By Ed Garea
STAR
OF THE MONTH
The
Star of the month for May is June Allyson, and TCM continues their
tribute. Although the films are of lesser quality as the month winds
down, there are still some gems.
May
21: TCM leads off the night at 8:00 pm with the entertaining
musical, Two Girls and a Sailor,
from MGM in 1944. June and Gloria DeHaven are singing sisters who
operate a canteen for GIs. They are both after the same sailor,
played by Van Johnson. It’s nice, light entertainment with many
fine musical numbers included, from Gracie Allen playing the piano
(!) to the impeccable Lena Horne singing “Paper Doll.” Also look
for Ava Gardner (who MGM still didn’t have a clue about using) as a
dancing showgirl and appearing in the dream sequence.
At
10:15 comes Best Foot Forward (MGM,
1943). Lucille Ball plays a big star who visits a small-town school
on a lark, with both Nancy Walker and June making their feature film
debuts recreating their Broadway roles. One of the highlights is
Harry James and his band performing “Two O’Clock Jump.”
At
midnight, it’s one of June’s best-known musicals, 1947’s Good
News. Screenwriters Betty Comden and Adolph Green do
an excellent job breathing new life into this 1920s Broadway musical.
Peter Lawford stars as a collegiate football hero and June is the
French tutor who grabs him on the rebound. It includes the vintage
songs “The Best Things in Life Are Free,” “Just Imagine,” and
“Varsity Drag,” along with new numbers “The French Lesson,”
and “Pass That Peace Pipe.”
May
28: Skip the 8:00 pm showing of Universal’s tepid remake
of its 1936 classic, My Man
Godfrey, and the 10:00 pm showing of The
Opposite Sex, MGM’s tepid remake of its 1939 hit The
Women. Wait instead, or get out the recorder for 2:00 am and
the screening of the above-average Battle
Circus (MGM, 1953), with Humphrey Bogart as a
MASH surgeon in the Korean War and June as the nurse with whom he
becomes romantically involved. Following at 5:30 am is one that
definitely requires the recorder. It’s the best Allyson of the
night, Executive Suite (MGM,
1956). This is a great tale of corporate intrigue among a board of
directors after the head of the firm dies as they jockey to be his
replacement. Helping June along in the fun is William Holden, Barbara
Stanwyck, Frederic March, Walter Pidgeon, and Louis Calhern.
FRIDAY
NIGHT SPOTLIGHT
The
Friday Night Spotlight for May, devoted to the best of Australian
cinema, continues.
May
16: Two films stand out this night. At 8:00 pm there’s the
excellent My Brilliant Career from
1979 with Judy Davis as a spirited young woman who must choose
between marriage to Sam Neill and a career. With this film, director
Gillian Armstrong did for female Australian cinema what George Miller
did for male Australian cinema the same year with Mad Max,
which was to put it firmly on the map and announce to the world that
it was here to stay.
The
other film to watch is Jane Campion’s 1989 drama, Sweetie,
about a young woman (Karen Colston) whose emotionally fragile grip on
reality is shaken when her seriously off-the-wall sister, Sweetie
(Genevieve Lemon) returns to the dysfunctional family fold. I
remember seeing this in the movies and coming out feeling like I’d
gone through the wringer; it was that intense an experience. I
recommend this one highly.
May
23: There are three worth your time tonight. Leading off at
8:00 pm is the Sigorney Weaver-Mel Gibson vehicle, The
Year of Living Dangerously (1982), with Mel as an
Australian journalist who is brought romantically together with
British Embassy attaché Sigourney during the 1965 Indonesian
Revolution by street-smart photographer Linda Hunt, who not only
steals the picture, but also secured a Academy Award nomination for
Supporting Actress. Much of the film is pretty slow going, so one
really has to stick with it at times.
At
10:00 pm, it’s Peter Weir’s 1979, psychological thriller/black
comedy, The Plumber.
Ivar Kants is Max, the plumber-from-Hell, who arrives to fix the
bathroom and ends up scaring the living wits out of yuppie
academician Judy Morris. It seems yuppies have nothing to fear but
the working class.
