Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" Thread, for the week of October 28-November 3, 2019. Daylight Saving Time ends this weekend, which is something to note for the movie that's coming up next Sunday afternoon. But before that, we get one more night of movies from Star of the Month Paul Muni, and a bunch of horror movies on Halloween. There are also a couple of special guests showing up on TCM, and some interesting stuff on other channels. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
Many of Hollywood's aging stars began to get not-so-good projects in the 1960s. A good example of this is Critic's Choice, which will be on TCM at 1:00 PM Monday. Bob Hope plays the critic, Parker Ballantine, who lives with his second wife, Angela (Lucille Ball). Parker is known to be a harsh but professional critic in that the Broadway types skewered by his reviews can generally take the criticism. However, one day Angela decides that she's going to write a play about her experiences growing up, just to show Parker she can see a project through to completion. Parker reads the first draft, which is pretty lousy, although how to break it to his wife is a problem. She, on hearing the criticism, becomes only more determined to get the play produced. Broadway director Dion (Rip Torn) thinks that with a lot of editing, there could be something in the play. Meanwhile, Parker's first wife (Marilyn Maxwell) is still around. This is based on a Broadway play by Ira Levin, of all people, a far cry from Rosemary's Baby.
We get one more night of Star of the Month Paul Muni on TCM on Monday, including The Commandos Strike at Dawn, at midnight Tuesday (ie. 11:00 PM Monday LFT). Muni plays Eric Toresen, who lives in a small town in Norway. You should remember that once World War II started in Europe, the Nazis invaded Norway, and made life very difficult for the people there. Toresen sees some of what the Nazis do to people who oppose them first hand, watching friend Johan (Ray Collins) suffer that treatment. Just before the war, an English family the Bowens whose father (Cedric Hardwicke) was in the military and who had a daughter Judith (Anna Lee) that Eric liked, had visited, so Eric knows that somehow the English have to be made aware of the true horrors of what's going on so that they'll start a second front in the far north. Other townsfolk join the Norwegian resistance. Of course, the question of how much the Norwegians resisted in reality is up for debate considering how vicious the Nazis could be. Watch for Lillian Gish as Johan's wife.
Another of the movies that's returned to FXM is The Robe. It's going to be on a couple of times this week, including Tuesday at 6:00 AM Tuesday. Richard Burton plays Marcellus, a Roman military tribune in love with Diana (Jean Simmons), although they haven't seen each other for some time. Caligula (Jay Robinson) has a think against Marcellus, so he sends Marcellus to Judea as punishment along with Marcellus' slave Demetrius (Victor Mature), which is also convenient in that he too loves Diana. The two show up in Jerusalem just in time to see Jesus enter into the city. If you recall your Christianity, Jesus gets crucified shortly thereafter, and the Roman soldiers gamble for Jesus' vestments. Wouldn't you know it, but Marcellus wins those vestments. Demetrius pretty much immediately became a Christian upon seeing Jesus, and when Marcellus rejects Jesus' robe, Demetrius runs off with it. Marcellus feels guilt over having had Jesus crucified and eventually becomes a Christian himself, while Caligula wants that robe for the power it has. This was the first movie released in Fox's new wide-screen Cinemascope process, although How to Marry a Millionaire had actually been produced a few months earlier.
TCM has a special night of movies on Tuesday. Julie Andrews has recently written another memoir, this time of her years in Hollywood. She sat down with Ben Mankiewicz to discuss the new book, and those segments will be airing 0n Tuesday night. They'll also be introducing four of Andrews' films:
Thoroughly Modern Millie at 8:00 PM, in which Andrews plays a 1920s woman going to New York to try to make it big;
Victor/Victoria at 11:00 PM, starring Andrews as a struggling singer in 1930s Paris who discovers she can be a success by pretending to be a man who goes on the cabaret stage as a female impersonator;
That's Life at 1:30 AM Wednesday, with Andrews and Jack Lemmon as a married couple who are each going through various crises in life; and
The Americanization of Emily at 3:30 AM, featuring Andrews opposite James Garner. He plays an American serviceman in London just before D-Day; she's a widow he woos even though she's not certain she wants to be wooed.
I don't think I've recommended The Gauntlet before. It's going to be on StarzEncore Classics at 1:51 AM Wednesday. Clint Eastwood stars as Ben Shockley, a hard-drinking policeman from Phoenix. His boss, Police Commissioner Blakelock (William Prince), gives him a job: go to Las Vegas and pick up the prostitute “Gus” Mally (Sondra Locke) to escort her back to Phoenix where she's supposed to be a witness in Mob trial. He only realizes “Gus” is a woman on meeting her, and she's none too happy about going to Phoenix. The thing is, she has information on some very powerful people, and she insists that the attempt to bring her to Phoenix is really just an attempt by those powerful people to get rid of her. Her, and Shockley as well. It turns out that Blakelock is in on the plot, because he's one of the people Gus has information on. Needless to say, the cops are able to go to great lengths in their attempt to kill Gus and Shockley, although the two somehow keep surviving as they make their way back to Phoenix.
