Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” thread, for the week of October 16-22, 2017. If you're ticked off with the Badgers' sub-par performance, even though they won, why not spend some time colling down with some good movies? Once again, I've used my discerning taste to pick out some really good and some really campy but fun movies. There's more from Star of the Month Anthony Perkins, and a big birthday coming up. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
I'm not certain if I've ever recommended What's Up, Doc? before. It's going to be on at 2:45 AM Tuesday on TCM. Barbara Streisand stars as Judy, a scatterbrained woman who's been something of a failure in life, dropping out of one college after another. She meets professor Howard Bannister (Ryan O'Neal) at a San Francisco hotel, and immediately falls in love with him. Howard is there for a musicology conference, where he's hoping to win a prestigious grant to research his theories on Neanderthal man's invention of music. He's none too happy with Judy's constant interference, although you know he's going to fall in love with her along the way. Complicating matters is that the two brought identical-looking overnight bags with them, so you just know the bags are going to get mixed up. And they're not the only two with the same type of bag. There's also a wealthy woman (Mabel Albertson) he's got jewelry in her bag, and a man (Michael Murphy) who's a whistleblower and has government secrets in his bag. Unsurprisingly, there are people who would like either the jewels or the secrets, further adding to the mayhem. Streisand really could act, and you just wish she'd stick to acting and drop the singing when you watch something like this.
Unless she dies in the next 48 hours, actress Marsha Hunt will be celebrating her 100th birthday on Tuesday. TCM is marking this stupendous occasion with a bunch of her movies, mostly MGM B movies. But they're fun, like Kid Glove Killer, which will be on at noon Tuesday. Hunt plays Jane Mitchell, a lab assistant to CSI-type (although they didn't call it CSI then) Gordon (Van Heflin). She's also in love with him, although he doesn't realize it yet. (It's obvious, though, that they'll be together at the end of the movie, not that it detracts from the film.) The town they're in has corrupt politicians, but Gordon being a man of science is scrupulously honest, if a bit naïve at times. Crusading prosecutor Gerald (Lee Bowman) claims to be fighting corruption, but is in fact one of the ringleaders. He also has a thing for Jane. And he's perfectly willing to bomb somebody who might bring it all down. Of course, Gordon gets the job of doing the forensics investigation, and Gerald tries to throw him off the scent. It's a really nifty little B movie with some fun scenes too, such as when Gordon mentions that particles will still be on the guilty man's scalp.
If you've ever wondered about Lon Chaney doing a western, you're in luck. This week, you can catch him in Black Spurs, at 11:17 AM Wednesday on StarzEncore Westerns. Chaney plays Gus Kile, a town owner who has the power to break a town by putting the rail line elsewhere. But he's a supporting character. The star here is Rory Calhoun, playing Santee. He's a ranchhand with a pregnant girlfriend Anna (Terry Moore) and ambition, so he decides to become a bounty hunter to make more money. He returns to town some time later embittered, and to find that Anna has married the sheriff (Roscoe P. Coltrane, er, James Best). So our bitter anti-hero comes up with a plan to destroy his old home town by bring women of ill repute and other immoralities to the town. Linda Darnell, in her final role before the tragic house fire that killed her, plays the madam. Bruce Cabot, decades after King Kong, plays the casino owner, and DeForest Kelley plays Kile's sheriff. Predictable, but professional and competent too.
Back on TCM on Wednesday, they're running the interesting Red Light at 2:00 PM. Johnny Torno (George Raft) plays the owner of a trucking company who loves his kid brother Jess; Jess is about to return from a stint as an Army chaplain in World War II and a war hero to boot. Johnny's former bookkeeper Nick (Raymond Burr) embezzled from the firm and is now in prison for it, and when he hears about Jess' homecoming, he hatches a plan. He gets fellow prisoner Rocky (Col. Potter, er, Harry Morgan), who is getting out of prison soon, to kill Jess, since that will make Nick's life a living hell! And Nick will have the perfect alibi of being in prison when the crime was committed. Jess survives the attack long enough to tell Johnny that the answer to the murder lies in the Bible. So of course Johnny thinks Jess wrote something down in the Gideon bible in the hotel room. But that particular bible has gone missing! Johnny investigates and finds Carla (Virginia Mayo) rented the same room as Jess; she's willing to help Johnny find the Gideon bible.