At
the late hour of 3:30 am, it the interesting Muriel’s
Wedding. Toni Collette stars as Muriel Heslop, a young
woman living in the tediously dull town of Porpoise Point, Australia.
She spends a lot of time in her bedroom, where she dreams of getting
married and moving away from both the town and her psychologically
abusive father, all the while listening to the music of ABBA.
Finally, she absconds with the family savings and scrams to an island
resort, where she meets Rhonda (Rachel Griffiths), who acts as the
catalyst for Muriel to become a new person. Finally Muriel takes her
dream of marriage too far and marries for the sake of it, coming
around later to find there’s more to marriage than first meets the
eye.
May
30: Leading off at 8:00 pm is Newsfront (1978),
a pleasant little film that follows the adventures of movie newsreel
reporters during the ‘40s. Then, at 11:45, TCM is showing the
powerful 1978 drama, The Chant of
Jimmie Blacksmith. Based on the 1972 novel of the same
name by Thomas Keneally, it’s a story of the exploits and
exploitation of Jimmie Governor, an Indigenous Australian man who
commits a series of murders around the turn of the century that
sprang from a long-simmering rage. It’s an oft-times disturbing
film that pulls no punches in depicting the social inequity of
turn-of-the-century Australia and the lives of those caught up in the
social net. Of all the films offered by TCM in this category during
the month, this is the one I recommend above all else.
MEMORIAL
DAY MARATHON
For
those of us who love war films, TCM is running its annual Memorial
Day Marathon from May 24 to May 27. During the holiday weekend, 34
films will be shown, and while nothing new will be screened, there
are a few films during the marathon that aren’t screened all that
often.
May
24: Tune in at 5:45 pm for The
Hill, Sidney Lumet’s study of a World War II British
military stockade in North Africa. Starring Sean Connery (who also
arranged for the movie’s financing) as an officer court-martialed
for refusing to lead his troops in a suicide charge, the movie
presents us with a Connery light years removed from his day job at
the time as Agent 007. It also garnered Connery the best reviews of
his career to that point, though the public was not as enamored of
the movie as were the critics and largely stayed away. A great
supporting cast that includes Ossie Davis, Ian Bannen, Roy Kinnear,
and Ian Hendry surrounds Connery. Other notable performances come
from Harry Andrews as the sadistic sergeant, and Michael Redgrave as
the weak-willed medical officer.
May
25: The pick of the day airs at 2:00 am. Carnival
in Flanders, from director Jacques Feyder, is a
thoroughly delightful farce about the Spanish invasion of a small
Flemish village in the 17th century. While the men of
the village all find excuses to run, the women stay behind,
conquering the conquerors with non-stop revelry and romance such that
the invaders not only leave the village intact, but also give the
townsfolk a year’s amnesty from paying taxes. Just how far the
“entertainment” went is left to the imagination, but the women
allow the men to believe it was their tactics that saved the village,
even though they ran away and the town’s mayor played dead.
May
26: How could I not recommend The
Best Years of Our Lives? This drama about the trials
and tribulations of three soldiers making the transition back to
civilian life was a multiple winner at the 1946 Academy Awards,
including Best Picture, Best Actor (Frederic March), and Best
Director (William Wyler). But the best performance in the film was
one that didn’t even garner a nomination. That was Myrna Loy, who
gave one of the best performances of her career as the understanding
wife of returning vet Frederic March, and the one who keeps the
family together and life at a normal pitch. How she could be
overlooked remains as one of Oscar’s greatest mysteries.
May
27: Even
though the Marathon ends on May 26, there is a bonus pick of sorts
for us cinephiles. During a daytime marathon of Merle Oberon movies
(no, it’s not her birthday) comes a rarely seen gem from producer
Alexander Korda and London Films, The
Lion Has Wings (1940).
Korda had promised Winston Churchill that if England went to war with
Germany, he would produce a morale film for the British public, and
in return Churchill would use the British film industry as a
propaganda weapon during the war. That was one hell of a bargain,
being that Churchill wasn’t even Prime Minister at the time; he was
Lord of the Admiralty. Be that as it may, Korda assigned three
directors to the film - Michael Powell, Brian Desmond Hurst, and
Adrian Brunel. Filming took about 12 days, with the result being a
mixture of documentary-style footage, scripted narrative featuring
Ralph Richardson and Merle Oberon, and footage taken from two
previous films: Fire
Over England (1936)
and The
Gap (1937).
