Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” thread, for the week of March 9-15, 2020. Apparently, the basketball tournament before the big basketball tournament is this week, so you guys will be watching the Badgers at the end of the week and waiting for Sunday evening to find out how the committee screws them over. In the meantime, why not deal with the wait by watching some of the interesting movies I'm selecting for you? There's more from Star of the Month Joe E. Brown, and worthwhile stuff on other movie channels as well. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
All day and night Monday, TCM is running movies about doomed ships. One of the movies that's particularly relevant is Pacific Liner, at 10:15 AM Monday. Chester Morris plays Dr. Craig, who takes a job as the ship's doctor mostly because he wants to be near the nurse Ann (Wendy Barrie) with whom he's in love. Of course, the chief engineer Crusher (Victor McLaglen) down in the boiler room also loves Ann. But bigger problems hit when a stowaway is found in the boiler room and that stowaway has a highly contagious case of cholera, coronavirus not having been discovered at the time the movie was made. The “solution” is to quarantine the boiler room so that the paying passengers don't learn what's going on, but of course the boiler room workers don't like that especially because they keep getting sick and some of them dying! So they threaten a mutiny. This one was directed by Lew Landers, who was RKO's king of B movies, yet has a surprisingly upper-tier cast for a B movie.
Tuesday brings us some teen movies on TCM, although this being TCM there's not quite the teen movies of today. Still, there's a lot of music in Rock Around the Clock, airing at 10:00 AM Tuesday. Johnny Johnston plays Steve Hollis, a promoter who promoted big bands but lucks into something new and big on his way back to the city. Bill Haley is playing rock and roll for the high schoolers in his home town, and Steve sees two of them, siblings Lisa (Lisa Gaye) and Jimmy (Earl Barton) doing a new style of dance to the new music. Steve can make them stars in the big city, and falls in love with Lisa along the way. But unfortunately, this means going to agent Corinne Talbot (Alix Talton), who is herself in love with Steve and trying to get him to propose to her, so she's going to what she can to sabotage Steve and the siblings if she can't get her way. (There weren't sexual harassment laws back then, of course.) But the new music is going to sweep away everything in its path regardless of what Corinne tries. There are performances from any number of bands which aren't necessarily rock, with a lot of them being forgotten today other than Bill Haley, and the Platters.
A movie that's been running in the FXM rotation recently is The Cavern. It's got two more airings this week, at 1:25 PM Tuesday and 10:45 AM Wednesday. The final film directed by low-budget king Edgar Ulmer, this one was an international co-production set during the waning days of the World War II campaign in Italy. An Italian citizen Anna (Rossana Schiaffino) and soldier Mario (Nino Castelnuovo) get caught in a skirmish between a Nazi soldier Hans (Hans von Borsody) and some Allied soldiers. There's American soldier Pvt. Cramer (John Saxon) who has been stripped of his rank; Canadian pilot who escaped a POW camp Lt. Carter (Peter L. Marshall, master of the Hollywood Squares, who for whatever reason has his middle initial in the credits); and a retired British general Braithwaite (Brian Aherne) and his PR flak Capt. Wilson (Larry Hagman a year before I Dream of Jeannie). But all of these people get caught up together when undetermined planes above attack, forcing them into the titular cavern that's been used as an ammo dump. And the aerial bombardment shuts the entrance to the cave, forcing them to work together to try to find a way out. And there are multiple youngish men with only one woman.
Joe E. Brown returns for a second night of his movies as TCM's Star of the Month on Wednesday in prime time as, continuing into Thursday morning. This night focuses on sports-themed movies, of which there are a lot because Brown started out in the circus and did a lot of physical comedy. One of the odder ones is Sit Tight, at7:45 AM Thursday. Brown plays Jojo, a worker at a health club/spa who is in a sort of relationship with the owner Winnie (Winnie Lightner). He gets involved in a pro wrestling match with someone much bigger than him, and predictably gets knocked out, leading to a bizarre dream sequence. Perhaps it would be better if he were a trainer. He'll get his chance, thanks to a subplot involving young lovers Sally (Claudia Dell) and Tom (Paul Gregory), who works for Sally's father. He wants to advance on his own merit and not by being the boss' presumptive son-in-law, which leads him to go in for training by Jojo and Winnie to become a wrestler himself. Apparently there were several musical numbers cut from the movie for the American audience because pre-42nd Street musicals were a mess. That's the only print known to survive.
We've got several movies this week that don't require that much thinking this week, just sit back and enjoy. Among them is The Delta Force, which shows up on StarzEncore Classics at 11:46 PM Wednesday. The 1980s were a time of terrorism, especially in Europe. Scott McCoy (Chuck Norris, who turns 80 on Tuesday) was part of the elite “Delta Force” that failed to rescue the US embassy hostages in Iran in 1980. Now, Arab terrorists led by Abdul (Robert Forster) hijack a celebrity-filled plane flying out of Athens, forcing it to land in Algiers, where the Deltas, led by Col. Alexander (Lee Marvin in his final movie) have their chance to redeem themselves. It goes wrong, but the hijackers let out the women (including Shelley Winters as the wife of Martin Balsam, and Lainie Kazan as the wife of Joey Bishop) and fly to Beirut, where they take the remaining men (add George Kennedy as a Catholic priest to the list) off into hiding. The Delta Force teams up with the Israelis to go into Lebanon and free the hostages. A fun if undemanding movie.