I see there's another TCM showing of Night of the Hunter, which will be on at midnight Friday (or 11:00 PM Thursday LFT). Peter Graves plays Ben, a bank robber who stole $20,000 and before getting caught, hides it in his daughter's doll. Ben gets the death penalty since somebody died during the robbery, and fellow prisoner Harry (Robert Mitchum) learns that there's that $20,000 hidden somewhere. So when Harry gets out of prison he marries Ben's widow Willa (Shelley Winters) and sets out trying to find the money. The kids realize they're in danger (Mom's final scene in the movie is memorable), so they run away and head down the river, with Harry chasing not far behind. Robert Mitchum is outstandingly menacing, and the kids aren't cloying at all. James Gleason has a small supporting role as the kids' “uncle” who turns out to be too drunk to help them, and Lillian Gish plays an old lady who takes in runaway and orphaned kids, who finds Ben's two children.
I just noticed that FXM is running a bunch of James Mason movies this week. Among them is Bigger Than Life, which will be on at 1:20 PM Thursday ant 11:20 AM Friday. Mason plays Ed, a teacher with a wife Lou (Barbara Rush) and kid Richie who has taken a second job driving a taxi to help pay the bills. Of course this leads to his winding up with exhaustion. But when he goes for medical tests it turns out the problem isn't just exhaustion; Ed has a heart issue. But he's in luck in that there's a new “miracle drug” that can deal with his heart problem: cortisone. (The movie is from 1956; commercial production of cortisone had only begun in the late 1940s.) Of course, corticosteroids have side effects, and Ed winds up going not into roid rage, but into roid insanity. He starts developing delusions of grandeur and becoming a Jesus freak, to the point that he's putting his own child in danger! The whole thing is interesting if a bit of a mess, although modern-day critics tend to inject their attitudes about 50s suburbia into their high praise of the movie. A young Walter Matthau plays Ed's fellow teacher and best friend.
There's another night of Anthony Perkins on TCM on Friday night, including what might be the TCM premiere of Mahogany, at 8:00 PM Friday. Diana Ross stars as Tracy, a department store worker in Chicago who has dreams of bettering her life, so she goes to fashion school studying to become a designer despite having unorthodox ideas. She's got a boyfriend in Brian (Billy Dee Williams), although he seems more interested in his political career then in her dreams. One day she shows up to a department store photo shoot from photographer Sean (that's Perkins) in a jaw-dropping dress that viewers will think is a disaster, but that Sean loves. In fact, Sean loves the idea of Tracy as a model, so he flies her off to Rome to become one of the world's great models. Tracy, of course, still has dreams of becoming a designer even more than just being a model. And the high life is more complicated than Tracy would have thought, especially as Sean begins to seem a bit off in the head. This one is one of those movies that goes disastrously wrong to the point that it's incredibly entertaining as you'll be howling at the screen. Oh, and there's one scene where Diana Ross accidentally bares her breast for a second or two.
If you want something more recent, you can catch the movie version of The Beverly Hillbillies at 2:00 PM Thursday on StarzEncore Classics. It's hard to believe that the movie is nearly a quarter-century old, but it did come out in 1993. You probably know the basic story from the TV show. Jed Clampett (played here by Jim Varney) strikes oil on his patch of land in the backwoods deep South, something that makes him worth hundreds of millions. So he decides to take his family and move them to someplace more wealthy: Beverly Hills, CA. There's his granny (Cloris Leachman), daughter Elly May (Playboy model Erika Eleniak), and cousin Jethro (Diedrich Bader). There's also bank manager Drysdale (Dabney Coleman) managing their money. So you get all the fish out of water jokes. The other part of the story is that Jethro is in want of a wife, and this brings out a bunch of con artists (notably Rob Schneider and Lea Jackson) trying to part the Clampetts from their money. This one tends to divide opinion.
Back on TCM, you could do far worse than to watch The Ladykillers, at 2:15 PM Saturday. Alec Guinness plays “Professor Marcus”, who shows up at a big house in an out of the way part of London owned by elderly Mrs. Wilberforce (Katie Johnson) who has rooms to let. The Professor is willing to take all the rooms, since he's got a band and the relative lack of neighbors would make it a perfect place for he and his bandmates to practice. Of course, all of that is a ruse, and the Professor and his men (including Herbert Lom and Peter Sellers) are really planning a bank heist, and this house is a good place for them to plan it and to come back to afterwards since it's so out of the way. And Mrs. Wilberforce seems too senile to know what's really going on. But at the same time, the old lady seems to have a way about her of bollixing up the men's plans, even if she has no idea what she's doing. It's easy to forget that Alec Guinness was really adept at comedy as he showed in a bunch of British movies early in his career.
Finally, we'll mention this weeks TCM Underground, which is a double feature of Willard at 2:00 AM Sunday, followed by Ben at 3:45 AM Sunday. A boy, a rat, and a theme song by Michael Jackson. What's not to love?