It all makes for most curious viewing and it’s one I do not plan to
miss.
CAGNEY
On May
16, in the wee hours of the morning (5:45 am), TCM is screening a
rarely seen Cagney vehicle. Jimmy
the Gent, from 1934, finds Cagney as a shady locator
of heirs for fortunes. Cagney pours over the news stories of
accidents, deaths, grisly murders and the like, and then sets out to
find the heirs to whatever fortune is left behind. And if he can’t
find the heir, he’s not above making one up for the right fee.
Bette Davis plays his love interest, a former employee who has left
him to work for a more respectable “genealogist.” But we know she
still carries the torch for Jimmy, even though her new boss wants her
to marry him. It’s a movie both stars disparaged at the time, but
one that still entertains today rather than just being a curiosity
piece. And check out Cagney’s hairstyle. Talk about severe; it was
done as a protest to being cast in what he termed as “mug” movies
- where he plays just another in a long line of mugs. This was the
first time both Cagney and Davis appeared in the same film. They
would not do so again until 1941 when they made The Bride
Came C.O.D.
OUT
OF THE ORDINARY
May
18: The Swedish coming-of-age film, My
Life as a Dog (1986) from director Lasse
Hallstrom, will be airing at 2:00 am. Though it’s been featured
here before, it’s still a delight to watch.
May
19 & 20: How about a nice change of pace from Mel Brooks, of
all people? Actually it’s more from his wife Anne Bancroft. First
up, on May 19 at 10:00 pm, it's 84
Charing Cross Road, starring Bancroft as a New York
scriptwriter who forms a most unusual friendship over the years
entirely through correspondence with London bookseller Anthony
Hopkins. It’s a delightful, intelligent film about how the love of
books can bring two disparate people together, even from across the
ocean. Based on the book and play of the same name by Helene Hanff,
Bancroft makes for a fine Hanff. Look for Judi Dench as Hopkins’
wife and Mercedes Ruehl in a small part.
Then,
on May 20 at 8:00 pm, it’s the classic The
Elephant Man, starring John Hurt as John Merrick, the
sensitive man whose affliction has caused him to live in a sideshow,
and Anthony Hopkins as the compassionate London doctor who rescues
Merrick from his plight. Hurt’s performance as the hideously
deformed Merrick is one for the ages, injecting just enough humanity
(without overdoing it) to make us reach for the Kleenex every time.
Hurt’s performance, in fact, reminds me of Boris Karloff’s as the
monster in The Bride of Frankenstein, it’s that
good.
Then,
at midnight, it’s Mel Brooks’ remake of Ernst Lubitsch’s
classic, To Be Or Not To Be.
Though Mel changed things around a bit for his remake, it’s one of
the few remakes that actually come close to the original. Anne
Bancroft is superb as Anna Bronski, wife of insufferable ham
Frederick Bronski (Brooks). Jose Ferrer is on hand as the treacherous
Professor Siletski, and Charles Durning almost steals the film as the
dimwitted Gestapo officer Colonel Erhardt (played by Sig Ruman in the
original).
May
22: Tune in at 8:00 pm for a night of host Bob Osborne’s
picks, leading off with the great 1945 noir, The
House on 92nd Street,
a documentary-style drama based on actual fact and using some of the
same locations used in the real story of how the FBI infiltrated and
broke up a Nazi spy ring. The always-dependable Lloyd Nolan stars.
At
11:00 pm it’s David Lean’s wonderful comedy, Hobson’s
Choice (1954), starring Charles Laughton as the
tyrannical, overbearing owner of a boot shop who is used to having
his every whim attended to by his three subservient daughters. Then
his oldest (Brenda De Banzie) decides to turn the tables with
delightful results.
