Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” thread, for the week of October 3-9, 2016. Now that the Wisconsin Badgers have lost, there's no point in spending time wondering about their national championship hopes, so why not relax with some good movies instead? I've used my good taste to pick out a bunch of stuff that I think you'll find interesting. There's a new Star of the Month on TCM and a new spotlight. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
We'll start off with an early talkie: Redemption, at 6:00 AM Monday. Based on a story by Leo Tolstoy, the movie stars John Gilbert as Fedya (yes, that's his name; it's the short form for Fyodor which is Russian for “Theodore”; since my name is Ted and I was a Russian major I decided to adopt Fedya as my internet handle since it's generally not taken; I didn't take it from this story). He falls in love with Lisa (Eleanor Boardman), despite the fact that she's engaged to Victor (Conrad Nagel). Meanwhile, after finally marrying Lisa, Fedya falls for the gypsy Masha (Renée Adorée). Tragic complications ensue. If you've read enough Tolstoy, you'll know that there's a whole bunch of moralizing in his stories, something that doesn't necessarily fit the movies so well. So this wasn't a particularly good choice for MGM to give Gilbert to enter talking pictures with. That, and the fact that the dialogue is stilted (I don't think Tolstoy's dialogue is particularly natural; I always found Chekhov easier to read in Russian than Tolstoy). You can see why Gilbert's career went nowhere after the advent of talking pictures.
This being October, it's somewhat appropriate that the Star of the Month is Christopher Lee, since he's know for so many Hammer horror films. TCM is showing his movies every Monday night in October. They're starting off the month with a rarity: Jinnah, at 8:00 PM Monday. Those who have a keen grasp of history may recognize that title. The name Jinnah refers to Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who is considered to be the founding father of Pakistan. When the British ruled the Indian subcontinent, it was all one giant dominion, but with Gandhi leading the Indian people to independence, the substantial Muslim minority wanted to be masters of their own house. The result was the partition of India and massive population movements of Hindus from what is now Pakistan and Bangladesh, and Muslims from India to the new country (what is now Bangladesh only became independent from Pakistan in the early 1970s). Lee plays Jinnah, a complex figure who wasn't the easiest to get along with, in this controversial film that doesn't tell his story in a linear manner.
It may be hard to believe, but it's been almost a third of a century since Risky Business was released. You have the opportunity to see it on Starz Comedy, at 2:40 AM Tuesday and again at 4:00 PM Tuesday. Tom Cruise, before he became a Scientologist freak, plays high school senior Joel, whose rich parents go away on vacation, leaving him along in a big house with access to the Porsche. Joel eventually winds up getting involved with call-girl Lana (Rebecca De Mornay), which gets him into some trouble since he can't pay the bill. But she wants to get away from her pimp, so she decides to stay in Joel's house, inviting her colleagues over and turning the place into a brothel. Obviously, a lot more complications ensue, like Joel having to deal with this and a college interview at the same time, or the Porsche winding up in the drink.
Now that we're in the first full week of a new month, we've got a new spotlight on TCM, the second half of the Trailblazing Women spotlight of which the first half was last October. It'll be on Tuesdays and Thursdays in prime time. The evening actually kicks off at 6:00 PM with a documentary on Mary Pickford that will be re-run at 4:00 AM Wednesday. Pickford also gets the night's first feature movie, Little Annie Rooney at 8:00 PM, in which the 32-year-old actress/producer is playing a 12-year-old girl because that's what audiences wanted. This time, she's opposite William Haines who was just about to become a big star
I'm looking forward to Mothers of Men at 10:00 PM; it's a restoration (a 1921 re-edit of a 1917 film) that I haven't seen with an interesting-sounding plot about a female judge whose husband winds up a defendant in a murder case.
