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11:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Boy With Green Hair (1949 USA): Last time I wrote about this Joseph Losey film, I hadn’t seen it in at least 20 years and was loath to recommend it based on either my own memories (which were dim) or the collective critical assumptions long made about the film (it’s an anti-war allegory with an anti-witch-hunt twist - both director Losey and screenwriter Alfred Lewis Levitt were blacklisted in the early ‘50s, with Losey relocating to Europe and Levitt assuming a pseudonym and a front). That was nine years ago (gosh, I’ve been doing this a long time!), and my 2004 viewing revealed that the film was pretty good, but not quite the leftie classic I’d imagined it to be. Still, it’s hard not to be impressed by Dean Stockwell’s luscious green locks, and any film with Robert Ryan is worth watching. Look for teenage Russ Tamblyn as one of Stockwell’s classmates.

Friday 3/22/13

7:50 AM Encore Action
Night of the Warrior (1991 USA): Here’s another of those cookie cutter action movies in which a hot, sweaty hero beats up and/or kills a bunch of smelly, swarthy bad guys. What’s special about this one? Well, it was co-written by wannabe Grade Z action hero Thomas Ian Griffith and features the last (to date) big screen appearance of the legendary Arlene Dahl and the only film appearance by the even more legendary blues singer Willie Dixon! Oh, I know – you all wish it were Robert Johnson instead, but he wasn’t available.

8:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Machine That Kills People (1952 ITA): Roberto Rossellini month continues this evening on TCM with a very rare small screen airing of this delightfully odd comedy, originally released in Italy as La macchina Ammazzacattivi. This is one of my favorite Rossellinis, no doubt because it’s about as close as he ever got to making a Bunuel film (still not terribly close), and is a breath of fresh air in comparison to his preceding film, the stale and stuffy Europa ’51. A fable in which Satan comes to Earth and begins performing evil deeds through third party photographer Celestino (Gennaro Pisano), The Machine That Kills People was never actually finished (it clocks in at a brief 80 minutes) and was released against Rossellini’s wishes, but I like it anyway. It’s followed at 9:30 PM by India: Matri Bhumi (1959), a film long unavailable unless you happened to make it to one of Pacific Film Archive’s infrequent screenings of their un-subtitled archival print. It’s extremely well regarded, but I’ve never seen it.

Saturday 3/23/13

Midnight The Movie Channel
Candyman 3: Day of the Dead (1999 USA): The first Candyman film was one of the better horror flicks of the early 1990s, a genuinely eerie effort firmly grounded in a reality similar to that of Wes Craven’s underrated The People Under the Stairs. By the time they got around to making this straight-to-video sequel, however, most of the juice had been sucked from the series, leaving it simply another entry in the "Supernatural Serial Killer" sub-genre. That said, star Tony Todd is always good, and his presence here is the sole reason I’m giving Candyman 3: Day of the Dead recognition this week.

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