A
Guide to the Interesting and Unusual on TCM
By
Ed Garea
In
the last column I spoke about B-Westerns. TCM is showing quite a few
this month, but they are from RKO. As I love B-Westerns, I have some
suggestions: I remember TCM showing a few Westerns from Monogram a
while ago starring the Trail Blazers (Ken Maynard and Hoot Gibson).
There are also loads of Westerns from PRC and Republic as well. When
the Maynard-Gibson oaters were shown I got quite a few e-mails from
fellow cinephiles who were delighted the station was showing them.
How about a Spotlight featuring such B-Western stars as Monogram’s
Range Busters series (Ray “Crash” Corrigan, John
“Dusty” King, & Max “Alibi” Terhune); The Rough
Riders series (Buck Jones, Tim McCoy & Ray
Hatton); Columbia’s The Durango Kid series
(Charles Starrett); Republic’s Three
Mesquiteers series (Bob Livingston, Crash Corrigan & Sid
Saylor); PRC’s Lone Rider series
(George Houston, later Bob Livingston); The Texas Rangers series (Jim
Newell, Dave O’Brien, Tex Ritter & Guy Owen Wilkerson); The
Frontier Marshal series (William Boyd, Art Davis & Lee
Powell); The Billy the Kid Series (Bob Steele, later
Buster Crabbe, both backed by Al “Fuzzy” St John); Lash La Rue
and Fuzzy St. John, & Eddie Dean; and – especially –
Hopalong Cassidy (William Boyd), perhaps the quintessential Western
hero for Paramount and UA. A lot of Boomers watched these on
television as kids and still remember them fondly. There’s a lot to
be mined here and TCM should get in on the fun.
ROMY
SCHNEIDER
October
18: At 8:00 pm TCM will air a trilogy of films directed by
Ernst Marischka about Empress Elisabeth of Austria, Sissi (1955)
and its sequels, Sissi: The Young
Empress (1956) and Sissi:
Fateful Years of an Empress (1957). The films
follow the life of Elisabeth of Bavaria, who became Empress of
Austria when she married Emperor Franz Josef. Sissi focuses
on the fateful meeting of Elisabeth and Franz Josef. When the young
emperor met he he instantly fell in love and declared he would marry
no one else, For her part Elisabeth was a free spirit who was
reluctant to become involved with the responsibility of an empress,
yet within the year they married and Sissi learns the duties and
responsibilities her position entails.
Sissi:
The Young Empress focuses on her life at the royal court
and the heartbreak, as Franz is away for long periods and her
mother-in-law has decided to take her granddaughter away from the
Empress and raise her herself. This marked the beginnings of
Elisabeth’s physical and mental health issues, as she becomes
unable to endure life at court and starts spending more and more time
away from it.
Sissi:
Fateful Years of an Empress sees her deteriorate
further, becoming so ill that her doctors begin to despair for her
life. Help arrives when her mother, Ludovika, arrives and nurses her
back to health, Now completely well, she returns to her husband’s
side and resumes her duties as Empress.
I
have seen only the first of the trilogy. Marischka does a wonderful
job of setting the stage, with superb settings and superior
camerawork. Schneider brings the empress to life and with her
co-star, Karlheinz Bohm, capture the pomp, circumstance and romance
of the House of Hapsburg.
JAPANESE
HORRORS
October
22: At the late hour of 3:45 am, TCM is airing the superb Kwaidan.
This 1964 production, directed by Masaki Kobayashi, adapts four tales
of the supernatural from 19th century writer Lafcadio Hearn’s
collection of Japanese folk tales, Kwaidan: Stories and
Studies of Strange Things, and Shadowings. In the
first, The Black Hair, a young, impoverished samurai
divorces his wife to marry the daughter of a noble family. But far
from finding the expected happiness he is haunted by the image of the
wife he abandoned. The second tale, The Woman in the Snow,
a woodcutter named Minokichi and his mentor Mosaku take refuge during
a snowstorm. A female snow spirit kills Mosaku, but spares Minokichi
because of his youth, warning him never to speak of what he has
witnessed or she will kill him. In the third tale, Hoichi the
Earless, a blind musician agrees to sing for a royal family
unaware of the fact they are ghosts. Finally, In a Cup of
Tea, a writer awaiting a visit from the publisher writes a story
about a samurai who is disturbed by the recurring image of a strange
man in a cup of tea.
