Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo", for the week of September 2-8, 2019. It's the start of a new NFL season, meaning the Packers are going to crush the Bears, while the Vikings are going to start another season of abject failure. Meanwhile, as the start of a new month, we get a whole bunch of new themes on TCM, as I'll discuss when I mention the various movies. There's also interesting stuff on some of the other movie channels. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
Monday bring another installment of the roughly quarterly series Treasures from the Disney Vault to TCM. This time, Leonard Maltin is introducing something that's actually well known: The Love Bug, a little after 9:30 PM Monday. (There's a short kicking off the time slot.) Dean Jones plays Jim, a failed race car driver now living with his hippie friend "Tennessee" (Buddy Hackett). One day while passing a car dealership, Jim sees the lovely Carole (Michelle Lee) and stops in to look at the cars as a pretext. There's nothing in Jim's price range, but he discovers that a beat up VW Beetle follows him home. He thinks the car dealer Thorndyke (David Tomlinson) is playing a trick on him, but Tennessee argues that everything has a life force, and that perhaps this car has a mind of its own, naming it Herbie. Sure enough, the car does seem to have an independent mind, as Jim and Herbie start winning races. Jim hopes to drive in an important road race. But Thorndyke wants the car back. This is the original, which spawned quite a few sequels.
I know you all like the early 80s movies, and one that's an interesting time capsule of the period is WarGames, which will be on StarzEncore Classics at 6:09 AM Tuesday. Matthew Broderick plays David Lightman, a bright kid who is unmotivated at school, instead being interested in computers. He's getting good at hacking, being able to change grades for himself and friend Jennifer (Ally Sheedy). But when he tries to hack into a games company, he doesn't realize what he's getting into. John McKittrick (Dabney Coleman) is an engineer at NORAD, the defense system against nuclear attacks, and he wants to computerize the systems that determines when to go to the next level on DEFCON, so he's favoring the use of a computer game simulation to train itself and figure these things out. That's the "game" that David has hacked into, innocuously called "Global Thermonuclear War", and he doesn't realize it's something deadly series. The feds, meanwhile, don't realize that they've got just a kid hacking into their system, and not a Soviet spy. Can they figure things out before setting off a nuclear war?
Now that we're out of August, it's time to get back into the regular monthly themes on TCM. We kick that off with a new Star of the Month. This time it's Sidney Poitier, and his movies will be on TCM every Tuesday in prime time. This first Tuesday includes several of his early movies, with the first being No Way Out at 8:00 PM Tuesday. Poitier plays Dr. Luther Brooks, a new young doctor at the county hospital, and the first black on they've had. He's working in the prison ward of the hospital, when they bring in two guys who got shot in a hold-up. Brooks examines them, and determines that one has a much more severe problem than the bullet in his leg, namely, a brain tumor. But while he's trying to confirm his diagnosis, the patient dies. The brother, Ray Biddle (Richard Widmark), is severely racist, so he raises a stink and tries to get his family to get Dr. Brooks fired while Brooks and the staff try to do an autopsy that will prove whether he was right. But it's going to take permission from the dead man's ex-wife (Linda Darnell), and she's not so sure. A provocative movie from a time (1950) when making a movie on such a challenging topic was almost unheard of.
In 1919, four of Hollywood's big names: married actors Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Mary Pickford, director D.W. Griffith, and actor/director Charlie Chaplin, had grown tired of the lack of independence they had with the other studios as they were then configured. So they formed their own production company, United Artists, and now we're at the centenary of that founding. So every Wednesday, TCM is running a whole bunch of United Artists movies, going from 1919 through the 1980s when the studio became part of MGM/UA. (Unlike a lot of spotlights, this one actually begins in the morning hours on Wednesdays rather than at 8:00 PM) Douglas Fairbanks is represented by his 1921 version of The Three Musketeers, which will be on at 11:30 PM Wednesday. Fairbanks plays D'Artagnan, but some of the other characters are of note for going on to have some success in the sound era. Aramis is played by Eugene Pallette, who was not always the fat father figure he'd be in those screwball comedies. French King Louis XIII is played by Adolphe Menjou. The story has been filmed many times since.
A movie I think I've never recommended before is Serial Mom, which is going to be on the week at 2:47 PM Wednesday on Starz Comedy. Kathleen Turner plays Beverly Sutphin, a stereotypical housewife with a husband in Eugene (Sam Waterston) the dentist and two teenage children Misty (Ricki Lake) and Chip. They seem like a perfect family, but then odd things begin to happen, such as a neighbor getting obscene phone calls. And then things get even stranger when one of Chip's teachers is killed. It turns out that Beverly is a perfectionist, and extremely defensive of her family. It's to the point that Mom is even willing to kill to protect her family's virtue and keep up appearances. And there's a lot of perfection to keep up, so more and more people find themselves getting killed. But certainly the cops are going to figure out who's doing the killing, and what's going to happen to the family then? This is another movie directed by John Waters, with his very interesting take on American middle-class culture.