If you want to watch a movie that goes laughably wrong, try Susan Slade at 2:00 PM Thursday on TCM. Connie Stevens plays Susan, a young woman who's been living in Chile for the past 10 years where Dad (Lloyd Nolan) has been working as a mining engineer. On the boat home, she learns about men, meeting wealthy adventurer Conn (Grant Williams). In California, she meet's the boss' son Wells (Bert Convy) whom Mom (Dorothy McGuire) and Dad want her to marry, and shunned Hoyt (Troy Donahue), whose father was convicted of embezzling from Wells' father. Conn dies in a mountaineering accident, but not after having knocked up Susan on the one night they spent together on the boat. And then things go really nuts when Mom decides the way to solve this problem is to have the family follow Dad to another mining project in Central America, where Susan will have the baby (she's not showing yet) and Mom will pass the baby off as her own; nobody need know that Susan was ever pregnant! Yes, it's that insane. The only thing missing is Susan Hayward in the Dorothy McGuire role.
The Hollywood studios had divisions in Britain to deal with quota rules requiring a certain amount of British-produced movies: these divisions would make cheap B movies and pair them with a prestige Hollywood production so that the quota was satisfied. Some years back TCM got the rights to a half dozen of Warner Bros.' “quota quickies” and ran them for the first time in America. Every now and then one of them shows up again; this week that's Man of the Moment at 4:45 PM Friday. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. plays Tony, a seemingly wealthy gentleman who's about to get married to Vera (Margaret Lockwood). But the day before the wedding, London secretary Mary (Laura La Plante) decides she's going to commit suicide because her boss is dating the other secretary in the office and not her. She incompetently throws herself in the river and Tony comes across her, saving her life. And then Vera finds Mary up in Tony's bedroom at his country house and thinks about breaking off the engagement. Of course, Tony doesn't have the fortune people think he does, either, trying to raise a substantial sum of money to start his own business. Perhaps going to Monte Carlo with Mary might do the trick.
Prequels and origin stories aren't just a thing today; you can find them even back in the 1960s, at least if you watch a movie like Nevada Smith, at 2:11 PM Saturday on StarzEncore Westerns. Steve McQueen plays the main character, a younger version of the Alan Ladd character in The Carpetbaggers. “Nevada Smith” was born Max Sand, a mixed-race boy whose parents were brutally murdered by a trio of outlaws: Fitch (Karl Malden), Bowdre (Arthur Kennedy), and Coe (Martin Landau). So Max grows up with a desire for revenge, meeting Jonas Cord (Brian Keith), the main character in The Carpetbaggers, learning from him how to shoot. He travels around the south and southwest, finds Bowdre and Coe and kills them, but Fitch is going to be harder since he's the leader of a gang. Max infiltrates the gang, but his grand plan could go all wrong when Jonas shows up again…. Watch for a young Suzanne Pleshette as a Cajun girl and Paul Fix playing yet another sheriff.
You probably know W.C. Fields from his comedies, but he had some other interesting performances along the way. One of those is in MGM's 1935 adaptation of Dickens' David Copperfield, on TCM at 7:30 AM Sunday. Young David Copperfield (Freddie Bartholomew) suffers the death of his father, while his mother remarries mean Mr. Murdstone (Basile Rathbone). When Mom dies, mean stepdad sends David off to London. He runs away to his aunt Betsey (Edna May Oliver) and a series of adventures on his way to becoming a man. Among these are meeting Mr. Micawber (Fields), who teaches David the value of £20 and not going into debt. There's also the fisherman Peggotty (Lionel Barrymore), Jessie Ralph as young David's nurse, and Roland Young as Uriah Heep. Then David grows up (played by Frank Lawton as an adult) and marries Dora (Maureen O'Sullivan), and finds that life isn't necessarily getting any easier for him. It's a fine literary adaptation, if hamstrung a bit by the studio backlot system.
Another teen movie airing this week is Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which is on StarzComedy on Sunday at 4:20 PM. This is an episodic look at a year in the lives of several students at Southern California's Ridgemont High School. Brad (Judge Reinhold) is a senior working at the local hamburger franchise, looking to dump his girlfriend. Brad's sister Stacy (Jennifer Jason Leigh) knows nothing about sex but vows to learn over the coming year. Theater usher Rat (Brian Backer) would be right for her as a boyfriend, but can they figure it out. Spicoli (Sean Penn) is a stoner who seems to be most interested in making life a living hell for his history teacher, Mr. Hand (Ray Walston). They and others have many of the typical 80s high school adventures involving the big football game or hanging out at the mall (remember those?), and also a lot around after-school jobs, relationships, and sex, before the year finally comes to a close. And there's a lot of good early 80s music too.