TiVoPlex
By John Seal
October 24, 2006
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Tuesday 10/24/06
Noon Turner Classic Movies
Key Witness (1960 USA): This minor crime drama was almost impossible to see for decades, but TCM dug it up in late 2002 and is airing it again this morning. The film's claim to fame is a very early performance by Dennis Hopper as a nasty street-punk named Cowboy who kills a rival and then terrorizes the only witness willing to talk, the straitlaced Jeffrey Hunter. Directed by hard-boiled auteur Phil Karlson (Kansas City Confidential, The Phenix City Story), the film looks great thanks to cinematographer Harold Wellman, but is let down somewhat by a pedestrian script. It's still essential for fans of Hopper and Karlson, and it may disappear again for another 30 years, so catch it while you can!
9:10 PM IFC
Wages of Fear (1953 FRA): If you haven't already splashed out for the wonderful Criterion DVD of this title, set the timer this evening. Directed by France's answer to Alfred Hitchcock, Henri-Georges Clouzot (whose equally-memorable 1943 classic Le Corbeau is also now included in the Criterion Collection), this epic adventure follows a group of hired hands on a dangerous trek through South American jungles as they attempt to transport a load of deadly nitroglycerine. Whatever they do, drivers Yves Montand, Peter Van Eyck, and company must somehow navigate 300 miles of atrocious roads without shifting the contents of their vehicles and agitating the explosives within. Clocking in at a generous and thoroughly unboring 156 minutes, this is a gorgeously shot thriller that will keep you completely involved to the end. Add a memorable Georges Auric score, and you have one of the greatest suspense films ever made. Also airs 10/25 at 2:50 AM and 1:50 PM.
Wednesday 10/25/06
12:45 AM More Max
The Naked Prey (1966 USA): Another of Cornel Wilde's idiosyncratic and quite personal films, The Naked Prey relates the story of an anonymous man on safari (Wilde) whose hunting party falls afoul of some unhappy local tribesmen. As he's pursued across the South African veldt, Wilde shed his clothing, supplies, and weaponry, rapidly losing the 'advantages' of Western civilization. The film features some brutal (for 1966) violence, beautiful location photography (luckily we're spared stock footage from old Tarzan movies), and Wilde is terrific. He was also in great physical condition considering he was over 50 when he made the film. Sixty-year old Sly Stallone hopefully took notes before wrapping his forthcoming Rocky Balboa sequel.
11:55 PM HBO Signature
Te Doy Mis Ojos (2003 ESP): Briefly released to American arthouses earlier this year as Take My Eyes, this Spanish drama examines the painful details of an abusive relationship. The film stars Laia Marull as Pilar, the wife of hotheaded Antonio (the imposing Luis Tosar), whose violent moodswings bring to mind those of Temuera Morrison's in Once Were Warriors. Pilar periodically flees from his violent outbursts, decamping with the couple's young son for the comparative safety of her sister's house whilst Antonio takes a chill pill. With alarming regularity, however, Antonio coaxes her back with promises of therapy and undying love, and the cycle continues - even after Pilar takes a job in an art museum to minimize her time at home. Avoiding the easy bromides of a typical Hollywood feature, Te Doy Mis Ojos is powerful stuff that refuses to reduce its designated bad guy to one-dimensional villainy. Written and directed by Iciar Bollain, the film was a huge hit on the festival circuit, and won a remarkable six awards at Spain's Cinema Writers Circle Awards.
Thursday 10/26/06
1:00 PM Fox Movie Channel
The Last Shot You Hear (1969 GB): This is an oddly engaging, rather badly made thriller featuring Hugh Marlowe as marriage counselor Charles Nordeck. Nordeck has made a fortune from his best-selling advice books, and has grown to love his wealth more than his wife, pouty blonde Anne (Patricia Haines). Desperate for children, Anne has engaged in an extramarital affair with tall dark and handsome Peter Marriott (William Dysart), but Charles must keep up appearances and refuses to give his unhappy spouse a divorce. Anne and Peter hatch a murder plot, but their plans are overheard by Nordeck's mousy secretary Eileen (Zena Walker), an ambitious young woman who wants in on the plot, too. Can Detective Inspector Nash (John Nettleton) unravel the intrigue, or will the troublemaking trio get away with it? Hamhandedly written for the screen by Walking With Dinosaurs creator Tim Haines, The Last Shot You Hear also suffers from poor cinematography and clumsy editing. Somehow, though, the film - directed by the generally reliable Gordon Hessler - manages to entertain whilst being thoroughly predictable, at least until the final reel. Comic relief is ably supplied by Thorley Walters and Joan Young, and there's a passable jazz-inflected score from Bert Shefter, the man who created The Bostweeds for Russ Meyer's Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! It's far from a classic, but fans of obscure British films will probably get some mileage out of The Last Shot You Hear.
11:30 PM Encore Mystery
Dr. Chopper (2005 USA): I couldn't overlook a straight to video disaster entitled ‘Dr. Chopper', now could I? Admittedly, I haven't seen this slasher epic, which relies on the old ‘five friends stuck in the woods while a madman stalks them' trope - but the titular killer is apparently a 60-year-old on a motorbike (played by The OH In Ohio's Ed Brigadier!), and I'm getting to the age where I can kinda sorta empathise with an old geezer out to rid the world of a few surplus to requirements teenagers. Directed by the guy who edited Scarecrow Gone Wild, Dr. Chopper has Beneath the Slimy Wall written all over it.