May
31: As long as we’re discussing seldom seen movies, tune
in to TCM on May 31 at 11:00 pm for the 1935 classic starring the
great Josephine Baker, Princess Tam
Tam. Baker lives up to her legend, and then some, in
this take on Pygmalion. She is a poor, beautiful
Tunisian shepherdess discovered, then polished and educated by writer
Max Demirecourt (Max Prejean) and passed off as an Indian princess,
much to the dismay of Max’s two-timing wife, Lucie (Germaine
Aussey). It’s a deft combination of charming story and lavish
musical numbers. If you’ve never seen Baker before, hold on to your
hats, for after watching her in this film, I guarantee you’ll never
forget her. The shame of it all was that this beautiful,
multi-talented woman had to go to France to realize her talents.
PSYCHOTRONICA
AND THE B HIVE
We
lead off this installment with a night of haunted house movies.
May
17: We begin the day at 8:00 pm with one of the best movies
of the genre, 1963’s The Haunting.
I remember seeing this one in the movies and being genuinely scared
throughout. I chalked it up to the fact that I was only eight years
of age and saw it again a couple of years ago, just to see if it
still held its power. It did. Robert Wise did a masterful job of
building the tension, and with a cast that included Julie Harris,
Claire Bloom, and Richard Johnson keeping that tension going
throughout the film. Even those who do not ordinarily care for horror
films will find something to like here.
At
10:00 pm, The Legend of Hell
House follows. This 1973 production had a good
start, being adapted by master of horror Richard Matheson from his
novel, Hell House, but the results are rather uneven,
perhaps due to the mix of horror and sexuality. During the course of
the movie, one of the leads - former child star Pamela Franklin - has
sex with an invisible ghost, and this may be the reason why the
British censors originally sapped an “X” rating on the movie
(although it was released here as “PG”), despite the fact that
Matheson toned down the sexual content of his novel. To me it always
seemed like a weak take on The Haunting; neither
the cast nor the director was up to the standards of the 1963
chiller. Look for an unbilled Michael Gough during the ending.
At
11:45 pm comes another film that disappointed me, Steven
Spielberg’s Poltergeist (1982).
Originally, Spielberg was just supposed to be the producer, with
horror-film veteran, Tobe Hooper, as director. But from what I’ve
read about the production itself, it seems that Spielberg and Hooper
had a David Selznick/Alfred Hitchcock relationship with Spielberg
ultimately making the decisions and even filming portions of the
movie. As critic Michael Weldon notes, except for one scene of a face
falling apart, the film is more akin to the silly but fun thrills of
William Castle’s 13 Ghosts. Perhaps too many
cooks do spoil the broth.
Following
at 2:00 am is Death By
Invitation (1971), a low budget wonder with
practically no scares, but lots of bad acting. See my essay on the
movie here. “Death By Boredom” is more like it.
Finally,
the mini-marathon wraps with a first-rate exercise in supernatural
horror, Burn, Witch, Burn.
Based on Fritz Leiber’s 1943 novel, Conjure Wife, it’s
a suspenseful, well-written tale of Norman Taylor (Peter Wyngarde), a
rising star in the sociology department of Hempnell Medical College
whose success may be more to the witchcraft practiced by his wife,
Tansy (Janet Blair). This is bad news to Norman, for not only is his
male ego wounded, but Norman is also a skeptic. The screenplay, by
Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont, builds the movie to a fever
pitch, never relenting for a moment. By the way, this is the second
time Leiber’s novel has been filmed. The first was Weird
Woman, from Universal in 1944. If you can catch this one on
DVD, you’re in for a treat, even though it suffers from the wooden
performance of Lon Chaney, Jr.
May
19: Begin at midnight with 1985’s so-so The
Doctor and the Devils from Brooksfilms and
director Freddie Francis. Yet another version of the story of grave
robbers Burke and Hare, which inspired Robert Louis Stevenson’s
classic story, “The Body Snatcher,” it’s been filmed many times
over the years, with perhaps the best version being RKO’s The
Body Snatcher from 1944, produced by Val Lewton. The
most interesting points about this version is that it was based on a
screenplay written by none other than Dylan Thomas (written in the
1940s) and Twiggy is one of the leads. Other than that . . .
