Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” Thread, for the week of October 31-November 6, 2016. Actually, I've only selected movies through Saturday, November 5, in part because this week sees the end of Daylight Savings Time in the civilized parts of the country that use it (sorry Arizonians). Trying to figure out when stuff will actually air that overnight is sometimes problematic. Anyhow, we're in the beginning of a new month, so we're going to get some new features on TCM. More on that later. As always, all times are in Eastern unless otherwise mentioned.
Monday is Halloween, so we get one last round of horror movies on TCM. One that I've mentioned several times in the past, but is so good it deserves another viewing, is Dead of Night, which you can see at 2:30 PM Monday on TCM. Mervyn Johns plays architect Walter Craig, who wakes up one morning and is off to an appointment at one of those British country houses. When he gets there, he sees some people that he has a vague idea he's seen before. As h talks further to them, they each start telling various horror stories: one about children partying at a house with a hidden staircase; one with a strange mirror; one with a car with “room for one more”; a story about two golfers and a creepy golf match; and, a ventriloquist who thinks his dummy is out to get him. As we see each of these stories played out on the screen, our architect gets an even stronger feeling he's seen these people before and gets premonitions about the future. The stories are pretty good, and the ending to the framing story, well, I won't give that away.
If you want something I haven't recommended before, you could try King of the Roaring 20s: The Story of Arnold Rothstein, which will be on TCM at 6:15 AM Tuesday. Rothstein (played by David Janssen) was a gangster who got his start before the 20s, being born to a Jewish family (the father here is played by veteran character actor Joseph Schildkraut) and using his mathematical genius to make money off a variety of scams, including fixing the 1919 World Series. And then Prohibition came along, which was a possibility for the gangsters to make even more money. There's actually a surprisingly high-powered cast in this one, as Mickey Rooney plays a former childhood play of Rothstein; Dan O'Herlihy plays the good cop who spends his career going after Rothstein, and Jack Carson, in his final role, plays a corrupt politician.
In addition to Jack Carson's final role, we have Audrey Hepburn's final role: in Always, which will be on StarzEncore Classics at 9:55 AM Wednesday. Pete (Richard Dreyfus) is a forest-fighting pilot, the kind who do water drops on the forest fires. He's in love with Dorinda (Holly Hunter), but he takes one risk too many and it results in his losing his life. Pete's guardian angel Hap (Audrey Hepburn) gives him one more mission: to be a sort of ghost helping out the man who is effectively Pete's replacement as a pilot, young Ted (Brad Johnson, the actor not the sh*tty Vikings quarterback). It goes well, although in some ways it goes too well as Ted begins to fall in love with Dorinda, much to Pete's chagrin. John Goodman plays Pete's pilot friend. Steven Spielberg directed this film which is in many ways a remake of A Guy Named Joe and something that's very much atypical for Spielberg.
For those of you who like more recent stuff, I'll mention something that's only a quarter-century old: Boyz N the Hood, airing at 7:05 PM Wednesday on StarzEncore. Tre is a boy living with a single mother who, being a discipline problem, gets sent to live with his father in “the hood” of South Central. Fast forward to age 17, and Tre (Cuba Gooding Jr.) is still living with dad “Furious” (Laurence Fishburne). Dad is trying to rais his son as best he can and teach him to do the right thing, but that's not always easy. Complicating matters is Tre's two best friends. They're half-brothers. Ricky (Morris Chestnut) is trying to get out of the hood by getting an athletic scholarship, while Doughboy (Ice Cube) seems to be succumbing to all the social problems created by the hood. Can Tre make it through all of this, and what's going to happen to his friends?
TCM is going to be spending Wednesday nights in November looking at documentaries. There's a two-part special on the genre, with the first part airing at 8:00 PM Wednesday. But the documentary I'd like to mention this week is The Secret Land, which will air at 3:45 AM Thursday. In 1946, the US government approved a Navy mission to explore Antarctica, to be led by Admiral Richard Byrd (who wound up flying over the South Pole). Along with the ships, planes, and men, they sent a bunch of Technicolor cameras, which documented the expedition. A fair amount of the footage wound up classified; some of it made its way to an MGM-produced documentary, which is what will be showing. Narrated by three MGM stars who served in World War II (Robert Montgomery, Robert Taylor, and Van Heflin), this tells about the stark landscape as well as the difficulties of working in one of the harshest environments on earth. One especially interesting section is on the Bunger Hills, which are a notably ice-free region of Antarctica, probably due to volcanic activity underground.
