Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” Thread, for the week of May 10-16, 2021. There's not much real footbal going on this week, unless you think of the off-the-field stuff being as worth paying attention to as practice and games. So why not sit down with some more good movies, since all of you know that I have impeccable taste in movies for you. We've got Hollywood on Hollywood this week, along with a couple of all-time classics and some more recent stuff that's worth mentioning. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
Tab Hunter's birthday isn't until July, but for some reason, TCM is spending Tuesday morning and afternoon with his movies. The afternoon concludes with an interesting documentary, Tab Hunter Confidential, at 6:15 PM Tuesday. Tab was a matinee idol back in the day, for his boyish good looks. But, he was also gay, something that you simply could not publicize back in those days. For a long time, he went along with the studio's packaging of him, keeping his private life extremely private, but when he stopped being so obliging, the studio dropped him and the quality of pictures he was cast in went way downhill. But then John Waters came along and Hunter got a second career, along with a partner of 30 years before his death. The documentary also looks at Hunter's life away from both screen and sexuality, as Hunter was a fairly accomplished figure skater and an avid horseman, and had a #1 hit single on the pop charts (although, to be fair, a lot of actors got pushed into cutting a record in those days). This was made a couple of years before Hunter's death, so we get his reminiscences.
For those of you who like more recent movies, we've got one this week that's only a quarter century old. That would be 12 Monkeys, on MoreMax at 12:38 AM Wednesday. Bruce Willis plays James Cole, a prisoner in a dystopian underground future prison, who gets sent to the surface for a dangerous mission. Apparently, at some point in the past, a devastating plague swept the planet, killing most of mankind. If Cole can go back in time to a time before the pandemic and stop it, well, he might just get parole. One of Cole's trips back in time takes him to a mental hospital in Baltimore, where he meets fellow patient Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), son of a prominent virologist (Christopher Plummer); one of the psychiatrists there, Dr. Railly (Madeleine Stowe) has a modicum of sympathy for Cole. When Cole gets re-transported to the right time, a couple years after his stint in the mental institution, he looks for Dr. Railly in the hopes that she'll recognize him and help him stop the plague. But crazy Jeffrey is also out of the hospital, and he has his own plans….
A search of x4 says that it's been over three years since I recommended The Lone Hand. It's going to be on again this week, at 2:22 AM Thursday on StarzEncore Westerns. Joel McCrea plays Zachary Hallock, who comes to a small town in the Colorado Territory circa 1870 with his son Joshua (Jimmy Hunt), looking to start over after his wife's death. The sheriff has been shot by outlaws but Zachary goes ahead, trying to start a farm and even finding a new mother for Joshua in the form of Sarah Jane (Barbara Hale). But then the crops fail, and Zachary, needing to survive, throws his lot in with the outlaws and starts robbing stagecoaches! His son can hardly believe it, while his new wife doesn't want to stay with him if he's going to be like this. Of course, this being a Joel McCrea western, you might expect that things aren't what they seem, since he almost always played good guys. Watch for James Arness as one of the bad guys.
Some of you may recall Sidney Sheldon for writing trashy airport novels like Rage of Angels. Others may remember that he created the sitcom I Dream of Jeannie. But he also won an Oscar for writing the screenplay to The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, which will be on TCM at 3:45 AM Thursday. Cary Grant plays the bachelor, a playboy named Dick Nugent who's always getting into the sorts of situations TMZ might cover nowadays. When brought before judge Margaret Turner (Myrna Loy), whose teenage sister Susan (Shirley Temple) has a crush on Dick, Margaret decrees that Dick will have to date Susan every night for a weeek so that she'll learn life with an older man really isn't so glamorous. Of course, things don't quite work out that way as Dick decides to act even more like a teenager than the actual teens. And, as you can guess, Dick and Margaret begin to develop feelings along the way, even though Margaret is being pursued by the DA (Rudy Vallee) in one of the movie's many conflicts of interest. Ignore those, however, because the movie is really quite funny.
Toward the end of 31 Days of Oscar, TCM ran three versions of A Star Is Born back to back. I mentioned then that there was an earlier movie called What Price Hollywood? that has much the same story, although it wasn't on in Oscar month. It's on now, at midnight Friday (or 11:00 PM Thursday LFT) on TCM. Constance Bennett plays Mary Evans, a waitress at the Brown Derby restaurant who is extremely eager to break into the glamorous side of Hollywood. When often drunk director Max Carey asks her to accompany him to an event, she accespts, starting her meteoric rise to Hollywood fame as Carey's last great discovery. Unlike future versions of the story, she doesn't marry Carey, but east coast polo player Lonny Borden (Neil Hamilton, later Commissioner Gordon on Batman), who quickly grows tired of the Hollywood scene. What will happen when Hollywood's gossip mill turns on Mary and starts to blame her for what's happening to Max? Interesting in part because unlike the first two versions of A Star Is Born, this was made before the Production Code crackdown.
