Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” thread, for the week of October 26-November 1, 2020. Halloween is this Saturday, so unsurprisingly there are several movies that fall in the horror genre. However, there's still enough interesting stuff out there that it's not all horror. Clocks go back an hour early Sunday morning, but I had enough good movies from before the time change that it's not an issue this week, other than giving you one extra hour to watch good movies. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
I know I've recommended it a bunch of times before, but I note that one of this week's TCM Imports is Diabolique, at 2:00 AM Monday. Paul Meurisse plays Michel Delassalle, headmaster at a boarding school for boys who is hated by everybody. He's got a weak-willed wife Christina (Vera Clouzot) and, in true French fashion, a mistress in the form of one of the teachers, Nicole (Simone Signoret). But they've grown as tired of Michel's nasty cheapskate ways as everybody else, and decide the best thing to do is murder him. They drug him and drown him, ultimately dumping his body in the school's swimming pool that won't be used for months. But when he's reported missing (obviously), the police investigate, which means they're going to drain the swimming pool. They do… and the body is gone! And then one of the students claims to be seeing Michel alive in various places around the school grounds, which really freaks Christina out. A great movie that got a Hollywood remake in the 90s that should be avoided; thankfully it's not on this week so you won't tune in to the wrong movie by accident.
Halloween is this week, but it's not the only holiday movie that's on and worth recommending. There's also Groundhog Day, at 9:45 AM Monday on Epix2. Bill Murray plays Phil Connors, a cynical big-city weatherman who gets the assignment of going to Punxsutawney, PA, for February 2, when they force a groundhog out of its den to determine if it will see its shadow and then predict whether or not there will be six more weeks of winter. He doesn't like the small town, and wants to get out, but a blizzard after the ceremonies forces them back. He wakes up the next morning and finds… everybody in town is preparing to get that damn groundhog again! As far as they're concerned, it's still February 2, and they're all acting the same way they did yesterday. Worse, this keeps happening, as every day Phil wakes up and it's still February 2. So he does the best he can with the situation, trying to change what he can and win the love of his producer Rita (Andie MacDowell). But what will ever happen if they get to February 3?
In the piece that Carol Burnett did for TCM when Lucille Ball was Star of the Month, Burnett said that the studios just didn't seem to know what to do with Lucy. A good example of this is Valley of the Sun, which you can see on TCM at 9:00 AM Tuesday. Lucy plays Christine Larson, who runs a restaurant in Desert Center, Arizona Territory a few years after the end of the Civil War. She's engaged to be married to one of the local Indian agents (that is, the men from the federal government who are the go-betweens for the tribes and the government), Jim Sawyer (Dean Jagger). Into all of this comes Jonathan Ware (James Craig), a former cavalry man who was drummed out of the army for helping a couple of those Indians escape from jail. He knew that the Indians were only stealing what was rightly theirs and what corrupt Indian agents were fraudulently taking from them. The rest of the plot should be obvious, with Ware falling for Christine, and learning that Sawyer is one of the corrupt agents; based on who gets what billing, it should also be obvious how the story ends. It's a light western, although still a bit odd to see Lucy doing a western.
This week's “back on FXM” movie is the 1944 version of The Lodger. You can see it at 6:00 AM Wednesday. It's late 1880s London, and Jack the Ripper has been going on his killing spree. The Bontings (Cedric Hardwicke and Sara Allgood) are a middle-class couple who have fallen on hard times, to the point that they have to let rooms in their house, as well as getting some support from their niece who lives with them, music-hall actress Kitty Langley (Merle Oberon). The couple's latest lodger is Slade (Laird Cregar), who tends to keep to himself and goes out a lot at night. As you can guess, the things that happen cause people to wonder whether perhaps Slade might be Jack the Ripper, such as turning the pictures of actresses in his room to face the wall. And with Kitty being an actress, she might judt be in danger if Slade is in fact Jack the Ripper. Investigating is police inspector Warwick (George Sanders), who also falls in love with Kitty along the way. Alfred Hitchcock had memorably filmed the source material as a silent back in 1927, and has been remade multiple times since.
Wednesday evenings theme on TCM is politics, which I suppose is their attempt to get us away from the current election between Giant Douche and Turd Sandwich. The night kicks off at 8:00 PM with The Best Man. Set in a time when conventions could still be contested, the story is set at a national convention where the party (unmentioned) still hasn't coalesced behind one candidate. There are two front-runners: William Russell (Henry Fonda), the Secretary of State who represents the more leftward part of his party and is a man of principle; and Joe Cantwell (Cliff Robertson), a staunch anti-communist and military hero who is relentless in his pursuit of power and frankly frightens a lot of people further left. Among these is the terminally ill former president, Hockstader (Lee Tracy, who is excellent 30 years after his heyday). Cantwell looks like he has the upper hand, but Russell's surrogates think they've found a way to fight back. Excellent performances all around.
