Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” Thread, for the week of October 5-11, 2020. We've got a new Star of the Month on TCM, more horror movies on TCM on Friday night, and a bunch of stuff on other movie channels as well. As always, all times are in Eastern unless otherwise mentioned.
Now that we're into the first full week of a new month, it's time for a new Star of the Month on TCM. This time, it's Peter Cushing, who is known for his roles in a bunch of the horror movies made at Britain's Hammer Studios. Cushing's movies will appear on TCM on Mondays in prime time, but the month starts off with a movie that's not a horror film: Cash on Demand at 8:00 PM Monday. Cushing plays Harry Fordyce, a martinet of a bank manager in a small English town who makes his employees' lives miserable even in the run-up to Christmas. On the day of the branch's Christmas party, insurance auditor Gore Hepburn (André Morell) calls Fordyce to tell him to expect him to arrive and perform a security audit. This is a ruse, however, as Gore is actually there to rob the bank out of a large sum of money. In order to carry out the precisely-timed plan, Gore has an accomplice at Fordyce's house holding the family hostage. The one catch, however, is that Fordyce has been so hard on his employees that they may not want to follow the instructions he's received from Gore, threatening the whole operation.
Cinemax is running a marathon of Pink Panther movies this Tuesday. I'll mention one of the later Peter Sellers entries, The Pink Panther Strikes Back, at 11:33 AM Tuesday, or three hours later if you only have the west coast feed. In a previous entry in the series, Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers) had driven his boss Dreyfus (Herbert Lom) nuts for one last time, resulting in Dreyfus' winding up in an institution. He's about to be released, and Clouseau shows up to speak on his boss' behalf at the hearing, but of course Clouseau's presence only makes things worse, with Dreyfus threatening to kill Clouseau, nixing the idea of any release. So Dreyfus decides to escape instead, and when he does, he comes up with a diabolical scheme to create a death ray and threaten to use it if nobody assassinates Clouseau. Clouseau decides that he's going to have to find Dreyfus himself, with a whole bunch of would-be assassins on his tail.
Tuesday marks the birth anniversary of Carole Lombard, so it's unsurprising that TCM is spending a morning and afternoon with her. One of her movies that doesn't get so much mention is Love Before Breakfast, which runs at 12:15 PM. Lombard plays Kay Colby, a socialite engaged to Bill (Cesar Romero), a middle manager in an oil company. The engagement hits a snag when Bill is transferred to the Tokyo office for two years, postponing the marriage. Worse, Kay learns from the president of the company, Scott Miller (Preston Foster), that he knew of the couple's impending marriage and deliberately transferred Bill to Tokyo. In fact, Scott bought the company because he's attracted to Kay and wanted to break up Kay and Bill's relationship so that he could pursue Kay, which is precisely what he immediately starts doing! Bill isn't certain how to handle things and gives Kay mixed messages, before she's able to convince Scott to bring Bill back so she can choose with both men there.
One of my selections may surprise you this week, as it's a movie from the current century! So recent! That movie is The Last King of Scotland, and you can see it at 10:06 PM Tuesday on MovieMax. James McAvoy plays Nicholas Garrigan, a Scottish doctor circa 1970 who decides on a lark that he's going to serve the world by doing charity medical service in Uganda. He arrives there and is picked up by Sarah Merritt (Gillian Anderson) just as one dictator Milton Obote is overthrown in a coup and replaced by Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker). Dr. Garrigan is naïve and idealistic, thinking Amin will be a force for good, especially after Amin's motorcade gets in an accident with a cow and Garrigan has to provide first aid. This leads him to become the Amin family's private physician, and up close, he slowly starts to see just how capricious Idi Amin could be. (We don't see most of the atrocities of the Amin regime.) By the time Garrigan realizes what he's gotten himself into, it may be too late for him to leave, and trying to do so may get him killed….
There's a bunch of movies set in Hungary on TCM on Wednesday morning and afternoon. One that I don't think I've recommended before is Fight For Your Lady, airing at 2:00 PM Wednesday. Jack Oakie plays wrestling promoter Ham Hamilton, who meets an opera singer Robert Densmore (John Boles) who's engaged to be married. Somehow Ham finds out that the woman is all wrong for Robert because she's a golddigger. So he tells the woman that Robert is in fact broke and she breaks off the engagement, leaving Robert pissed. So much so, in fact, that Robert plans to off himself by going to Budapest to woo a woman engaged to a famous fencer who will certainly be able to kill Robert in a duel! That woman is Marietta (Ida Lupino in an early role), a nightclub singer; Eirk Rhodes plays her fiancé. Ham is able to come up with a ruse that is able to save Robert from the duel. However, somehow Robert's original fiancée has learned that he's not really broke, so she's come over to Budapest to try to win Robert back.