The “Short and Sweet” movies continue on Wednesday, with the morning and afternoon being given over to detective movies. A fun detective series was the Hildegarde Withers mysteries, mostly starring Edna May Oliver as the schoolteacher/detective. One of those movies is Murder on a Honeymoon, which will be on TCM at 11:00 AM Wednesday. This one has the distinction of doing a reasonable amount of shooting on Catalina Island just off the California coast. Withers is taking a sea-plane to Catalina, only for one of the passengers to die en route. Since some of the other passengers suffered air sickness during the flight, authorities want it to be natural causes, but Hildegarde knows better. And when it turns out that the dead guy was already part of a police investigation, the police send Withers' old friend and rival Inspector Piper (James Gleason) out to take part in the investigation. And since the murder occurred on a plane, we already know all the suspects. Oliver and Gleason have great chemistry together, making this one a treat.
Halloween is this Thursday, so we've got more horror this week, including House on Haunted Hill, at 11:15 AM Thursday on TCM. Vincent Price plays Frederick Loren, a rich but eccentric man who invites five people to a house he's rented for a party with him and his fourth wife Annabelle (Carol Ohmart). At the gathering, he tells the assembled folks that this is a haunted house, and that if anybody can stay the night, he'll give them $10,000. To up the ante, he has the doors lock them in at midnight, and gives each of the guests a gun for protection. But it turns out there's more going on. Frederick suspects Annabelle of trying to kill him, while she tells one of the guests Lance (Richard Long) that she suspects Frederick of having killed two of his previous wives. Meanwhile, another guest Watson (Elisha Cook Jr.) is the actual owner of the house and knows more about its haunted past. And then things start happening to the guests that might mean they won't survive the night after all.... William Castle produced this, with the original gimmick being to have a skeleton fly out over the audience at a key point in the proceedings.
The Magnificent Seven was such a hit that eventually there would be sequels. The first of those sequels is Return of the Magnificent Seven, which will be on StarzEncore Westerns at 9:28 PM Thursday. Chico (Julián Mateos replacing Horst Buchholz), after the events of the first movie, stayed in the town the Seven freed and married one of the local girls, Petra (Elisa Montés). But another villainous rancher, Lorca, comes and shanghais the town's adult men for a project on his lands. So Petra goes and seeks out Chris (Yul Brynner again) in the hopes that he can help free Chico and the other men. Chris finds Vin (Robert Fuller taking Steve McQueen's role) and, since the other members of the Seven died, has to find replacements for them, which includes Warren Oates and Claude Akins. They set out on their mission, which doesn't seem all that different from the first movie, which is part of the problem here, since the first (not the original, of course, since that was a remake of The Seven Samurai) was so memorable. But Yul Brynner and Warren Oates are always worth watching.
Friday is November 1, which means that we're going to start getting into new programming themes on TCM. The first one up is “Dennis Miller and Friends”, in which Dennis Miller will be guest hosting along with four of his funny friends on Fridays in prime time, at least leading up to TCM Underground in the wee hours of the morning. It'll be one friend on each of the Friday nights, although with five Fridays in November, one friend is going to get two Fridays, that friend being Martin Short this Friday and next. Among the movies he's selected this week are the Marx Bros. classic Duck Soup at 8:00 PM.
For you stoners (you know who you are), one especially for you this week is Up In Smoke, which will be on StarzComedy at 12:18 AM Saturday. Tommy Chong plays “Man”, a slacker who gets thrown out of his house and forced to spend a night on the beach, which is where he meets Pedro (Cheech Marin). The two become fast friends in part because they're both looking to score some good weed, and wind up in a bunch of adventures because of that. This ultimately leads to the two of them getting deported to Mexico (thank you Orangemanbad) without the money to get home, until Pedro's uncle gets him a gig driving a van back to California. But the two go to the wrong address, going to an illicit pot production facility that puts the weed in the upholstery. So they do get a van to drive back, but not the one they expected, and it's filled with marijuana. Stacy Keach, who would later have his own real-life drug issues getting caught with cocaine in his luggage at an airport, plays a narc, while talented stars like Tom Skerritt and Edie Adams have small roles.
Finally, I'll mention The Last Time I Saw Paris, on TCM at 1:45 PM Sunday. Van Johnson plays Charles Wills, who is returning to Paris. Some years back, during World War II, he had been a reporter for Stars and Stripes, covering the liberation of Paris which is where he met the Ellswirth family, headed by father James (Walter Pidgeon), an American who had emigrated after World War I and never left. Charles eventually falls in love with James' daughter Helen (Elizabeth Taylor), and the two mary, despite Helen being as much of a bohemian as her father was. It's a mess of a marriage as the two party all the time while Charles is also trying to write “the great American novel”. Helen meets tennis player Paul (Roger Moore), while Charles meets serial divorcée Lorraine (Eva Gabor); the two continue to party, drink, and fight. Helen's sister Marion doesn't care for all this and eventually grows up, something it's going to take tragedy for Charles to do. Well made, but it has the feel of MGM's sanitizing such material.