Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” Thread, for the week of October 17-23, 2016. We're getting closer to Halloween, which means more horror. There's a night of Christopher Lee horror on Monday night, as well as some fun stuff on TCM on Friday night. Of course, there are good movies on other channels as well. I've used my good taste to pick out a series of movies I know all of you will like. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
We'll start off with this week's Silent Sunday Nights feature, A Page of Madness at midnight Monday (ie. tonight at 11:00 PM LFT) on TCM. This one is also known ast Kurutta Ippeji, since it's a Japanese silent movie. The plot, if you can decipher it, involves a group of women living in a Japanese mental institution. An elderly janitor at the place is actually working there because his wife is one of the patients. Their daughter is engaged to be married, and that may have something to do with why Mom has been institutionalized. Meanwhile, Dad took the job as a janitor because he's trying to get his wife out of the place. But does she really want to leave? The movie can be maddeningly hard to follow in part because of the subject matter and disjointed imagery used to portray it, and in part beause of the lack of intertitles. In Japanese silent cinema, the tradition was to have a benshi: somebody whose job it was to translate the action of what was going on in those pictures and help tell the story. We obviously don't get that with this movie.
For those of you who like westerns, StarzEncore Westerns is running Will Penny again, at 8:50 PM Monday. Charlton Heston plays Penny, a cattle driver in bleak Montana. With the annual cattle drive over, he and his friends Blue and Dutchy (Lee Majors and Anthony Zerbe respectively) decide what to do for the winter. Along the way, they get in a fight with Preacher Quint (Donald Pleasance) and his family, resulting in one of Quint's party being killed and Penny's friend getting shot. Will eventually takes a job as a line ranger, watching for stray cattle stuck in the winter wilderness. But when he gets to his cabin, he finds that it's already occupied, by Catherine (Joan Hackett) and her young son. They were migrating west, but her husband left to get a guide and never came back, and there's no way she can keep going west during the winter. It's highly against the rules for her to be there, but what's Will to do? And, of course, you know we haven't seen the last of Quint yet.
TCM is showing a bunch of Miriam Hopkins movies on Tuesday. One that I don't think I've recommended before is The Stranger's Return, at 6:30 AM. Hopkins plays Louise Storr, a woman from the big city who has recently gotten divorced. To try to get over it, she goes to visit her Grandpa Storr (Lionel Barrymore), who lives on a farm and still runs the place. While there, Grandpa introduces Louise to his neighbor, Guy Crane (Franchot Tone). The two immediately hit it off, and Louise thinks seriously about settling down here. There's just one small catch. Guy is already married, even though he realizes he can love Louise more than his own wife. Meanwhile, another relative (Beulah Bondi) is trying to get control of the farm out from under Grandpa's nose, by trying to get him declared not mentally competent and have him committed.
The look at trailblazing women continues on Tuesday night. One who certainly fits is Anna May Wong, and the movie TCM is showing with her is Piccadilly, at 12:30 AM Wednesday. The scene is the Piccadilly Club in London, where Mabel (Gilda Grey) dances with Vic as the star of the floor show, although she's in love with the club owner Valentine (Jameson Thomas). But cut to the back of the club. Working in the kitchen as a scullery girl is Shosho (Anna May Wong), and she does a dance there for the other kitchen workers. Valentine sees Shosho, and is eventually taken with her, taking her on as a dancer to help boost the club's fortunes. Needless to say, this makes Mabel extremely jealous, resulting in, well, you'll have to see what happens next. There's some really interesting photography in this and Wong looks great. Watch for a disgruntled patron with a dirty plate. That's a young Charles Laughton.
One that I've mentioned several times in the past but which is always worth another viewing is In the Heat of the Night, at 8:30 AM Wednesday on StarzEncore Classics. Sidney Poitier plays Virgil Tibbs, who's going through a small town in Mississippi on his way to visit his mother. However, at the same time he's waiting to change trains, there's a murder committed in town. So of course the cops, led by Sheriff Gillespie (Rod Steiger), suspect the black guy who's just visiting. What they don't realize is that Virgil (they call him Mister Tibbs) is actually a police detective up in Philadelphia, and when Gillespie checks this story, he's told to let Tibbs help investigate. Gillespie learns to deal with black people, and Tibbs deals with racism while solving the case. Most of the exterior location shooting was actually done in Illinois, because trying to make a movie like this in the south at the time, the producers thought, would still have been difficult.