For those of you who like westerns, StarzEncore Westerns is running Dawn at Socorro at 1:00 AM Thursday. Rory Calhoun plays gunfighter Brett Wade, who took a bullet in a previous encounter and is now ill with consumption as a result. It's not good for his health, so he's decided to hang up his guns ang go on a rest cure. If only. Needless to say, his past follows him. He meets Rannah (Piper Laurie); who was thrown out of her house by her father for her loose morals. Brett takes an interest in her and wants to get her out of her situation. But he gets in a gunfight and has to leave town, eventually winding up in Socorro where Rannah, much to Brett's chagrin, starts working at the local casino run by Braden (David Brian). Sheriff Cauthen (Edgar Buchanan) wants Brett out of town, because he knows Brett's past and doesn't want it catching up with him here, but good luck with that.
I'm not certain if I've recommended The Last Mile before. You can catch it at 5:15 AM Thursday on TCM. Howard Phillips plays Dick Walters, who gets sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit. Not only that, but he's been sent to death row since it was a murder! The warden is surprisingly sympathetic, thinking capital punishment is wrong, but not the guards. They're brutal. Eventually, one of the condmned, John Mears (Preston Foster), decides the hell with it. Since they're all going to die anyway, why not try to make a break for it? So he leads the other condemned men in a jailbreak, which of course leads to a dilemma for Dick. Should he try to make a break for freedom, or should he hope his friends on the outside can find the evidence that will clear him before it's too late? Like a lot of early talkies, this was based on a stage play. In the original stage play, the Preston Foster role was taken by Spencer Tracy, while when the touring company did it out in California, the role went to Clark Gable.
Coming up this week on FXM Retro is The Salzburg Connection, at 1:25 PM Thursday and 11:45 AM Friday. This is one of those thrillers typical of the early 70s, with nice European locations but a mess of a plot. In this one, the plot involves American lawyer Bill Mathison (Barry Newman), who is asked by a publisher to contact a writer of a potentially interesting book on Austrian lakes. When Bill goes to see the guy, he only finds the guy's wife Anna (Anna Karina). Hubby has gone missing, and the wife is being “protected” by her brother Johann (Klaus Maria Brandauer). It turns out that in doing his research on lakes, the man dredged up (literally) a chest containing, among other things, a secret list of Nazi collaborators, which was presumably dumped so nobody could find it. Everybody, and I mean everybody, wants to get their hands on their list, and our lawyer hero finds himself the unwilling protagonist in an international espionage plot. At least it's tough to go wrong filming the scenery around Salzburg.
One of this week's TCM Underground selections is The Zodiac Killer, at 2:00 AM Sunday on TCM. Older members of the forum may remember the Zodiac killings, committed by a serial killer in the San Francisco area in 1968. The real killer was never found, and this movie was made, loosely about the murders, possibly to lure the real killer out of hiding. The killer, in addition to committing his murders, sent taunting letters to the media and obviously getting away with it all. The movie, which was done on an extremely low budget, posits two fictional characters, a creepy truck driver and an impossibly nice mailman, as the possible person behind the murders, and then gives us a series of interesting murders. Those poor women in their cars. It's another of those movies that's really not very good but it's interesting.
Our last selection this week is an interesting one: No Orchids for Miss Blandish, at 8:00 AM Sunday on TCM. In many ways, it's an American gangster movie, except that it was made in Britain not long after the end of World War II, with a mostly British cast. Miss Blandish (Linden Travers) is the daughter of a wealthy man; she gets waylaid by a gang who want her necklace. Unfortunately for the gang, the robbery goes wrong, and she and the necklace are held hostage. Worse, the even more violent Grisson gang discovers where Miss Blandish is, and the leader, Slim (American actor Jack La Rue) winds up with her on his hands. The two fall in love, as unlikely as that may be, and that causes all sorts of problems, since the Grisson gang want to ransom her and Slim doesn't want that. Miss Blandish, for her part, actually seems to be willing to run off with Slim. The movie was savaged by British critics when it was released, but it's actually a surprisingly good movie.