Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" Thread, for the week of May 18-24, 2020. Some people are lucky enough to be in states where the coronavirus house arrest orders are beginning to be relaxed, but other of us have governors who don't want their incompetence revealed. If you're trapped in one of the latter states, or if you're the sort of person who likes to bully those who refuse to panic, then why not stay home and watch some good movies? Once again I've used my discerning taste and erudition to pick out a broad selection of films, from Star of the Month Edward G. Robinson to 80s crime movies and war films for the upcoming Memorial Day weekend, and everything in between. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
Monday morning and afternoon on TCM bring a bunch of movies about scientists and crime. One of the lesser-known movies is The Murder of Dr. Harrigan, at 8:45 AM. (Not this Harrigan.) John Eldredge plays Harrigan, a surgeon in a hospital administered by Dr. Melady. Melady, along with several other members of staff, has been working on a new anesthetic. Melady apparently has the completed formula, but everybody else wants to claim the credit for themselves. Meanwhile, Melady is set to go in for some surgery, to be performed by Harrigan, which is odd because Harrigan is a rival too. Well, Harrigan winds up stabbed in the back while Melday goes missing, and more murders are on the way. There are also all sorts of romantic subplots, notably involving Melady's wife, who is herself in the hospital with a broken arm. Mary Astor has a supporting role, and the lead goes to Ricardo Cortez, playing yet another doctor and the one who ultimately solves the convoluted case.
We've got a couple of 1980s movies this week. The first of them is K-9, which will be on StarzEncore Classics at 7:22 PM. Jim Belushi plays Michael Dooley, a San Diego police detective who's been working on bringing down drug kingpins, earning him a very powerful enemy in the form of Lyman (Kevin Tighe), one of the chief drug lords. Lyman's men try to kill Dooley but fail, leading Dooley's boss to suggest Dooley take a partner. Dooley's not happy with that, especially when the partner he does wind up getting is a drug-sniffing dog named Jerry Lee. (Never mind how inaccurate drug dogs are in the real world, serving only to give the cops an excuse to do their intrusive searches.) What makes matters even worse is that Jerry Lee seems to have a mind of his own, working on his terms and in ways that don't really make Dooley's job any easier. That and making a mess of Dooley's personal life. Things go from bad to worse when Lyman has Dooley's girlfriend Tracy (Mel Harris) kidnapped.
A movie that lots of critics think is great but leaves me a little cold is Black Narcissus. It's going to be on TCM at 6:15 PM Tuesday, so you can judge for yourself. Deborah Kerr Sister Clodagh, a nun teaching at a missionary school in Calcutta in the 1930s. Her order has come up with the idea of renting and old palace up in the Himalayas and turning it into a mission to educate the village children and provide health care. Mr. Dean (David Farrar), the liaison for the prince who owns the place, isn't so sanguine about the nuns' prospects because he knows the isolated location and constant wind aren't good for anybody's mental health. Sure enough, tensions start to grow between the nuns, especially harming Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron) who was having a crisis of faith to begin with. She starts trying to seduce Mr. Dean, who has no real interest in her, and grows increasingly jealous of Clodagh. Then a failed medical treatment results in a local child dying, putting the nuns in danger. Watch for the young Jean Simmons as local girl Kanchi.
For those of you who don't like the more recent movies, you're in luck. I'm recommending an early talkie this week, in the form of A Notorious Affair, which airs on TCM at noon Wednesday. Silent star Billie Dove makes a not quite successful transition to sound as Patricia Hanley, an heiress whose family has gotten her engaged to Dr. Pomeroy (Kenneth Thomson). But she's really in love with unsuccessful concert violinist Paul Gherardi (Basil Rathbone), so she ditches her fiancé and runs off with Paul. Meanwhile, Paul isn't getting anywhere in his career and needs a patron. He's lucky in that he finds free-thinking countess Olga Balakireff (Kay Francis), who could support that career. Except that she's in love with him and decides she's going to steal Paul from his wife, and the two start having an affair. That doesn't go well, either, as Paul winds up suffering a nervous breakdown, and gets treated in hospital by… Dr. Pomeroy!
A movie that recently began showing up in the FXM rotation is The Gambler from Natchez. It's on again this week, at 10:05 AM Thursday. Dale Robertson plays the gambler in question, a man named Vance Colby whose father was also a professional gambler on the Mississippi riverboats. Vance has just returned to Louisiana after four years serving in the Army with Sam Houston out in Texas and on his return home meets love interest Melanie (Debra Paget) and her father Capt. Barbee (Thomas Gomez), who runs a decrepit riverboat. Vance's father was going to tell Vance that he decided to go into a more honest business, running a riverboat with gambling and raking off the vig rather than doing the gambling himself. But Dad's three business partners, led by André Rivage (Kevin McCarthy), lost part of their control of the boat by gambling to Vance's father, so they repaid him by killing the old man! Vance unsurprisingly wants revenge. Competently made, but it's easy to see why Dale Robertson never really became a star.