Following
at 1:45 am is Hammer’s 1957 horror classic, The
Curse of Frankenstein. A smash hit upon its release,
it would spawn countless sequels and forever identify star Peter
Cushing with the scientist Victor Frankenstein. Cushing gives a
first-rate performance, conveying the decadence beneath the Baron’s
upper-class crust. As I mentioned elsewhere, Christopher Lee has a
thankless role as the Monster, with no dialogue. It was on the set of
this film that Lee and Cushing first met. Reportedly, Lee came into
Cushing’s dressing room to complain that he had no lines. Cushing
said, “You’re lucky. I read the script.” As their friendship
progressed they discovered they were both fans of Warner Brothers
Looney Tunes and would often pass the time on the set exchanging
phrases from the cartoons.
William
Castle’s macabre Mr.
Sardonicus follows at 3:15 am, the story of a
rich (of course) 19th century man whose face is
permanently frozen into a horrific smile. The baron (Guy Rolfe)
tricks his wife’s doctor and ex-lover (Ronald Lewis) into operating
on his face. The final result is surprising. As was his custom,
Castle supplied a gimmick for patrons of the film. They were given a
florescent thumb card, to be used near the end of the film in a
“Punishment Poll.” Supposedly, two endings were filmed. At the
appropriate time, the film was stopped and Castle appeared on screen
to ask the audience to hold up their cards with the thumb either
pointing up (mercy) or down (no mercy). According to Castle, then
ending where Sardonicus is allowed to live was rarely, if ever, used,
as most of the audience voted “thumbs down.”
Evening
becomes morning and wraps up with Roger Corman’s 1963 opus, The
Haunted Castle, starring Vincent Price as the
descendent of a warlock burned at the stake by the villagers of
Arkham. When Price arrives to reopen his ancestor’s castle he is
possessed by the warlock’s spirit, and aided by warlock partners
Lon Chaney, Jr. and Milton Parsons, resurrects his former witch
partner and sacrifices his wife at an altar in the basement. Although
the film was publicized as a Poe adaptation, it was actually based on
H.P. Lovecraft’s story, “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.”
Charles Beaumont wrote the screenplay.
May
20: Bad Film Lover’s Alert. At 10:30 am, TCM is
airing Joseph Von Sternberg’s 1941 cult classic, The
Shanghai Gesture. A bowdlerized version of John
Colton’s London and Broadway stage play, it starred Ona Munson as
“Mother Gin Sling,” the owner of a famous Shanghai casino. In the
play she was Mother Godamn and ran a bordello. Oh, the Hays Office.
It’s typical Von Sternberg: all style with only a smattering of
substance. Among the denizens of Mother’s House of Whoopee is Omar,
“a doctor of nothing.” Fittingly, Victor Mature, an actor of
nothing, plays Omar. And check out mother while you’re at it. She
makes her first appearance in a headdress that would cause Cher
spasms of jealousy. Yeah, it’s bad, but it’s not boring, and
that’s why those who haven’t yet seen this masterpiece should
tune in. Von Sternberg would later give us another classic bad
film, Jet Pilot, with John Wayne and Janet Leigh,
produced in 1950 but not released until 1957 for reasons that will
immediately become clear when you begin to watch.
May
23: One of the great film noirs makes its appearance at 5:15
pm - Anthony Mann’s Raw Deal,
a beautifully made story from 1948 of a guy (Dennis O’Keefe) who
takes the rap for gangster Raymond Burr, only to have Burr welch on
the deal. O’Keefe busts out of prison and begins looking for his
ex-boss. Two things make this one to watch: Burr’s great
performance as a sadistic thug, and Mann’s fluent direction. I
always thought the worst thing to happen to Anthony Mann was success
and promotion from the Bs.
May
31: Speaking of low budget movies, tune in at 4:30 pm for
Allied Artists’ 1956 opus World
Without End. Hugh Marlowe, Rod Taylor, Nelson Leigh,
and Christopher Dark are astronauts caught in a time warp while
returning from a mission and find themselves on a post-apocalyptic
Earth sometime around 2188 AD. For what it is, it’s not bad and
plays rather like a Star Trek episode, only no one
figures out how to return to 1957.
No comments:
Post a Comment