Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” thread, for the week of October 12-18, 2020. In theory there's a holiday this week, but who really gets it off other than government-sector workers? Since I don't get it off, I'm working hard to bring you some of the more interesting movies out there. There's still Peter Cushing on TCM on Monday night; a Halloween movie or two, and stuff related to other holidays. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
I'm pleased to see that one of this week's TCM Imports is The Firemen's Ball, which will be on at 2:00 AM Monday. Directed by Miloš Forman in his native Czechoslovakia before he had to flee to the west, the movie tells the story of a small town where the retired head of the fire department has recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. So the rest of the fire department decides to honor his 50 years of service by having a big party. However, the party doesn't go as the committee plans, as each of the members really wants the party to make himself look good rather than what it does for the department. Somebody is stealing all the raffle prizes; the young women don't want to take part in a pageant to determine who will give the retired fireman the committee's gift, causing a riot; and finally, a real fire breaks out the the department doesn't seem so effective in fighting. The Communists banned the movie because they saw it as a stinging attack on the idea of Communist solidarity, but having grown up in a small town with a volunteer fire department, there's a lot here that came across as familiar to me.
Last week I mentioned Robert Ryan in The Woman on Pier 13; this week I'll mention him in The Canadians, airing at 8:53 AM Monday on StarzEncore Westerns. Ryan plays Inspector Gannon, an officer with the Mounties in Saskatchewan. After the battle at Little Big Horn, Canada let the Sioux migrate north, on the grounds that they remain peaceful; Gannon's job is to make those conditions clear to the Sioux. Well, they held up their end of the bargain, but somebody went and killed a bunch of them. That somebody is Frank Boone (John Dehner), a horse rancher who suffers the loss of a bunch of his horses, and believes that the new Sioux settlers are responsible. He and his ranch-hands, in addition to killing those Sioux, also “liberate” a young woman kidnapped by the Sioux (opera singer Teresa Stratas) who has assimilated. Gannon wants to keep the peace and bring Boone to justice; the Sioux chief (Michael Pate) wants vengeance and would be happy to see Boone suffer a vigilante death.
The TCM lineup for Tuesday morning and afternoon is a bunch of movies set in London, more or less. A fun little entry on the schedule is The Runaway Bus, at 7:30 AM. One of those stereotypical fogs has come in and socked in the entire city of London, which is a problem for the passengers at the airport who need to catch a flight. The airline arranges for a flight out of another airport after a whole bunch of complaining by passenger Cynthia Beeston (Margaret Rutherford), but needs a bus to take the passengers there. They get novice bus driver Percy (Frankie Howerd), but he's not up to the job as he gets lost in the fog. On the bus are Beeston, a few other passengers, stewardess Nikki (Petula Clark) and airline first officer Peter. Compounding problems is that a bunch of gold bullion has been stolen from the airport and the police have determined it's on the bus, so possibly one of the passengers might know something about it and have reason to be dangerous. And then where the bus stops is a booby-trapped village used for army exercises….
If you want to have a good laugh, you could do far worse than to watch I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, which will be on StarzEncore Black at 11:09 AM Wednesday. Keenan Ivory Wayans, who also directed, plays Jack Spade, a soldier who returns to his home in south central LA from the army to find his brother has died of OG – an overdose of gold chains, while his mom (Ja'net DuBois) has been assaulted by a couple of thugs. So Jack decides that he's going to deal with the problem by taking down all of the gangs, except they're led by the underworld figure Mr. Big (John Vernon), so it's going to take a lot of doing. To that end, Jack gathers all of the superheroes from the hood from back in the 1970s, like Slade (Bernie Casey), Hammer (Isaac Hayes), and Slammer (Jim Brown) to get them to help him go after the gangs. It turns into a send-up of 1970s blaxploitation movies, although it's pretty darn funny even if you don't get all of the references to the classics.
As you can tell from the calendar, it's not July 4. However, TCM will be running 1776 again this week, at 3:15 AM Thursday. It's May of 1776, and the Revolutionary War has been going on for about a year, although mostly in New England. Massachusetts wants the colonies to declare independence, and their delegate to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, John Adams (William Daniels), introduces a resolution to that regard. Some delegates support this, like Ben Franklin (Howard Da Silva), but others, especially in the southern colonies, aren't so certain. Eventually, it's determined that if there is going to be a declaration, it's going to have to be approved unanimously, so Adams needs to make certain that declaration is pretty damn eloquent. The one person who could write such a declaration is Thomas Jefferson (Ken Howard), although he really wants to get away from Philadelphia to see his wife Martha (Blythe Danner) whom he hasn't seen in months. It's an interesting telling of history, although it's also a musical, based on a proper stage musical, and the breaking out in song may be a problem for some people.
