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8:30 AM Fox Movie Channel
Night and the City (1950 USA): One of the greatest of films noir, Jules Dassin’s Night and the City is, uncharacteristically, set in London rather than New York. Richard Widmark stars as two-bit hustler Harry Fabian, a transplanted Yank trying to earn a crust in the seedy world of pro wrestling. A chance encounter with squared circle veteran Gregorius (real life Greco-Roman grappler Stanislaus Zbyszko) seems to offer Harry a golden opportunity to make a mint—but Gregorius’ son Kristo (Herbert Lom) has other ideas, and our anti-hero soon finds himself fleeing from his goons through the luminous black and white back alleys of the Big Smoke. If all this isn’t reason enough to watch, Mike Mazurki herein plays a character named The Strangler — you wouldn’t want to miss that, would you?

8:20 PM Encore Dramatic Stories
Lenny (1974 USA): Hey, TCM, Lenny was nominated for six Oscars! Where’s the love! Instead it gets relegated to Encore Dramatic Stories, but don’t let that put you off — this is a great film, headlined by Dustin Hoffman’s amazing and deeply moving performance as stand-up comic and cultural lightning rod Lenny Bruce. Shot in black and white by Bruce Surtees, this is the rare biopic that does more than simply recreate the life and times of its subject — it also casts light on the forces arrayed in opposition to the flickering flame of the human spirit. That may sound a mite over the top, but watch the film and see if you aren’t choked up and even a little bit angry at the end. It’s that powerful.

Thursday 2/10/11

8:15 AM Sundance
A Town Called Panic (2009 BEL): If you enjoy the Toy Story series, you may get similar mileage from this Belgian animated feature. Shot in glorious stop-motion, the film relates the adventures of Horse, Cowboy, and Indian, three toys who try to celebrate a birthday by building a barbecue pit but end up having an Internet shopping misadventure instead. And it just gets weirder from there — much weirder. Based on a television series popular in the Low Countries and clocking in at a brisk 75 minutes, A Town Called Panic will delight and baffle old and young alike. Also airs at 12:30 PM.

Friday 2/11/11

3:00 AM Flix
Skidoo (1968 USA): Two years ago, I wrote this:

I never thought I'd live to see the day Skidoo would appear again on television, and in all honesty, I'm a bit disturbed at the prospect. After all, this is the midnight movie to end all midnight movies, so obscure and deeply buried in the vaults that its extremely rare big-screen appearances are the stuff of legend (the last time I saw it was probably 15 years ago at San Francisco's Red Vic, a dilapidated but wonderful rep house with sofas for seats and a good line in concession stand chocolate). It's the infamous film in which Jackie Gleason takes an acid trip, and that's probably reason enough to watch, though the remarkable supporting cast also provides a strong argument: Carol Channing (as Jackie's wife), Groucho Marx, Frankie Avalon, Fred Clark, John Phillip Law, Peter Lawford, George Raft, Frank Gorshin, Cesar Romero, Slim Pickens, Mickey Rooney, Richard Kiel, Harry Nilsson, and (the final icing on the cake) Arnold Stang, the TiVoPlex cult fave whose career runs the gamut from The Man With the Golden Arm to Courage the Cowardly Dog and beyond! Directed by Otto Preminger, Skidoo is the ne plus ultra of old Hollywood's attempts to acknowledge and interpret the counterculture and, simply put, is a terrible movie. If you miss it tonight, however, you may regret it for the rest of your life, as there's still no indication that a home video release is in the offing. Now, can TCM…pry The Day the Clown Cried from Jerry Lewis' clammy grip??

Since then, TCM has given Skidoo an encore performance, and now it’s worked its way (up? down?) to Flix (still no DVD, though). So perhaps The Day the Clown Cried really is just around the corner. Till then, just keep singing: “Skidoo…skidoo…I do believe it really is the thing to do…”

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