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Thursday 9/30/10

2:15 PM Showtime 3
Jassy (1948 GB): I have really, really serious doubts about this one: Showtime 3 is not a channel known for airing obscure old films. That said, this is the title that appears in the program guide, so just in case it’s right we’ll give it a mention. Jassy is a lush (well, lush considering it wasn’t produced by MGM) British frock flick starring lovely Margaret Lockwood as a 19th century servant girl of gypsy origins who marries Helmar (Basil Sydney), the man responsible for the death of her father. When Helmar, in turn, passes on suddenly, Jassy is understandably suspected of orchestrating his death in order to inherit his estate. Compensation for this stunningly unoriginal plot is offered by the film’s excellent cast (also including Dennis Price, Ernest Thesiger, Dermot Walsh, and John Laurie) and Geoffrey Unsworth’s impressive Technicolor cinematography.

Friday 10/1/10

5:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Horror of Dracula (1958 GB): Welcome to Rocktober! Remember when your local AOR radio station would herald the arrival of this supposedly special month? I never really understood what set it apart from all the other months, because Rocktober seemed to consist of the same old crap they’d previously been playing in Rocktember: Uriah Heep, Molly Hatchet, Kansas, Nick Gilder, you know the routine. So let’s start over - welcome to Shocktober, when cable and satellite channels decide they have an obligation to up the gore ante in a vain effort to scare the pants off jaded viewers such as myself. First out of the gate is TCM’s four-pack of Hammer horrors, three of them featuring tall, dark, and gruesome Christopher Lee. The evening begins with Horror of Dracula, still one of the best vampire movies ever made and the film that made Lee a star. Directed by Terence Fisher, it offers a full color reappraisal of the Dracula legend as imagined by screenwriter Jimmy Sangster, and cemented the synergistic onscreen relationship between Lee and Peter Cushing, who remains the definitive Van Helsing 50 years on. It’s followed at 6:30 PM by 1960’s The Brides of Dracula, an excellent sorta-sequel with a homoerotic subtext in which Cushing returns as Van Helsing, whilst David Peel essays the role of blood-sucking Baron Meinster; at 8:00 PM by 1966’s Dracula Prince of Darkness, in which Lee returns to wreak havoc in Central Europe (otherwise known as Bray Studios); and at 9:45 PM by 1969’s memorably titled Dracula Has Risen From the Grave, in which…well, you can probably guess what happens.

Saturday 10/2/10

1:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
Daughters of Satan (1972 PHI): Fans of Tom Selleck, don’t miss this one! Everyone else, run away! Daughters of Satan stars the mustachioed one as James Robertson, an art collector in the Philippines who purchases a grotesque witch-burning painting that reminds him of wife Chris (Barra Grant). Love you too, sweetheart. When Chris starts acting all possessed and stuff, James divines that her body is now controlled by the spirit of one of the subjects depicted in his painting…and that, y’know, his life might be in danger. Where’s Higgins when you need him? Directed by television regular Hollingsworth Morse (H. R. Pufnstuf, McHale’s Navy), Daughters of Satan co-stars familiar Filipino heavy Vic Diaz.

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