October
29: Ugetsu,
director Kenji Mizoguchi’s 1953 tale of the supernatural, airs at
4:15 am. This is a masterful tale of two poor villagers who seek to
profit from a shortage of pottery during a civil war in 16th century
Japan. Though they make a fortune, they pay later for their misdeeds
as do their wives. Mizoguchi’s film is beautifully filmed and
realized, merging reality with fantasy in a supernatural tapestry of
the price paid for war, avarice, dishonesty and lust.
DRACULA
October
22: It’s a Hammer Studios Dracula double feature,
with Dracula: Prince of
Darkness (1965) at 8:00 pm, followed by
1968’s Dracula Has Risen From the
Grave. Both star Christopher Lee as the famous
vampire.
October
29: The Hammer Draculas continue with another double
feature: Taste the Blood of
Dracula (1970) at 8:00 pm, and Dracula
A.D. 1972 (1972) at 10:00 pm. Again, both star
Lee as Dracula. Read our essay on the latter film here.
One thing I’ve noticed about the Hammer Dracula sequels
is that the vampire has become reduced to having mortals not only
doing his dirty work, but also tending to his person.
CLASSIC
HORROR
October
17: TCM airs an evening of horror classics, Hammer Style,
beginning at 8:00 pm with The
Devil’s Bride (1968), with Christopher Lee
battling Satanist Charles Grey for the soul of Patrick Mower. At 9:45
pm Peter Cushing and Lee star in The
Curse of Frankenstein (1956). Lee is Kharis the
Mummy in The Mummy (1959)
at 11:15 pm, threatening a group of archaeologists (led by Peter
Cushing) who defiled his tomb. Then, at 1 am, Oliver Reed suffers
from The Curse of the
Werewolf (1961). Andre Morell does battle with an
evil landowner (John Carson) who uses zombies to work his mines
in Plague of the Zombies (1966),
airing at 2:45 am. Finally, at 4:30 am, Indian snake worshippers turn
explorer Noel Willman’s daughter (Jacqueline Pearce) into a monster
in The Reptile (1966).
Yes, they get sillier as time goes on.
October
24: More classic horror, highlighted by The
Innocents (1961) at 8:00 pm, the excellent and
underrated Curse of the Demon (1957)
at midnight, and the thoroughly unsettling Carnival
of Souls (1962)
following at 2:00 am.
October
31: More classics, led by James Whale’s The
Old Dark House (1932) at 8:00 pm, 1963’s The
Haunting at 9:30, William Castle’s classic
schlock House on Haunted Hill (1958)
at 11:30, Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard in Paramount’s remake
of The Cat and the Canary (1939)
at 1:15 am, and Vincent Price and Agnes Moorhead in 1959’s The
Bat at 4:30 am.
OTHER
PSYCHOTRONICA
October
19: Wounded mobster James Fox gets more than he bargained for
when he takes refuge at the mansion of reclusive rock star Mick
Jagger in Performance (1970)
at 4:00 am.
October
21: Bruce Davison and friends take revenge on his tormenting
boss, Ernest Borgnine in Willard (1971)
at 2:00 am. Problem is that his friends are all rats. Sort of like a
psychotronic pied piper. The sequel, Ben (1972)
follows at 3:45 am.
October
28: Catherine Deneuve goes slowly and tormentingly mad in
Roman Polanski’s 1965 horror classic, Repulsion (3:45
am).
October
31: Panned when released, White
Zombie (1932) is regarded as a classic. Starring
the great Bela Lugosi, it can be seen at 8:30 am.
PRE-CODE
October
16: At 8:00 pm comes the chance to see a rarely shown film
from none other than Cecil B. DeMille, Filmdom’s most overrated
director. One might think from the title that Madam
Satan is a horror picture. It isn’t, though it
is a horror of another kind. This 1930 effort from DeMille is so
bizarre that we guarantee you’ll never forget it, and when you do
remember it, you’ll naturally cringe a bit. It stars Kay Johnson as
Angela, a wife tired of husband’s (Reginald Denny) infidelity. She
decides to win him back by disguising herself as an alluring masked
guest at a masquerade ball. Naturally Bob goes ga-ga over her, and
gets the shock of his life when she reveals her identity. This leads
him to declare that “I’ve been such a fool.” Also along for the
ride are Lillian Roth as Trixie, Bob’s tasty bit on the side, and
Roland Young as Bob’s BFF, Jimmy.