Those of you who like westerns may enjoy The Siege at Red River, at 10:20 AM Thursday on StarzEncore Westerns. Van Johnson, oddly cast in a western, plays James, a Confederate Civil War soldier who is passing himself off as part of a medicine show with Benjy (Milburn Stone). In fact, the two have stolen a shipment of US Army Gatling guns, and are trying to travel west to get it to the Confederate lines on the western front. Of course, the North wants the guns back. So James and Benjy have to make a hasty getaway with Nora (Joanne Dru) even though she's a northern sympathizer. And of course James and Nora fall in love. Meanwhile, there's Brett Manning(!) along for the ride, who wants to steal the guns not to give them back to the north, but to sell them to the Indians! Things don't quite work out as planned, of course, and everybody winds up in a shootout.
With Election Day coming up (finally!) soon, we're going to get a number of campaign-themed movies on TCM. One I think I haven't recommended before is You Can't Beat Love, airing at 4:15 AM Friday. Jimmy Hughes (Preston Foster) is a wealthy lawyer, but one who's a bit different because he likes to engage in bets. One day, that winds up with him announcing that he's going to run for mayor! Not that he intended to, but he winds up taking the campaign seriously. The current mayor's daughter Trudy (Joan Fontaine) meets Jimmy and immediately takes a disliking to him, but since this is a B romantic comedy from the beginning of Fontaine's career, we know she's going to fall in love with Jimmy along the way. And then Jimmy learns just how corrupt the local cops can be as there is a group of racketeers to go after. It's always interesting to see people who would go on to become stars, like Fontaine, in the movies they made before attaining stardom.
We're into a new month, which means we're going to get a new Star of the Month. This time around, it's Natalie Wood, who is being honored since it's been 35 years since she died in a boating accident. Wood started her career as a child actress, so I suppose it's only fitting that TCM is showing several of her juvenile roles. Some of them are relatively small, such as in The Silver Chalice (Saturday at 1:35 AM), in which she plays the child version of the character who grows up to be the main love interest (played by Virginia Mayo opposite Paul Newman). In Tomorrow is Forever (8:00 PM Friday), her first credited role, she plays a German girl who is the foster child of Orson Welles; the movie is about World War I veteran Orson Welles returning home after having been presumed killed in action; he finds out that his wife (Colbert) has remarried.
I mentioned some British sci-fi last week, so I'll follow up this week with Spaceflight: IC-1, which is on FXM Retro at 10:25 AM Saturday. At some point in Earth's future, the planet is dying, so the best minds of the world have found another planet they can colonize and are sending a spaceship to that planet. The only thing is, the voyage is decades long, and the colonists are going to have to have children along the way. Except of course there are problems: one of the passengers has developed a life-threatening ailment and can't have another child, and she's not happy about it. She's certainly not happy that the captain is being strict about it, to the point that some of the passengers are willing to mutiny over the captain's strictness. And then there's another group of colonists in suspended animation. Obviously that's to preserve them for when they get to the new planet, but it turns out to have some unintended side effects. Unfortunately this one was hampered by a minuscule budget, with the result that is has interesting ideas but a complete misfire on the execution.
This week sees another airing of Coal Miner's Daughter, at 8:00 PM Saturday on TCM. Sissy Spacek plays Loretta Webb, who at the start of the movie is a ~14-year-old girl living in a ramshackle house with a ton of siblings in Kentucky coal-mining country, Enter Doolittle Lynn (Tommy Lee Jones), just back from World War II. He sweeps Loretta off her feet, marrying her and making her a mother of four by the time she was 20. (She was a grandmother at 29 
) One day Doolittle hears her singing, and gets the idea that Loretta could be a success as a country singer, and thus begins the struggle to make it in the entertainment business. This is of course all based on the real-life story of Loretta Lynn, so we know she's going to become successful, although there's a lot of hard times along the way. Spacek did her own singing and won an Oscar for her role. Also in the cast are Levon Helm (of The Band) as Loretta's father, and Beverly D'Angelo as tragic country singer Patsy Cline. Oh, and Minnie Pearl plays herself when Loretta plays the Grand Old Opry.