Friday 10/27/06
8:45 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Creature With the Atom Brain (1955 USA): Surely one of the greatest film titles of all time, The Creature With the Atom Brain also spawned a Roky Erickson tune of the same name back in the late 1970s. Still absent on DVD, the film stars Gregory Gaye as Dr. Wilhelm Steig, a Nazi scientist hired by gangster Frank Buchanan (Michael Granger) to reanimate corpses and use them to kill the stoolies who sent him up the river. It's up to Police Captain Harris (S. John Launer) and his scientific pal Dr. Walker (Richard Denning) to solve the mystery of the marauding radio-controlled corpses. Can they stanch the bloodshed, or will Buchanan's revenge be complete? Written by the great Curt Siodmak (who seemed to have an obsession with brain-related horrors, cf. Donovan's Brain and Hauser's Memory) and directed by journeyman Edward L. Cahn, this nifty little thriller got lodged in the memory cells of many a baby boomer, and remains a surprisingly effective effort that could probably still give a few 21st century eight year olds a decent nightmare or two.
10:30 PM Encore Love Stories
Dear Frankie (2004 GB): This overlooked British drama stars the always good Emily Mortimer as Lizzie, a Scottish working class single mum trying to raise her deaf nine-year-old son Frankie (Jack McElhone) with the help of her mother (Mary Riggans). Lizzie's lied to her progeny about the whereabouts of his deadbeat dad, spinning a tale about how father is away at sea aboard the merchant ship Accra - but blowback commences when Frankie decides to connect with the old man via Royal Mail. Lizzie intercepts his missives, and masquerades as the man of the house with a series of increasingly complicated replies to Frankie's inquiries. Things go from bad to worse when a ship called the Accra actually DOES dock in Glasgow one day - and, unwilling to admit the truth, Lizzie hires a complete stranger (Gerard Butler, not slumming for once) to be Frankie's Dad For A Day. Needless to say, things don't go exactly as she plans. Directed by Shona Auerbach, this understated melodrama may verge on the predictable, but the cast is excellent and Andrea Gibb's screenplay stays just this side of saccharine.
Saturday 10/28/06
12:45 AM Turner Classic Movies
The Crazies (1973 USA): This George Romero classic has long lived in the shadow of the director's better known Living Dead features, but it's just as good as any of those and deserves much wider exposure. It's been on DVD for a while, but makes a very rare uncut television appearance tonight on TCM. Set as usual in Pennsylvania, Romero examines what happens when a secret biological weapon gets loose from an Army laboratory. The virus is designed to literally drive its victims to madness, and as it spreads across the rural landscape becomes harder and harder to contain, until eventually extreme measures must be taken. As powerful today as ever - indeed, in light of the passage of the Military Commissions Act, perhaps even more relevant - The Crazies evokes a nightmare near future where Posse Comitatus has been rescinded, and the armed forces are on the streets of Anytown, USA. A comparative flop on its initial release, this film now stands as one of this prescient filmmaker's best works, and should be considered essential viewing for any serious horror fan.
9:30 AM Starz In Black
Krump Dancing vs. Break Dancing (2006 USA): Honestly, I have no idea if this film is any good and even less idea about what ‘Krump Dancing' entails, but how could I not mention it? With the presence of Different Strokes bad boy Todd Bridges and Adolfo Quinones - also known as Shabba Doo - as our hosts, resistance is futile.
Sunday 10/29/06
5:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Grey Gardens (1975 USA): The Maysles Brothers are rightly revered for their documentary classics Salesman and Gimme Shelter, but this obscure left-field examination of old age on Long Island is just as good. It's a deceptively simple cinema verite look at the lives of Jackie Kennedy's aged aunt, Edith Bouvier Beale (no relation to Marge Bouvier, however), and her minder and daughter, ‘Little' Edie. The two lived for 20 years in a decaying East Hamptons mansion, slowly and perhaps inadvertently withdrawing into an increasingly small world of creeping neglect and eccentric behaviour. Over the decades, both the Beales and their home went to seed (apparently, the house is now owned by former Washington Post publisher Ben Bradlee and has presumably been renovated), with portions of the estate overrun by wildlife and the rest of it much the worse for wear. Originally intended as background material for a feature about Jackie O and Lee Radziwell, the Maysles decided the Bouvier footage was much more interesting subject matter, and turned it into Grey Gardens. Tracing the inexorable path from youthful promise to disappointment and decay - an arc that almost all of us will trace, regardless of social position or wealth - this is bittersweet and powerful testimony to the inexorable toll taken by the passage of time.
8:45 PM Starz In Black
Strange As Angels (2004 USA): Shot in Chicago for an astonishing $75,000, this indie feature from writer-director Steven Foley plays more like a foreign film than an American one. Defying the usual Hollywood stereotypes of African-American filmmaking, Strange As Angels subscribes to the less is more philosophy, with the film's lovelorn protagonists, an artist and a journalist (Marie-Francoise Theodore and Christian Payton), dancing carefully around the edges of commitment. It's not for everyone, and truthfully it's not that great a film, but any director who can complete a serious feature film for that little money deserves some recognition. Here's looking at you, Steven Foley.
Monday 10/30/06
12:15 PM Turner Classic Movies
Wildcat Bus (1940 USA): Poor Fay Wray had tumbled pretty far from the heady heights of King Kong by the time she made this RKO ‘B' feature in 1940 - but her presence is what makes this otherwise forgettable bill-filler worth a look today. Fay plays ‘Ted' Dawson, the daughter of the owner of Federated Bus Lines, a firm whose franchise is threatened by a suspicious series of accidents and breakdowns. She's determined to save the family firm from ruination, but a wildcat cab company run by oily Sid Casey (Don Costello) is determined to muscle in on Federated's lucrative territory, and is willing to resort to any underhanded trick to do so. It's far from thrilling stuff, but Fay is delightful, and film fans will enjoy spotting uncredited appearances by Minerva Urecal, Keye Luke, and a pre-stardom Alan Ladd.