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11:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Shack Out on 101 (1955 USA): For many years, Shack Out on 101 was virtually a lost film. You read about it in books, but it wasn't on video and hardly ever showed up on TV — until one day, sometime around the turn of the century, it cropped up on TNT and dreams became reality. Was it worth the wait? At the time, I remember being distinctly disappointed, but I'm hoping a second viewing will fully reveal its awesome majesty. After all, how can any film featuring Lee Marvin as a borderline psycho cook named Slob who also happens to be a commie stooge NOT be good? What I do remember is Floyd Crosby's excellent black and white cinematography; luminous, deeply shadowed, and rain sodden, it's the distinct highlight of this low-budget thriller.

Saturday 03/14/09

12:30 AM Turner Classic Movies
Nightmare Honeymoon (1973 USA): Every once in a while, TCM provides us with a true WTF moment. This is one of them, another long forgotten MGM production on a par with the equally obscure Wicked, Wicked. Helmed by Elliott Silverstein (who replaced, of all people, Nicolas Roeg in the director's chair!), Nightmare Honeymoon stars John Beck as a killer crossing swords with newlywed couple David and Jill (Dack Rambo and Rebecca Smith) deep in the humid bayous of Louisiana. The young lovers witness a gangland execution, get roughed up by the villains, and then decide that a cool, tall glass of revenge will slake their thirst for southern-fried payback. Tailor made for the drive-in circuit, Nightmare Honeymoon's MGM-sized budget allowed producer Hugh Benson the luxury of hiring Elmer Bernstein to compose the score — and for extra WTF points, he also snagged Walter Koenig — Walter Koenig! — to portray a backwoods depity sheriff.

5:00 PM IFC
Chopper (2005 AUS): Future Jolly Green Hulk star Eric Bana burst onto the festival scene with this controversial Australian paean to a very, very bad man. Based on the autobiography of Mark Brandon Read, this is a Tarantino-esque exercise in violence and four-letter words. Not for all tastes by any means, but fans of crime and action films will undoubtedly want to see what the clean-cut Eric Bana was up to in the years before he became Bruce Banner. Also airs at 10:00 PM.

7:15 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Great Bank Hoax (1978 USA): I've never seen this film, but then virtually no one else has either. Burgess Meredith and Richard Basehart star as small town bankers plotting to defraud their institution — and needing to do so before the soon-come auditors arrive to balance the books. These days that's called TARP. The Great Bank Hoax is followed at 9:00 PM by Mine Own Executioner (1947), a well regarded British drama that features Meredith as a psychologist plumbing the depths of his shell-shocked patient (Kieron Moore).

Sunday 03/15/09

10:20 PM Encore Love Stories
Neo Ned (2005 USA): On paper, this sounds like an unlikely, if not outright terrible, idea: neo-Nazi falls in love with deranged African-American girl who thinks she's Adolf Hitler. Sounds like the latest episode of South Park, right? In reality, however (and much to my surprise), it ain't half bad. Jeremy Renner plays skinhead Ned, who's been sent to a mental hospital as punishment for his involvement in a hate crime. Here he encounters Rachael (Gabrielle Union), a sexually abused young woman who periodically issues orders in guttural German to anyone who'll listen, and the two immediately find themselves strangely attracted to one other. Union and Renner are both excellent, rendering what could have been a ham-fisted folly into a surprisingly delicate tale of a most unlikely friendship.

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