The Billy the Kid story has been told on film a bunch of times. One that I haven't mentioned in a while, if at all, is Young Guns. It shows up at 8:01 AM Thursday on StarzEncore Classics. Emilio Estevez plays Billy, real name William Bonney, who along with a bunch of his friends get hired by the New Mexico rancher John Tunstall (Terence Stamp) to work his ranch; Tunstall also hopes to civilize the young men. There's a land war going on between Tunstall and fellow rancher Murphy (Jack Palance; both of these characters appear in the John Wayne movie Chisum (not on this week as far as I could find) which deals with the land war as well). Murphy has some guys shoot Tunstall and when the sheriff refuses to do anything, a lawyer gets the judge to deputize Bonney and his friends. But Bonney takes the law into his own hands, forcing the “young guns” (in addition to Estevez, there's his brother Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips, Dermot Mulroney, and Casey Siemaszko) to flee. It turned out popular enough that a sequel was made, Young Guns II, which follows at 9:50 AM.
Speaking of glory, a search of x4 claims that I haven't mentioned Tunes of Glory before. It's got an airing on TCM this week, at 8:00 PM Thursday, and if you want a good character story, it's absolutely worth watching. Alec Guinness plays Maj. Jock Sinclair, a widower and head of a Scottish regiment just after World War II. His daughter Morag (Susannah York) is seeing one of the regimental bagpipers, Ian Fraser (John Fraser) behind Dad's back. But worse is that Jock is about to be relieved of his command, as Lt. Col. Barrow (John Mills) is returning to take over after having been a POW in the war. Barrow is an aristocrat unlike Sinclair and his men; he's not Scottish enough for many of them; and he's also an extreme stickler for proper military behavior. All of these serve to tick off the soldiers, who have always liked and looked up to Sinclair. Matters come to a head when Sinclair finds out about his daughter's relationship with Fraser, leading to a court martial and tragic consequences.
If you want a fun B horror movie, you could do a lot worse than to watch Spider Baby, at 4:45 PM Friday on TCM. Supposedly there's a disease that was genetically passed through one family, with only three children left (including Sid Haig as eldest child Ralph). The disease hits around age 10, leading to regression and turning the victims into a more animal-like state. (How they reach marriageable age to reproduce is left unanswered.) So the kids live in a decaying old house with their caretaker Bruno (Lon Chaney), whom they love, and who is trying to keep the kids safe from any prying eyes since if anybody found out it would lead to the kids being institutionalized. Unfortunately, a couple of cousins have found out that the kids' dad died, so they come with a lawyer to settle the family's affairs. The children, unsurprisingly, still have enough animal cunning to realize that they're in danger, so they plot to deal with anybody who would break up the family, including murdering such people if necessary.
A movie that's back in the FXM rotation is It Happened in Flatbush, and you can see it this week at 7:30 AM Saturday. Lloyd Nolan plays Frank “Butterfingers” Maguire, a baseball player who screwed up his playing career and is now toiling as the manager of a minor-league team. When Mrs. McAvoy (Sara Allgood), the owner of Brooklyn's struggling team, has to replace the team's manager who up and quits, she reaches down to the minors to pick Maguire. The players are none too happy with Maguire's managing technique, and things go from bad to worse for the team when McAvoy dies and bequeaths the team to her niece Kathryn (Carole Landis). Kathryn and Frank clash but also fall in love, which really ticks off the players. But at the same time, the team actually starts winning. Could they possibly win the pennant? Obviously based on the Brooklyn Dodgers, who interestingly won the pennant the fall before this movie was released, their first in two decades. But any resemblance to baseball other than that is purely coincidental.
Finally, a couple of brief notes. Last week I recommended the 1974 version of The Front Page, pointing out it's the third version of the play put on film. The second version, His Girl Friday, is going to be on TCM this week, at 8:15 AM Sunday. Also, at the end of the TCM Underground block, at about 5:30 AM Saturday, there's another airing of Shake Hands With Danger, an industrial safety film that is fairly memorable: