TiVoPlex
By John Seal
April 2, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Tuesday 4/3/12
12:30 AM Cinemax
The Funhouse (1981 USA): Director Tobe Hooper became a cult hero in the wake of 1974's Texas Chainsaw Massacre and parlayed that fame into box office success with 1982's Poltergeist. In between those films (and in the wake of his 1979 TV movie Salem's Lot), he made this obscure horror flick about a carnival concealing a dark secret. The story revolves around four teenagers enjoying a wild night at the fairgrounds, where they plan to hide out in the funhouse and spend the wee hours smoking wacky tobacky and engaging in unprotected, pre-marital sex. Their plans go awry after they witness a murder and find themselves being stalked by a killer wearing a Frankenstein's Monster mask. As in most slasher films, the protagonists are so annoying and clueless that you end up rooting for the killer, but The Funhouse benefits from impressive set design and an all too brief appearance by William Finley (Phantom of the Paradise) as magician Margo the Magnificent. Also airs at 3:30 AM.
Wednesday 4/4/12
1:45 AM Fox Movie Channel
Footsteps (1972 USA): Originally scheduled to air on March 26th, Footsteps didn’t, but appears again this morning on Fox’s online schedule. We’ll cross our fingers and assume this time the schedule doesn’t lie. Here’s what I previously wrote about the film:
Here’s another pretty decent made-for-TV movie, this one especially of interest to fans of American football. Despite the fact that I’m about as interested in football as I am in Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald movies, I’ve noticed that gridiron flicks are almost always entertaining, as are baseball movies. Basketball, on the other hand, is not a good movie sport - and unless we’re talking about Talladega Nights, don’t even get me started on NASCAR. Anyhoo, Footsteps stars Richard Crenna as Paddy O’Connor, a coach hired by a small college to improve their pigskin program. Paddy’s up for the task, but hasn’t reckoned on the local mobsters, however, who need his team to keep failing. Nominated in 1973 for a "Best TV Movie" Golden Globe, Footsteps co-stars Ned Beatty, Joanna Pettet, Clu Gulager, Forrest Tucker, Robert Carradine, and - in one of his very first roles - James Woods.
3:05 AM Starz
African Cats (2011 USA): I’m generally a pushover for nature documentaries, though you probably wouldn’t know it from reading TiVoPlex as such films rarely air on premium channels. The exception that proves the rule, African Cats is a stunningly beautiful Disney doc shot with state-of-the-art high def cameras and featuring narration by Samuel L. Jackson. Best part: when Jackson speaks on behalf of a leopard stalking a pair of springboks, stating “normally, both your asses would be dead as fucking fried chicken, but you happen to pull this shit while I'm in a transitional period so I don't wanna kill you, I wanna help you.” Okay, maybe he doesn’t say exactly that, but it’s close. And he does refer to a giraffe as a “skinny-necked motherfucker.” Okay, that part’s not true, either. Sorry. Trust me, though, this is one impressive looking nature flick. Also airs at 6:05 AM.
3:20 AM Encore
Oliver Twist (2005 GB): I’ve written of my admiration for Roman Polanski’s adaptation of Charles Dickens’ novel in the past, but only when comparing and contrasting it with other versions of the same story. Now it finally gets its own well deserved recommendation. Twelve-year-old newcomer Barney Clark essays the role of orphan Oliver, sent as a small child to the workhouse of corpulent Mr. Bumble (Jeremy Swift), befriended by pickpocket Artful Dodger (Harry Eden) and fence Fagin (Ben Kingsley), rescued from the gutter by middle-class bibliophile Brownlow (Edward Hardwicke) , and plunged into danger by the nefarious Bill Sykes (Jamie Foreman) after an ill-fated trip to a book shop. Polanski’s adaptation remains true to Dickens’ novel and looks suitably Victorian despite being shot entirely in the Czech Republic rather than a British film studio. Of particular note is Pawel Edelman’s cinematography, which captures the dust and damp of Victorian London in muddy hues of brown and grey.
11:00 AM Fox Movie Channel
The Evil Within (1970 PHI): Okay, I’m having a super hard time believing this one is for reals, but it’s listed on the FMC website and I’m going to take the channel at its word. The Internet wouldn’t lie, right? The Evil Within is a Filipino movie starring legendary Indian actor Dev Anand, who died last December. I’ve never seen it, it has no reviews on IMDb or anywhere else, but was apparently distributed by Fox. I guess we’ll all just have to tune in to see if this is what it claims to be, or whether it’s actually one of the other Evil Withins out there (there are at least five other films with the same title).
Thursday 4/5/12
8:30 PM The Movie Channel
Night Catches Us (2010 USA): Here’s a virtually unknown but quite worthwhile drama set in Philadelphia circa 1976. This Philadelphia, however, is not the white working-class Philly of Rocky Balboa, but the Germantown neighborhood where the Black Panther Party and other black liberation movements put down roots in the 1960s. Star Anthony Mackie (Half Nelson, The Hurt Locker) plays Marcus, a former Panther who returns home for his father’s funeral only to be broadsided with accusations of snitching. Finding most of his old comrades now less than hospitable, Marcus makes common cause with lawyer and activist Patty (Kerry Washington), a widow whose husband had been killed by the police who continue to rule the streets of the City of Brotherly Love with an iron fist. This solid if very low-budget feature deserved a far better fate at the box-office and is well worth checking out this evening. Also airs at 11:30 PM.
Saturday 4/7/12
12:35 AM Starz
Attack the Block (2010 GB): In case you missed it when it debuted on American television in February, here’s one of the best horror flicks of the last few years. Written and directed by newcomer Joe Cornish, the story revolves around a youthful group of South London hoodies who find themselves the last line of defense during an alien invasion of Planet Earth - but there’s a deeper, darker secret being concealed by the invasion, as our youthful if somewhat uncouth heroes will soon discover. Set in and around a fictional sink estate, Attack the Block allows Cornish to display his deep knowledge of and love for genre flicks whilst avoiding the excesses of Tarantino. Also airs at 3:35 AM.
4:40 AM HBO2
Love Crimes of Kabul (2011 GB): Produced with the assistance of HBO, this is the latest sterling effort from Iranian-born filmmaker Tanaz Eshaghian, whose previous film, Be Like Others, was an eye-opening and genuinely shocking look at the lives of gay Iranian men forced to undergo sex change operations in order to circumvent their homeland’s onerous morality laws. Eshaghian’s new film is also an examination of the treatment of sexual outlaws in Central Asia, taking place in Afghanistan, a country where women are imprisoned for running away from home or having premarital "relations" with their boyfriends and fiancés. This, of course, is also the same country that the United States and NATO have spent hundreds of billions of dollars "defending" from a fundamentalist sect known as the Taliban. This war has been propagandized, in part, as a war for womens rights, but Eshaghian’s film makes crystal clear precisely how many rights those billions of dollars have purchased so far. If you ever wondered whether women could be imprisoned for the crime of "intending to have sex," Love Crimes of Kabul provides the answer - and, guess what, our tax dollars are helping pay for their prosecution. Also airs at 7:40 AM.
9:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
The New Adventures of Tarzan (1935 USA): This has to be a first of some sort - how many times has a film on TCM not appeared in an edition of the TiVoPlex until this late in the week? I have no idea, but I’d guess that over the last ten years the answer is probably fewer than three. Anyway, TCM is on the case now, and in fact will be taking this week’s column down the home stretch. As for Tarzan’s new adventures - well, they haven’t exactly been new for a good 75 years and probably weren’t all that new even in 1935, when this feature version of a 12-chapter serial produced independently by Edgar Rice Burroughs was shot in the jungles of Guatemala. While that’s all well and good and lends the film greater verisimilitude than your average backlot vine-swinger, the film suffers due to post-production dubbing, which robs star Bruce Bennett (aka Herman Brix) of his own voice and replaces it with someone English. I wish TCM would air the serial, but frankly, it’s probably awful, and we should probably be grateful for small (and shorter) mercies.
11:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Happy Thieves (1961 USA): Rex Harrison and Rita Hayworth headline this rarely seen widescreen caper flick. They play Jimmy Bourne and Eve Lewis, a pair of professional art thieves who misplace some of their loot and are tasked to replace it with a Goya nicked from one of the world’s most closely guarded art museums. Unfortunately, The Happy Thieves is blandly directed by comedy specialist George Marshall, who neither creates tension nor coaxes romantic sparks between his leads, leaving the film of primary interest for its fine supporting cast (including Alida Valli, Gregoire Aslan, Britt Ekland, and Dr. No himself, Joseph Wiseman).
Monday 4/9/12
12:15 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Man Who Lived Twice (1936 USA): Ralph Bellamy plays a criminal suffering from amnesia in this enjoyable Columbia second feature. Bellamy is Slick Rawley, a baddie who undergoes plastic surgery in order to throw the coppers off his trail. After successfully undergoing the operation, however, Slick forgets his shady past, decides to take the Hippocratic Oath, and dedicates the rest of his life to healing the sick. But of course, life is not so simple, and when summoned to a prison to treat an inmate, the skeletons in his closet are discovered by con Gloves Baker (Ward Bond), who plans to take full advantage of this extremely interesting information. Co-starring Marian Marsh as Slick’s love interest and Willard Robertson as the policeman who’s been hot on his trail for the better part of a decade, The Man Who Lived Twice also benefits from some fine James Van Trees cinematography.