TCM is officially marketing their salute to United Artists as being on Wednesdays and Thursdays, although I think the two nights' lineups should be thought of as separate spotlights. On Thursdays in prime time in September, TCM is spotlighting the James Bond movies, which were made in the UK and distributed in the US by United Artists (or later MGM/UA). They're going in chronological order starting with Dr. No this Thursday at 8:00 PM through to 1999's Tomorrow Never Dies which will be on at 5:30 AM September 27. (Never Say Never Again, not being made by the same company that made the other Bond movies, is not part of the spotlight) This first Thursday sees the first five movies, all starring Sean Connery as Bond, with the last of the night's lineup being You Only Live Twice at 4:45 AM Friday.
Another 80s movie showing up this week is Firestarter, which you can watch at 10:00 AM Thursday on StarzEncore (or three hours later if you have the west coast feed). Andrew (David Keith) and Vicky (Heather Locklear) McGee are a couple who, to make some extra money back in college, took part in an experiment that involved their taking hallucinogens. The result is that they ended up with psychic powers, specifically Andy having the ability to force other people to do what he wants. They have a daughter Charlie (Drew Barrymore) who has elevated psychic abilities like her parents, although in her case it's pyrokinesis, the ability to start fires with her mind. As is a standard trope for movies like this, it turns out that the experiments were carried out by a shady governmental organization known as the "Shop". When they realize the powers that Charlie has, they want her for their own use, as a weapon against whoever the enemies of the US might be. And they'll stop at nothing to get Charlie, including killing Vicky. Martin Sheen plays the head of the "Shop", and George C. Scott an agent sent out to get Charlie.
At 7:00 AM Friday, TCM is going to run a block called "The Cartoons of Winsor McCay". McCay was a pioneering cartoonist back in the 1910s, first doing comic strips for Hearst before making ten animated shorts, all of which are scheduled in the block. In those days, doing animation was much more difficult, as the earliest ones were done before cels allowed the backgrounds to remain the same. As an example of McCay's work, here's 1914's Gertie the Dinosaur:
There's one more spotlight on TCM this month, which is looking at college football. Every Friday in prime time up until the start of the Underground block, they'll be showing college football-themed movies with Ben Mankiewicz being joined by varying guest co-hosts. This first Friday sees the CEO of the College Football Hall of Fame as the guest host, with a series of comedies including Too Many Girls at 12:30 AM Saturday. This one has Lucille Ball as Connie, a strong-willed heiress who goes west to college to follow her boyfriend. So her Dad hires a bunch of football players (including Desi Arnaz as a running back from the Argentine!) to look after Connie without her knowledge. The four guys wind up joining the football team and turning the program's fortunes around, but one of them falls in love with Connie, and when she discovers the ruse, she heads back east, threatening to scupper the whole football season. There's no semblance of reality in this one but it's a whole lot of fun.
A search of the site suggests I haven't recommended The Wild and the Innocent before. It's going to be on StarzEncore Westerns at 12:32 PM Sunday. This is another Audie Murphy western, although the title really refers to the two main female characters. Audie plays Yancy, a trapper in the Wyoming territory who knows little about sophisticated city life. He goes to the fort to trade his furs, only to find it's been burned down because idiot Ben Stocker (Strother Martin) sold moonshine to the Indians and they got drunk. Yancy is going to have to go to the "big city" of Casper to sell his furs and when he does, he's accompanied by Rosalie (Sandra Dee), the runaway daughter of Stocker. When they get to Casper, Yancy tries to get Rosalie a job at the dance hall at the behest of the sheriff (Gilbert Roland), not realizing that the hall is really a front for prostitution. And in fact, Yancy falls in love with Marcy (Joanne Dru), one of the prostitutes, himself. How is he going to be able to save Rosalie?
I mentioned No Way Out before. There was also a 1980s movie with that title (not on this week as far as I can tell), but that's not a remake of the Sidney Poitier movie. Instead it's a remake of a movie called The Big Clock, which just happens to be this week's Noir Alley selection, at 10:00 AM Sunday. Ray Milland plays George Stroud, who at the beginning of the movie is hiding out in the workings of the titular clock in a big New York office building. Flash back to his he got there. Stroud works for publishing magnate Earl Janoth (Charles Laughton), editing a crime magazine. Janoth demands so much of George that he and his wife (Maureen O'Sullivan) haven't been able to vacation together. When work causes George to miss another vacation, he drowns his sorrows with Paulette (Rita Johnson), who just happens to be Earl's mistress. Except that Earl is angry with her and kills her in a fit of rage. George knows Earl did it having escaped the apartment just before Earl entered, while Earl only knows a mysterious figure (not having seen the man's face) left. Earl's plan is to frame that mystery man and then have George investigate who it was.