It’s
a variation on his silent sex comedies such as Old Wives for
New (1918) and Don't Change Your Husband (1919),
where husbands and wives flirt with infidelity before reuniting in a
good old-fashioned moralistic ending. When DeMille made this film,
MGM was already doing a better job with Robert Montgomery and Norma
Shearer. The first half-hour moves at a pace so slow that you may be
tempted to catch something else. But hang around, for the last part
of the movie is pure camp, as the masquerade ball is held aboard
Jimmy’s zeppelin. You read that right – zeppelin. The ball is
highlighted by outlandish ballet led by The Spirit of Electricity and
his ballet troupe in a scene seemingly right out
of Metropolis and Dante’s Inferno,
with bizarre costumes and little motor cars driven by waitresses.
When a storm arises and rips the zeppelin from its moorings everyone
aboard simply parachutes out to safety(!). The sheer audacity of the
ending makes the slogging through the first 30-plus minutes bearable.
Costing over $1 million, Madam Satan lost a ton of
money at the box office. Critic Mordaunt Hall, in The New
York Times, hit it on the head when he noted that “it is an
inept story with touches of comedy that are more tedious than
laughable.” At any rate, it’s not to be missed.
October
21: Gangster Dave the Dude (Warren William) helps apple
vendor May Robson impersonate a society woman to impress her visiting
daughter in Frank Capra’s 1933 comedy, Lady
For a Day at 6:00 am. It’s followed at 8:00 am
by John Barrymore as a man who deserted his daughter long ago, but
must now help her out of a jam in Long
Lost Father (1934). Helen Chandler co-stars.
Ironically, both Barrymore and Chandler later drank themselves to
death.
October
22: Katharine Hepburn won the Oscar as a stage struck young
actress determined to make in on Broadway in Morning
Glory (1933) at 7:00 am.
October
26: Dashing Russian nobleman Douglas Fairbanks Jr, is forced
to flee the Russian Revolution with former servant Nancy Carroll
in Scarlet Dawn (1932)
at Noon.
BAD MOVIE
ALERT!
October
19: At 5:15 pm it’s the howlingly bad docudrama Adventure
Girl (1934). Billed as the true adventures of
self-styled explorer Joan Lowell, it recounts her journey to the
wilds of Guatemala. The movie’s forward tells you all you need to
know:
A
year ago Joan Lowell returned from a trip to the vastnesses of
Central America, with a tale of well-nigh incredible adventures. So
lurid and exciting was the story of her exploits that she was
persuaded to duplicate them – only this time with a motion picture
camera. "ADVENTURE GIRL" is a re-enactment of Miss Lowell's
fantastic journyings (sic) and depicts her experiences in this
tropical land noted for its bewildering equatorial beauty.
Or
so she’d have us believe. In search of pirate treasure in a lost
city Joan sails off with crewmen Bill and Otto. A gale catches their
sailboat and blows off a mast. Bill is blown overboard, and Joan
dives in to save him. Meanwhile, the sailboat, caught in the gale,
speeds away without them and Joan and Bill are forced to tread water
in the Gulf of Mexico for two hours. However, the camera is right in
there with them, recording their travails to the sound of Joan’s
hysterically loud narration. Eventually our three intrepid explorers
are in Guatemala, looking to steal a fabled emerald that's in the eye
socket of a Mayan idol. They are captured by natives, who make plans
to roast Joan at the stake. It’s a scene that must
be seen to be believed, as the “natives” stare
into the camera and giggle embarrassedly while chanting goona-goona
curses at Joan. We can’t help but be aware of the camera and the
cameraman behind it filming away while Joan is in desperate need of
immediate aid. Later Joan gets into a bitch-slapping cat fight with a
Guatemalan woman, Princess Maya, who looks suspiciously like a
caucasian made up as a native. What makes this such a howler is that
the proceedings are presented with the utmost solemnity. Yet, we can
easily see it’s faked so badly that it’s laugh-out-loud. Joan’s
hilarious overacting in the film is accompanied by some of the most
outrageous narration this side of Criswell and Ed Wood. If you can,
hold on until the climax of the film, where Joan is comically chased
downriver by boats of savages. Joan and Bill dump gasoline into the
water and set it on fire, but end up encircling themselves. In the
end Joan confesses her greed and vows never to be tempted by material
wealth again. Not to be missed. So low budget that even its
distributor, RKO, had to make a profit. By the way, the screenplay is
based on Joan’s autobiography, The Cradle of the Deep. It
was even a Book-of-the-Month selection when published in 1929, but
was later found to be a work of fiction.
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