If you've ever wanted to see Lionel Barrymore in drag, you're in luck. TCM is showing The Devil-Doll this week, at 7:00 AM Thursday. Barrymore plays Paul Lavond, a Parisian banker who was framed for murder and sent to Devil's Island. While in prison, he meets Marcel (Henry B. Walthall), a mad scientist who has ideas about reducing humanity for environmental purposes – think how much fewer resources they'll use! Indeed, he and his wife were doing research into the topic in Paris. The two men escape and somehow make it back to Paris, where Paul sees the technique up close and how it results in mind control. Unfortunately, Marcel suffers a fatal heart attack. But his wife continues the research, and Paul realizes he can use it to get back at the men who framed him. So he disguises himself as doll-maker Madame Mandlip, which also makes it easier for him to see his daughter Lorraine (Maureen O'Sullivan). Paul's revenge scheme seems to work at first, but you know it's going to come back to bite him in the rear.
Another western this week is a more recent one (well, it's only 40 years old): Tom Horn, at 7:33 AM Friday on StarzEncore Westerns. Steve McQueen plays Tom Horn (not to be confused with former x4 poster Don Horn), who shows up in a small town in Wyoming about a decade after statehood. Tom is an iconoclast, which gets him into trouble with some of the locals, although rancher John Coble (Richard Farnsworth) is more accepting. When cattle rustlers try to waylay the two, Tom shoots one of the rustlers in the foot, which gives Coble the idea to hire Tom since the Cattlemen's Association has been having a big problem with cattle rustlers. The US Marshal (Billy Green Bush), knowing Horn's reputation from the Indian Wars, is none too happy with any of this. But Tom does his job well. Too well, in fact, as the Association eventually decides that perhaps Tom's continued presence is more of a danger to them than the rustlers whom Tom seems to have extirpated. So they set him up to take a fall. Based on a true story.
A lot of horror movies have gotten remakes, and as we'll see, there's a remake airing later this week. First, though, I'll mention an original that got a remake 30 years later: the 1970s version of The Wicker Man, which will be on TCM at 12:45 AM Saturday. Edward Woodward plays Neil Howie, a Scottish police detective who gets a disturbing anonymous letter from the offshore island of Summerisle. Apparently, an adolescent girl named Rowan Morrison has disappeared. Howie goes to the island and starts interviewing the locals, and finds that they all claim this Rowan doesn't exist. Further, as the devoutly Methodist Howie investigates, he finds that the people of Summerisle are pagans who celebrate fertility rites, which disgusts him. That, and Rowan, if she did exist, might be a victim of human sacrifice because of a failed harvest. Howie talks to the laird of the island, Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee) but gets nowhere. Eventually, after a lot of investigation, Howie thinks he's solved the mystery. But has he? As far as I can tell, the 2006 remake is not on this week, not as if it's anywhere near as good as the original.
With Halloween being on Saturday, we're getting a bunch of horror movies this week. One that I don't think I've mentioned in a while is the 1980s version of The Fly. You can see that one at 3:03 AM Saturday on StarzEncore Classics. Jeff Goldblum plays Seth, a scientist who has secretly been working on the possibility of creating Star Trek-style transporters. He's created two pods, and some of the experiments seem to be working. But any time he tries to transport living tissue it doesn't work. He reveals his invention to journalist Veronica (Geena Davis), and she agrees to keep the story a secret in return for exclusivity. They also fall in love. Seth thinks he's figured out why he can't teleport live tissue, and ultimately decides to experiment on himself. Of course, when he does, a fly gets into the teleporter at the same time, which is going to have disastrous consequences as the two animals' genomes start to merge Can Seth save himself in time? (As far as I can tell, the Vincent Price/David Hedison version of The Fly is not on this week.)
Another insect-themed horror film is Them! It's airing at 10:00 PM Saturday on TCM. Out in the desert of New Mexico a bunch of people wind up dead in odd attacks. Scientist Dr. Harold Medord (Edmund Gwenn) and his daughter Patricia (Joan Weldon), also a scientist, are brought in when a little girl survives one of the attacks, but is catatonic. Harold has an inspiration, waving a flask of formic acid under the little girl's face, at which point she starts screaming “Them!”. Further investigation reveals that nuclear tests out in New Mexico have mutated some of the ants there into super-giant bugs. Worse, the colonies have reached the stage of creating new queen ants that are going to fly off and start colonies elsewhere. (Of course, nobody will believe the pilot who sees a queen ant flying through the air, will they?) One of the new colonies has been traced to the sewers feeding into the dry riverbeds of Los Angeles, and it's off to LA to destroy the colony before it can destroy mankind.