualms about engaging in insurance fraud claiming cargo gets waylaid while he's actually selling it illicitly. Then, to make matters worse, Harry gets involved in a dispute between Joe and his girlfriend, receptionist Lyn (Diana Dors). The climax involves trying to move a load of furs over the back roads of Scotland.
Up against the Diana Dors movies, over on StarzEncore Westerns you'll have a chance to watch Winchester '73, at 8:01 PM. Lin McAdam (James Stewart) comes into town one July 4, and finds the town is holding a marksmanship contest with the grand prize being a fabulous Winchester '73 repeating rifle. Lin beats out an old nemesis, Dutch (Stephen McNally), only for Dutch to waylay Lin later in the hotel, knocking Lin out in a fight and riding off with the rifle. Lin follows in hot pursuit to get his rifle back, but finds it won't be so easy. The rifle goes through several hands, from an Indian trader to an Indian chief (Rock Hudson!), to an outlaw Waco Johnny (Dan Duryea) who gets a meek settler in a showdown. The settler's fiancée Lola (Shelley Winters) prefers both Waco Johnny and Lin. Meanwhile, Lin has more reason for wanting to find Dutch than just that gun, as Lin is looking to avenge the killing of his father….
If you enjoyed a period piece like The Sword and the Rose, then you might like Quentin Durward, which TCM is running at 2:00 PM Saturday. It's the 1460s, just after the Hundred Years' War has ended, and French king Louis XI (Robert Morley) is trying to rebuild his country. However he's got a rival in the Duke of Burgundy (Alec Clunes), and the Duke is trying to marry a countess Isabelle (Key Kendall) off to Quentin's uncle to cement an alliance with Scotland. Quentin (Robert Taylor) is supposed to go to France to see if the countess would make a suitable wife for the uncle. However, Isabelle wants nothing to do with the Duke, so she's run off to seek the protection of Louis, and Quentin winds up meeting Isabelle there and becoming one of Isabelle's guardsmen as part of Louis' plot. Quentin of course falls in love with Isabelle despite the fact that he's supposed to be there to help her get married to his uncle.
Sunday is Easter, so TCM is running a bunch of religious-themed movies starting Saturday evening. This means that there's not going to be any Noir Alley this week, with the regular Sunday morning slot being taken instead by The Bible… In the Beginning at 10:00 AM Sunday. If you want to look at this as noir, I suppose you can consider poor schlub Adam (Michael Parks) getting taken down by the original femme fatale Eve (Ulla Bergryd) as having noir tropes. The rest of the long, long, movie is stories from the book of Genesis. There's Noah (John Huston) who built himself an arky arky; Cain (Richard Harris) and Abel (Franco Nero; this was produced in Italy by Dino di Laurentiis); Abraham (George C. Scott) and Sarah (Ava Gardner); and so on, with Italian actors in the lesser stories. It's not particularly good, but it's fun to watch all the good actors getting put in roles for which they're entirely unsuited. Supposedly Orson Welles contributed to the script, although he's not credited.