Sean Connery did a lot of interesting stuff after quitting being James Bond. FXM has the rights to one of his movies, and that movie, The Terrorists, is back in the rotation, at 9:45 AM Friday. Connery plays Tahlvik, the chief of security for an unnamed Scandinavian country (the movie was filmed at Oslo's old airport which has since been replaced). Terrorists led by Petrie (Ian McShane) have hijacked a plane and forced it to land at the airport, and it's Tahlvik's job to get the passengers to safety. Meanwhile, another group of terrorists has kidnapped the British ambassador. The two turn out to be related as the hijackers want to use the plane to transport the ambassador somewhere else as part of their plot. But the pilot of the plane burst all the tires on landing so that it couldn't take off, and a cat-and-mouse game ensues as time ticks away for Tahlvik to figure out how to defuse the situation and not let the terrorists get their way. It's an interesting little movie that's deservedly not as well-known as some of Connery's other stuff, but it still deserves more recognition.
For those of you who want a footballing change of pace from the Aaron Rodgers contract kerfuffle, there's an interesting movie for you this week: Eleven Men and a Girl, on TCM at 6:00 AM Friday. Joe E. Brown stars as Speed, a college football player (yeah, right) at a school that's financially struggling and has a lousy football team. Speed is friends with Nan (Joan Bennett), daughter of one of the professors (George Irving), and together the two hatch an idea: Nan will use her feminine charms to get a bunch of top college football players attracted to her to the point that they'll transfer to her school and help turn the football team into a winning team! (What, they used sex in college sports recruiting?) The real gimmick of the movie, however, is that Warner Bros got actual All-American college football players to play themselves as the players that Nan recruits. Audiences of 1930 would have recognized the names, but I don't. And Joe E. Brown is up to all his old antics, except that they weren't old yet.
It's been a while since I've mentioned The Big Heat. It has an airing this week at 8:00 PM Saturday on TCM. Glenn Ford plays that character that doesn't exist in real life, an honest cop named Dave Bannion, living in a modest home with his wife (Jocelyn Brando) and kid. A fellow cop living above his means commits suicide, and when Bannion investigates, he gets the distinct impression that everybody, including his superiors, is stonewalling him. It's obvious that local underworld boss Mike Lagana (Alexander Scourby) had the dead cop on the take. Lagana won't let anybody stop him, and has Mrs. Bannion obviously bumped off (you can see it coming a mile away), which only makes Bnnion more dogged in his investigation. It eventually leads to Lagana's underling Vince Stone (Lee Marvin), who's nasty to everyone, including his girlfriend Debby (Gloria Grahame); she's the one who finally gets the courage to stand up to Lagana's gang although there's going to be a lot more violence and twists and turnd before the bad guys are brought to justice.
If you like sequels, then you'll enjoy Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, airing at 5:15 AM Sunday on HBO 2. Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves reprise their roles as Bill and Ted, whose music, after winning the San Dimas Battle of the Bands, led to a utopia. Gym teacher De Nomolos (Joss Ackland) doesn't like that, so he steals Rufus' (George Carlin) time machine to go back in time and replace Bill and Ted with robot versions of themselves so that they won't win the Battle of the Bands and the current timeline won't take place. After he kills Bill and Ted, they wind up in purgatory where Death (William Sadler) challenges them to a game of Twister; since Death loses he has to help Bill and Ted get back what was rightfully theirs and best De Nomolos. De Nomolos, however, still has a bunch of tricks up his sleeve, and Bill and Ted aren't really musically talented enough to win the contest anyway, you'd think. But then that would destroy the timeline.
I mentioned Mildred Pierce briefly last week, since TCM couldn't show it for Mother's Day what with them doing the TCM virtual Film Festival this past weekend. Wouldn't you know, but Mildred Pierce shows up one week late, at 6:00 PM Sunday (May 16) on TCM. Joan Crawford plays Mildred, whose second husband Monte Beragon (Zachary Scott) gets shot to open the movie. When Mildred is brought in for questioning, we learn her story in flashback. She was married to Bert (Bruce Bennett) with two daughters, including elder daughter Veda (Ann Blyth). First marriage goes wrong and Mildred has to make a living, starting as a waitress for Ida (Eve Arden) and baking cakes, all while spoiling Veda rotten, especially after the younger daughter dies. Mildred meets Monte when buying a property off of him for her first restaurant, with the financial backing of Wally Fay (Jack Carson). Mildred's spoiling of Veda spirals out of control and, as we know at the beginning, Monte is going to get shot. But who shot him?