Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” Thread, for the week of November 2-8, 2020. We're into the first full week of a new month, which is going to mean a new Star of the Month on TCM. But there are also a couple of passings that we need to note, and I've done that by mentioning a couple of movies showing this week. There's also interesting stuff on non-TCM channels, including movies as recent as 30 years ago since I know you all like the newer releases. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
Among our more recent movies this week is one I've never mentioned before here: Critical Condition, which you can see at 10:30 AM Monday on The Movie Channel. Richard Pryor plays Kevin Lenihan, a shady New York real-estate developer approaching a loan shark who operates out of the back of an adult video store. When the deal goes bad and Kevin is literally left holding the bag, he at first plans to plead guilty, until he remembers that he can try to plead insanity, not that he's insane at all. At the mental hospital where's he's sent, there's a new administrator, Rachel Atwood (Rachel Ticotin), on trial for a job there. And she's going to have to face a lot, as there's a hurricane about to hit New York. It knocks out power and the hospital is having trouble with the backup generators, so Kevin has a chance to escape and destroy those records showing he's not insane. However, in the psychiatrist's office, he's spotted and mistaken for a Dr. Slattery. Kevin goes along with the ruse even though he has no medical ability, and you can probably figure out what happens thereafter. A young Bob Saget is one of the interns, and Wesley Snipes has a brief role as an ambulance driver.
Now that we're into the first week of a new month, it's time for a new Star of the Month on TCM. This time, it's Shelley Winters, and her movies will be on TCM every Monday in prime time. This week includes I Died a Thousand Times, at 1:30 AM Tuesday. A remake of High Sierra (which will be on TCM at 4:15 PM Wednesday), the movie stars Jack Palance as Roy Earle, the released convict who's got information about one big score he doesn't necessarily want to do, especially when he meets the two accomplices he's been given, Babe (Lee Marvin) and Red (Earl Holliman). One of them has even brought along a girl to their mountain hideout, Marie (that's Winters, not that you could mistake her). Marie falls in love with Roy, enraging the other two guys. But Roy has fallen for Velma (Lori Nelson), a club-footed girl traveling west with her grandparents. Roy decides he's going to pay for an operation to fix that foot, even though Velma has a boy she's interested in back in the midwest. Oh, and there's that dog that takes a shining to Roy. The movie would be better remembered if it weren't a remake of a classic.
I can't remember how long it's been since I've recommended Brubaker. It's on again this week, at 4:35 AM Tuesday on Cinemax (and three hours later if you have the west coast feed). Robert Reford plays Henry Brubaker, who at the start of the movie is being imprisoned at the Wakefield penitentiary in Arkansas. Conditions are brutal, with for example a bunch of prisoners in a barracks with a leaky roof that was built by a crony of the warden. In reality, Brubaker is the new warden, and only went into disguise so he could see the conditions first-hand without anyone trying to create a Potemkin village for him. As warden, he finds some of the trustees – the prisoners who have been given positions of trust within the prison – don't necessarily like the reforms that Brubaker wants to institute. There's also a lot of opposition on the outside, with do-gooder Lillian Gray (Jane Alexander) being the one person to try to help him, although she seems to care more about how she looks than whether anything actually gets done. Yaphet Kotto plays one of the main trustees, and Morgan Freeman has a small role. It's all based on a true story.
A movie that everybody else considers a classic but that it may surprise you to know has always left me a little cold is Vertigo. It's got another showing this week, on TCM at 10:00 PM Thursday. James Stewart plays Scottie, a San Francisco cop who's on disability because of a bout of vertigo that left him unable to save his partner from falling to his death. Scottie is approached by old friend Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore) and asked to watch Mrs. Elster (Kim Novak) who, Gavin says, is acting odd and believing she may be possessed by the spirit of a lady in a painting. Scottie falls in love with Mrs. Elster, eventually following her to a mission in northern California where she climbs up the belfry and jumps to her death, Scottie being unable to follow because of that vertigo. And then another, younger woman, Judy (also played by Novak, of course), comes into Scottie's life, looking shockingly like Mrs. Elster. It supposedly a great psychological suspense movie, but I've always found it an overlong slog.
Sean Connery died over the yesterday, so I looked to see if any of his movies were on this week. There's one, The Russia House, at 8:53 AM Thursday on ThrillerMax. Connery plays Barley, a British publisher who visits a writers' retreat near Moscow and talks idealistically about peace. Some time later, Katya (Michelle Pfeiffer) comes looking for Barley at a book fair, with a manuscript from “Dante” (Klaus Maria Brandauer). It turns out that Dante is trying to smuggle out classified information on the Soviet Union's ability, or lack thereof, to fight a war against the west. The British spy service, under the aegis of Bed (James Fox) find out, and send Barley to the USSR to get the full scoop if he can. Not that Barley is a spy, of course, and he falls in love with Katya along the way. The US is following, with CIA agent Russell (Roy Scheider) handling things for the Americans. Will Barley get the information the western spy agencies want? Can Dante escape detection from the KGB? Will love conquer all? Unfortunately, the movie was released about a year before the breakup of the USSR, so it became dated amazingly quickly.
