From the obscure to the obscurest to the merely overlooked or underappreciated; they all have a home in the TiVoPlex! All times PDT.
Tuesday 11/25/03
3am Turner Classic Movies The Yellow Canary (1943 GB): A typically low-octane British wartime thriller, The Yellow Canary is blessed with a cast more interesting than its screenplay (co-written by Cat People creator DeWitt Bodeen and future actor Miles Malleson). Anna Neagle stars as a suspected Nazi sympathizer who ships out to Canada, where she meets up with future Robin Hood Richard Greene and becomes enmeshed in a struggle between German secret agents and the Mounties, who, predictably enough, get their man, though I won’t spoil things for you by telling you WHO the man is. Margaret Rutherford lends comic support in one of her classic dotty old lady roles, and father and son Franklin and Valentine Dyall appear on opposite sides in the struggle between Axis and Allies. It’s not Hitchcock by any means, but it’s a decent diversion.
3:30am Cinemax Roustabout (1964 USA): Whenever Elvis returned to his rebel roots, his product improved. Roustabout provided him with his meatiest ‘60s role, a leather-clad itinerant musician who falls in with Barbara Stanwyck's traveling carnival. He's lean and mean and his songs actually work as part of the film instead of serving simply as a distraction. It’s a shame this hasn’t been aired recently by TCM - like all Elvis’ films, it’s better in wide-screen - but for once the screenplay carries the story and doesn’t embarrass the King. Add in a solid supporting cast of old-time troupers, including Jack Albertson, Dabbs Greer, and Pat Buttram, and you’ve got a winner. Watch for Teri Garr and Raquel Welch in non-credited appearances as, respectively, a carnival dancer and a college girl. Also airs at 6:30am.
Wednesday 11/26/03
4am Showtime Fast Break (1979 USA): I couldn’t let this one slip by without a mention. Gabe Kaplan, Mr. Kott-AIR himself, stars as a basketball fan whose dream of coaching comes true when he’s hired by a small Nevada college to turn around their program. It’s basically Bad News Bears with college kids instead of pre-pubescents, with Kaplan’s crew facing off against the mighty rival team fielded by coach and arch-nemesis Bert Remsen, but it’s good fun and is well directed by action specialist Jack Smight. Laurence Fishburne appears briefly as a local kid-on-the-street. Also airs at 7am.
8:50am Encore Mystery Drive a Crooked Road (1954 USA): This oddly affecting pseudo-noir stars Mickey Rooney as a mechanic whose love for bad girl Diane Foster gets him in a whole heap of trouble with bank robbers Kevin McCarthy and Jack Kelly. This is one of Rooney’s best efforts - right up there with the similarly-themed The Strip (1951 USA) - and is also a showcase for McCarthy, whose onscreen persona is now defined by his role as the good guy doctor in 1956’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (look for his character’s reappearance in black-and-white in this year’s Looney Tunes: Back in Action). Written by Blake Edwards and directed by Richard Quine, Drive a Crooked Road is a forgotten Columbia melodrama that deserves a better fate.
Thursday 11/27/03
4:45am Showtime Extreme Chungking Express (1994 HK): An odd programming selection for Showtime Extreme, Wong Kar Wai’s romantic comedy would seem to be a better fit for Sundance or IFC. Then again, this channel has aired distinctly un-extreme films like Roger Corman’s Five Guns West of late, so perhaps I shouldn’t be too surprised. Scheduling decisions aside, Chungking Express is one of my all-time favorite Hong Kong films, and stars twig-thin Brigitte Lin as a love-struck restaurant employee who will go to any lengths to ingratiate herself with cop-on-the-beat Tony Leung, a regular customer at her noodle joint. The story is deceptively slight and develops in unusual directions, and Lin and Leung make a fascinating odd couple. An absolute must for fans of Asian cinema, and strongly recommended for everyone else. Also airs at 11:25am and 11/30 at 5:45am.
8:45pm HBO Signature All About My Father (2002 NOR): Cross-dressing. Transvestism. Drag. Call it what you will, but when a man dons a woman’s clothing, it sends all sorts of political, social, and sexual messages and almost always evinces a strong reaction, positive or negative. This small-scale documentary, directed by a man whose father shares certain proclivities with Monty Python’s lumberjack, can’t begin to answer the big questions (why is it “okay” for a woman to wear men’s clothing, but not vice-versa?) but concentrates on the reactions of one family when they learn their patriarch subscribes to the fashion look that dare not speak its name. All About My Father is an honest, humorous, and warm look at the sometimes blurred lines of sexual identity.
Friday 11/28/03
5pm Turner Classic Movies Seven Samurai (1957 JAP): TCM is airing a night of Akira Kurosawa samurai flicks, with Yojimbo (1961 JAP) following at 8:30pm and Throne of Blood (1957 JAP) at 10:30pm (1953’s Teinosuke Kinugasa film, Gate of Hell, airs after Throne of Blood at 1am Saturday morning). I’ve probably recommended all three of these at one time or another on separate occasions, but I’d be remiss not to point out their appearance together this evening. Seven Samurai was the film that first introduced Kurosawa to a wide Western audience, and it remains the gold standard of its genre, starring Toshiro Mifune - of course - as a farmer-turned-swordsman who hooks up with a group of itinerant mercenaries in an effort to protect a village from a rampaging horde of bandits. Many consider this Kurosawa’s greatest film, and while I politely disagree, it is a tremendous piece of cinema. Yojimbo (1961 JAP), an action-comedy with Mifune as a roaming samurai playing two criminal gangs off each other in another remote medieval Japanese hamlet, isn’t quite up to the lofty standards of its predecessor, but is a more than worthwhile (though necessarily loose) adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s bloody Red Harvest, and Throne of Blood (1957 JAP) is, of course, Kurosawa’s first Shakespeare interpretation. Drawing from one of the Bard’s greatest plays (Macbeth), it ranks high in the director’s lofty pantheon. You may have seen one or more of these films already, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a better way to help you digest your Turkey Day leftovers.