Thursday is the birth anniversary of actor Robert Montgomery, so TCM is spending the morning and afternoon with his movies. One that I've always enjoyed that is on the schedule is Hide-Out, at 9:30 AM. Montgomery plays Lucky Wilson, a big-city gangster who is wanted by the police, and in a chase, gets winged by a bullet. He escapes but the wound is enough to make him pass out, where he's discovered by a farm family, the Millers. They take him in and treat him, not realizing he's a gangster as he tells them he came up to the country to do some hunting. He's not exactly enamored of the more rural life, but one of the family members taking care of him is unmarried adult daughter Pauline (Maureen O'Sullivan). The two begin to fall in love, and Lucky begins to like the slower pace of life. But he also knows he can't stay there forever because his past is going to catch up to him and he can't keep up the lie forever once he's recovered. Mickey Rooney, 13 at the time, plays the kid brother, and gets a humorous scene involving the rabbits he raises (which also provide the surprising punchline at the end of the movie).
Another gangster shows up in the 1980s version of the movie Scarface, which runs at 1:06 PM Friday on StarzEncore Suspense. Al Pacino plays Tony Montana, a Cuban criminal who is released as part of the Mariel boat lift when Fidel Castro, letting some Cubans flee, decided to inflict a bunch of criminals on the US. Tony is stuck in a refugee camp, but his friend Manny (Steven Bauer) comes up with a plan to get the two of them out. The only thing is, that plan involves going to work for a drug lord and carrying out a contract killing. Tony takes to the drug gangs like Communist leaders take to killing people, and he quickly starts rising in the Miami underworld. He's really rising too quickly, however, as he gets greedy, wanting to take the place of his boss Frank (Robert Loggia) and Frank's mistress Elvira (Michelle Pfeiffer). That, and Tony takes to drug use and incessant profanity, slowly becoming paranoid from all the cocaine use. If you don't mind really violent movies, then this version of Scarface is for you.
Edward G. Robinson's third night as TCM's Star of the Month includes “good guy” roles. Among them is his final role, in Soylent Green, which was released after his death. The movie is on TCM at 8:30 AM Friday. Charlton Heston is the star here, playing Thorn, a police detective in a future New York City that has been devastated not by the panic over the coronavirus, but by overpopulation that never occurred. (The movie is set in 2022 and claims New York has a population of 40 million.) In order to feed the people, the Soylent corporation has come up with nutritious plankton-based foods. But apparently there's a dark side to this, and Soylent executive William Simonson (Joseph Cotten) is about to reveal this, so he's murdered, leaving Thorn to investigate. This he does with the help of his friend, roommate, and researchers Sol (Robinson). There's also regular riots over the short supply of Soylent's latest product, the titular Soylent Green, and Thorn eventually learns the true secret about the food. Other familiar names in the cast include Rifleman Chuck Connors as Simonson's bodyguard, and Dick Van Patten as a worker helping Sol on his final journey.
Our last 1980s movie this week is Gorky Park. That you can watch at 2:05 PM Saturday on Epix. Arkady Renko (William Hurt) plays a detective in the Moscow militsiya, the civil police force that even communist countries needed since they didn't just have trumped-up political prisoners to deal with. One winter day in the titular park, three bodies are discovered, unidentifiable because they've had their faces and fingers chopped off. Arkady is reluctant to investigate because he's worried about running afoul of the KGB, but what he finds might be even worse. That's because one of the people drawn into the investigation is an American, Jack Osborne (Lee Marvin), a furrier who routinely comes to the USSR to get the fine pelts he can't get in the West. This brings a New York cop, William Kirwill (Brian Dennehy) into the investigation as well, and he's got a personal reason for wanting to solve the case, thinking one of the unidentified bodies might be his brother. Oh, and the KGB might just be involved after all. They obviously couldn't film in Moscow at the time, so much of the filming was done in a wintry Helsinki.
Saturday is the start of the Memorial Day weekend, and TCM is doing its usual thing of running a bunch of war-themed movies over the weekend. One that I'm not certain whether I've recommended before is Hell to Eternity, at 8:0 PM Sunday. Jeffrey Hunter plays Guy Gabaldon, a Chicano youth in Los Angeles who at the age of 12 fell into the state foster system. He was placed with the Nakanos, a Japanese-American family, which is where he learned Japanese. But then the attack on Pearl Harbor came, and FDR thought rounding up the Japanese-Americans and putting them in gulags was a brilliant idea. Guy not being of Japanese descent didn't have to go, and when he was 17 he enlisted in the Marines. He was sent to the Pacific theater, and in the Battle of Saipan, he used his knowledge of the Japanese language to persuade Japanese troops to surrender, something that his commanding officers at first couldn't believe. And yet it happened, this being based on a true story.