Peter O'Toole did a piece for TCM in which he mentioned that he wasn't able to sing a note, which was proved by his casting in the musical remake of Goodbye Mr. Chips. Yet some studio boss saw that and decided that the best thing to do would be to cast O'Toole in another music. That later movie, Man of La Mancha, will be on Epix Hits at 4:20 AM Thursday. O'Toole plays both Don Quixote and Miguel Cervantes, the author of the original story. In a framing device, Cervantes is arrested by the Spanish Inquisition (who could have expected that?) and put in jail with a bunch of other people who want Cervantes' belongings, so they put him on a mock trial. In order to defend himself and try to keep his manuscript, he tells the other prisoners the story of Don Quixote, who started out as a peasant and then styled himself the knight Don Quixote, traveling across Spain with his trusty partner Sancho Panza (James Coco). At an inn, he meets a prostitute and styles the inn as a castle and the prostitute the noblewoman Dulcinea (Sophia Loren), and pursues her love. This time, at least, O'Toole had his voice dubbed for the songs.
For those of you who like the less serious 1980s pictures, we've got one this week in the form of Real Genius, which will be on Starz Comedy at 6:44 PM Thursday. Gabe Jarret plays Mitch Taylor, a high-school freshman who gets noticed at a science fair by Prof. Hathaway (William Atherton), who heads a prestigious science research department at a university and is always looking for child prodigies. For Mitch, it's a chance to study with Chris Knight (Val Kilmer), a senior who, like Mitch, was a prodigy himself. Mitch gets to the college and finds that Chris seems rather more interested in partying and using the scientific experiments on lasers for more comedic effect. Mitch, as someone much younger than everybody else, is also having a lot of trouble fitting in. And then, to make matters worse, Chris learns that the real reason Prof. Hathaway is experimenting with high-powered lasers is because he's working on a new superweapon for the US military, which offends the students, who are more into research for the sake of research.
Another movie I haven't mentioned in a while is The Woman on Pier 13, which TCM is showing at6:45 PM Friday. Robert Ryan plays Brad Collins, who is a former dockworker who has graduated to a cushier office job working with the bosses and in charge of the next round of negotiations with the union. Also, he's just gotten married to Nan (Laraine Day). But it's not all smooth sailing. Brad has a secret past that Nan doesn't know about, which is that in the past he had a dalliance with the Communist Party, something that's worse than any femme fatale out there. The Communists are not happy with the way the negotiations are going as they want more labor strife, so they bring in one of Brad's former girlfriends, Christine Norman (Janis Carter), who got Brad into the Communist Party in the first place. If her putting pressure on Brad doesn't work, perhaps she can try Nan's brother Don (John Agar) who got a job on the docks thanks to Brad. And if that doesn't work, the Commies can always try violence.
Just in time for Halloween, we've got a creepy horror film in the FXM rotation: The Other, which will be on FXM at 9:40 AM Saturday. Chris and Martin Udvamoky in their only movie roels play Niles and Holland respectively, a pair of twin brothers living in a small Connecticut farming community together with their extended family (Diana Muldaur is their invalid mother and John Ritter in a very early role is their brother-in-law). It's a carefree summer for Niles, who has a “game” that he likes to play with Holland, one that only his immigrant grandmother Ada (Uta Hagen) knows about – and she knows that Niles really shouldn't be playing this game. Bad things start to happen when another kid dies in an accident and then Mom falls down a flight of stairs, at which point Ada has to tell Niles the truth about the “game” he's been playing and why he really needs to grow up. But that twist comes with about a third of the movie still remaining, so there's still more of a horrifying twist to come. This was based on a novel by Tom Tryon, whom you might recall started out as an actor in movies like I Married a Monster from Outer Space but, having grown disillusioned with Hollywood, turned to writing.
I've recommended the 1931 version of The Front Page as well as the remake His Girl Friday before. But I don't think I've ever mentioned the 1974 remake, also known as The Front Page. That 1974 remake is going to be on TCM at 8:00 PM Sunday. Walter Matthau plays Walter Burns, editor of a Chicago newspaper. When he realizes that the execution of alleged cop-killer Earl Williams (Austin Pendleton) is about to take place, he knows he's got just the reporter to try to get a death row interview out of Earl: Hildy Johnson (Jack Lemmon). Except that Hildy is about to retire from the newspaper in order to marry his fiancée Peggy (Susan Sarandon). Walter tries every trick in the book to get Hildy to stay and do this one last job. Meanwhile Earl escapes from the sheriff (Vincent Gardenia) and is hiding out somewhere in the building where the execution is supposed to take place. And it turns out that perhaps the proof of Earl's guilt is not all it's cracked up to be. Watch for Carol Burnett, Paul Benedict (from The Jeffersons) and, in his final role, Allen Jenkins, who died a few months before the movie was released.