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Monday 06/25/07

7:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
St. Benny the Dip (1951 USA): Considering it's a Danziger Brothers poverty row production, St. Benny the Dip is blessed with a surprisingly good cast. Dick Haymes, Lionel Stander, and Cosmo Topper himself, Roland Young, play a trio of small time hoodlums who disguise themselves as priests to escape a police dragnet. Finding themselves in an abandoned Bowery mission, the threesome take their masquerade to extremes, holding services and feeding the poor. This marvelous tale of redemption also stars a luminous Nina Foch as love interest and Little Lord Fauntleroy himself, Freddie Bartholomew, in his final screen appearance. This is perhaps the first and so far only noir-comedy ever made, with some very fine black and white location photography by Don Malkames, whose career took him from Yiddish pictures to 'race' films. John Roeburt's screenplay is consistently intelligent and amusing, and though the film's low budget is readily apparent, it's also clear everyone involved was working very hard to make a quality picture. Happily, they succeeded.

2:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Charlie Chan In the Secret Service (1944 USA): Slowly but surely, the Charlie Chan series is resurfacing after the absurd brou-ha-ha a few years back that saw the films banished from Fox Movie Channel. This late period entry in the canon — the first produced after the series moved to its new low budget home at Monogram — may not be the best place to start for Chan neophytes, but for long time enthusiasts it offers plenty of rewards. In this outing, our hero (Sidney Toler) has been hired by the Feds to investigate the murder of inventor George Melton, whose work developing a new torpedo is crucial to the war effort. Naturally, there's a room full of suspects, including a flighty socialite, an egotistical politician, and the usual assortment of suspicious butlers and household hangers on. Oddly, series regular-to-be Mantan Moreland DOES put in an appearance as chauffeur Birmingham Brown—but this time he's not working for Chan. If you can overlook the anachronistic racial stereotyping, Charlie Chan in the Secret Service is good, very old-fashioned fun.

6:00 PM Sundance
Gay Sex in the 70s (2005 USA): I haven't seen this film yet, so I'm looking forward to learning how gay sex was different during the 1970s, and distinct from, say, gay sex BCE, gay sex during the Reformation, and gay sex during the Suez Crisis of 1956. Disco music? That must be the answer.

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