Another star who died recently is Rhonda Fleming, who died in the middle of October aged 97. I didn't recommend any of her movies the past few weeks, so this week I'll mention The Big Circus, airing at 12:15 AM Saturday on TCM (that's still late Friday evening LFT). Victor Mature is the star here, as Hank Whirling, manager of a traveling big-top circus, who is taking out a loan for the circus' new big tour. However, one of the conditions of the loan is to have a representative of the bank there to make financial decisions. That man is Randy Sherman (Red Buttons), who is much more about business than Hank who is about art. Randy hires Helen Harrison (Rhonda Fleming) to be the press agent, and she winds up falling in love with Hank along the way. But there are big problems for the circus as accidents just seem to keep happening, killing various members of the circus. It soon becomes obvious that there's a saboteur in their midst, but who is it? There are a lot of people it could be thanks to the all-star cast, which includes Peter Lorre as a clown, Vincent Price as ringmaster, and Gilbert Roland as the patriarch of the high-wire act.
A movie that's back in the FXM rotation that I haven't mentioned in a while is The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker, at 6:00 AM Saturday. Clifton Webb plays Horace Pennypacker, a forward-thinking man living in Harrisburg, PA, circa 1900 with a wife Emily (Dorothy McGuire) and a passel of kids, with the eldest being Kate (a young Jill St. John). Horace drives a car back and forth between the company offices in Harrisburg and Philadelphia, where he has a secret, which is that he's got a second family and another passel of kids, 17 in total between the two families, none of whom (other than Horace, of course) know anything about the existence of the other family. Of course, that's going to come out eventually, when the Philadelphia family's house is about to be condemned and that side's eldest son comes out to Harrisburg to warn Dad, finding out about the other family in the process. It threatens to destroy everybody's happiness, most especially Kate, who was engaged to be married to nice young minister Wilbur (Ron Ely). 82-year-old Charles Coburn plays Horace's father in one of his last movies.
TCM is running a trio of movies directed by Richard Lester on Saturday night. One that's a hell of a lot of fun is It's Trad, Dad! (aka Ring-a-Ding Rhythm), at 9:45 PM Saturday. Made just before the Beatles hit it big, this movie stars two teenagers in one of the new towns that sprung up in the UK after World War II, young Helen (Helen Shapiro) and Craig (Craig Douglas). They listen to the new sound, but this being between the first wave of rock and role and the rise of the Beatles, that sound is Dixieland-laced rock that quickly left the scene once the Beatles became popular. The town fathers in their town want to ban such awful noise, and the teens unsurprisingly revolt, going to London to try to find a DJ who will be able to get some of the popular music acts of the day to come to their town for a live performace and show the local government that this music isn't so bad after all. What makes the movie interesting is that the music is little-remembered in America (I'd never heard of the Temperance Seven before seeing this movie), as well as the fact that Richard Lester knew not to take this material seriously, instead spoofing the material and making something that's much more fun than it has any right to be.
Up against It's Trad, Dad! over on StarzEncore Westerns, we get a marathon of the Magnificent Seven movies, starting at 5:00 PM Saturday with the “original” Magnificent Seven (of course, The Seven Samurai was first, but that's another story). The other three are Return of the Magnificent Seven at 7:10 PM, Guns of the Magnificent Seven at 8:47 PM, and The Magnificent Seven Ride! at 10:34 PM.
This week's Noir Alley selection is Nightfall, at 10:00 AM Sunday. Aldo Ray plays James Vanning, going on a hunting trip in Wyoming with his friend Doc Gurston (Frank Albertson) just before snow will shut off the area. A car crashes and Doc goes to help not knowing that the two men in the car are bank robbers with a large sum of cash. The men, John (Brian Keith) and Red (Rudy Bond) shoot Doc and go after Vanning, but in the confusion they take Doc's medical bag, which looked exactly like the bag in which they had the $350,000 they robbed. Fast forward several months. Vanning knows where the money is and has thoughts of getting it. But of course he's being followed by John and Red trying to get him to lead them to the money if their rough treatment of him won't beat the information out of him. Jim takes refuge with a model, Marie (Anne Bancroft), and they head off to Wyoming. But there's somebody else following all of them…. It's a lower-budget suspense movie, but a pretty good one at that.