A movie that's recently started showing up on FXM Retro is 23 Paces to Baker Street, which will be on again this week at 7:45 AM Wednesday. Van Johnson plays Philip Hannon, a playwright living in London who has recently gone blind. One night when he goes to the local pub, he overhears part of a conversation which to him sounds like two people planning to commit a kidnapping. (You'd think would-be kidnappers would have the sense not to discuss their crime in a pub.) Philip goes to the police, but unsurprisingly they don't believe him. So Philip enlists the help of his ex-fiancée Jean (Vera Miles) and his butler Bob (Cecil Parker) in uncovering the truth behind this possible plot, and prevent a kidnapping if that is indeed the plot. One of the subplots involves the fact that Philip broke off the engagement because he only recently lost his eyesight. But will the attempt to foil a crime put Philip in danger? This one bears a lot of resemblance to the work of Alfred Hitchcock, but he had no involvement.
TCM is showing several Paul Muni movies on Thursday. One that I don't think I've recommended before is Dr. Socrates, at 5:30 PM. As Miriam Hopkins went back to the small town in The Stranger's Return, so does Paul Muni here, as Dr. Caldwell. He's an ex-surgeon who was in a car crash that killed his fiancée, which is why he wants to get away from it all. He scrapes by as a doctor, until one day when there's a bank robbery that results in one of the gangsters getting wounded, as well as a hitch-hiking bystander Josephine (Ann Dvorak). Our good doctor does such good work that the leader of the gang, Bastian (Barton MacLane), wants Caldwell to be their doctor all the time. Meanwhile, Josephine is suspected of being a gang member, and she's also just so darn lovely that you know she's going to become the source of romantic conflict…. How does Dr. Caldwell extricate himself from all of this? Muni is always interesting to watch, even in a lesser movie like this.
Another movie that recently started showing up on FXM Retro is The Nickel Ride, which will be on again this week at 11:45 AM Thursday. Jason Miller plays Cooper, the “Key Man” known for his keychain. The keys on that chain unlock a bunch of warehouses, which is where the mob keeps the stuff that they've robbed until they can fence it. They're running out of room, and Cooper is trying to swing a deal to get more warehouse space. But he hasn't been quite as successful as a middle-level man in the mob for some time now, in part because he's been trying to make himself bigger than he should be by getting involved in too many things. If he can't pull off this deal, he might just get offed. Indeed, The big boss Carl (John Hillerman) has brought in Turner (Bo Hopkins), a hired hit-man from Oklahoma, to do the dirty deed in case Cooper doesn't succeed. This is a gritty and decidedly unglamorous look at the underworld.
With Halloween being this month, TCM is running a bunch of horror movies on Friday nights. One of the movies that's a lot of fun because it's awful on the face of it is The Brain That Wouldn't Die, at 5:15 AM Saturday. Herb Evers plays Dr. Bill, who's experimenting with limb transplantation, experiments that have put him on the edge of licit behavior. While driving with his fiancée Jan (Virginia Leith) they get in a car crash which kills poor Jan. But Dr. Bill's experiments enable him to cut off the head and put it in a solution that will keep the head alive until the doctor can find a suitable body for his fiancée. (“Suitable” involves going to skeezy clubs; after all, the other woman is going to die.) Jan, for her part, is none too happy about any of this, and treats her fiancé badly, but who can blame her? Meanwhile, the lab she's in has a locked door with something sentient behind it, and Jan finds herself communicating with that thing. The plot is ludicrous and the production values are terrible, but that all makes it a hoot.
Finally, I'd like to make brief mention of the Saturday prime time lineup on TCM. They're running Jaws at 8:00 PM. Now that in and of itself is no big deal. It's a classic movie, one that cemented Steven Spielberg's success and made the summer blockbuster a thing. But perhaps more interesting is that the rest of the evening before TCM Underground, as Jaws is followed by Jaws 2 at 10:15 PM and then Jaws 3 (which was originally in 3D) at 12:15 AM Sunday. The latter two movies are inferior, of course.