6pm Showtime 3 James Ellroy’s Feast of Death (2001 USA): I haven’t seen this documentary about novelist and true crime buff Ellroy, nor have I read any of his books, but who could resist a title like Feast of Death? Sounds like a lost Herschell Gordon Lewis classic. Focusing on the author’s fascination with murder, and viewed through the prism of the killing of Ellroy’s own mother, the film also explores his long-time interest in the infamous Black Dahlia murder case in post-war Los Angeles, as well as other unsolved homicide cases. For those of you with morbid or ghoulish inclinations, this one sounds like a no-brainer. Also airs 11/30 at 9pm.
Saturday 11/29/03
5am IFC Samurai Rebellion (1967 JAP): If you thought we got lucky a few weeks back with IFC’s airing of the classic Sword of Doom (also 1967), I have some good news: we’re about to get lucky again. Here’s another overlooked Toho production, also starring Toshiro Mifune, this time as a swordsman in retirement who, naturally, is called back to duty when his family’s future is threatened by a capricious warlord. Like Sword of Doom, this one is (unfortunately) in black-and-white and (fortunately) in wide-screen Tohoscope. I doubt Samurai Rebellion can match the brilliantly realized intensity of Sword of Doom’s nihilistic conclusion, but it’s another essential item for fans of the genre. Also airs at 10:45am.
12:30pm HBO Signature The Execution of Wanda Jean (2002 USA): It may be news to many Americans, but capital punishment in the United States is still dealt out on a somewhat arbitrary basis. If you’re poor, black or Hispanic, from a Southern or border state, and are convicted of murder, the odds of a date with Ol’ Sparky are not the same as they would be if you were rich, middle-class, white, from the Mid-West or Northeast, and convicted of murder. In the case of Wanda Jean Allen, not only did she fit into the former category, she was also a lesbian and borderline learning-impaired. As a result, her inept lawyer’s bad work contributed to her death by electrocution at the hand of Oklahoma’s prison authorities. Chronicling the period commencing at Ms. Allen’s clemency hearing and concluding with her execution, this film points out the deep flaws in the American system of legal murder.
8pm Turner Classic Movies The Hill (1965 GB): One of the most grueling war stories you’ll ever see doesn’t even take place on a battlefield. Set in a prison camp in the Libyan desert for disobedient, recalcitrant or otherwise uncooperative British soldiers, The Hill is one of director Sidney Lumet’s greatest films and is in desperate need of a DVD restoration and reissue. Ian Hendry plays a brutal martinet who keeps his charges in line the old-fashioned way: he abuses them. Camp commandant Harry Andrews is more than willing to overlook the physical and mental torture of the inmates, but the kindly Sergeant Harris - played by Ian Bannen - takes issue with Hendry’s program of punishment. Sean Connery is the troublemaking ringleader of the prisoners, refusing to be cowed by the prospect of lugging sacks of sand up and down a hill in the middle of the prison yard (hence the film’s title), and he shares a cell with the simpering Roy Kinnear, the mentally-deranged Ossie Davis, and others. Michael Redgrave is also on hand as an ineffectual medical officer. Based on a play by Ray Rigby, who spent a considerable amount of World War II in detention himself, and shot by Oswald Morris, this is an unforgettable tale of military injustice that is as powerful in its own way as Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957 USA).
Sunday 11/30/03
12:20pm Encore Westerns Gunman’s Walk (1958 USA): Regular readers of this column already know I’m not a huge fan of westerns. Even I, however, will make time for a Phil Karlson western. Karlson, the tough-as-nails helmer of gritty crime dramas like Kansas City Confidential and The Phoenix City Story, took a detour into sagebrush territory for this tale of a bad seed (Tab Hunter) wreaking havoc in the Old West whilst his wealthy father (Van Heflin) protects him and looks the other way. I’d like to see this one on TCM sometime - it was filmed in CinemaScope - but like most of the Columbia back-catalogue, it’ll probably only show up on Encore for the foreseeable future. Look for game-show host Bert Convy - sans perm - in a small role.
8pm More Max Winged Migration (2001 FRA): If you enjoyed Microcosmos - the day-in-the-life of an insect film from the directors of Winged Migration - you’ll like this free-form look at the migratory patterns of our feathered friends. Surprisingly violent at times (especially for a G-rated movie!), this is an interesting if unctuously narrated nature film, filled with stunning high-altitude photography of birds in flight.
9pm Turner Classic Movies Down to the Sea in Ships (1922 USA): Clara Bow stars in this Elmer Clifton-directed silent about the rough existence of Atlantic whalers in the 19th century. Filmed in and around Massachusetts and Rhode Island, the film features some impressive whaling footage, but is Bow’s vehicle all the way. When she’s not on the screen - and when the whale isn’t being eviscerated - this is a slow and stodgy affair, but the 16-year-old future star steals the show. It’s preceded at 8pm by the original TCM documentary Clara Bow: Discovering the It Girl, a film I would recommend if it weren’t narrated by the eternally-annoying Courtney Love.
