Sunday, July 15, 2018

Cinéma Inhabituel for July 16-31

A Guide to the Interesting and Unusual on TCM

By Ed Garea

KUROSAWA

July 29: At 3:00 am Akira Kurosawa turns his attention to Fyodor Dostoyevsky in Hakuchi (The Idiot), from 1951. Probably the most underrated of all his films, it was dismissed by critics when released, even though Kurosawa was faithful to the source material. The “idiot” is Kinji Kameda, (Masayuki Mori), a naive and epileptic war veteran who comes home to Hokkaido. There his guileless nature sets off a romantic triangle, which along with other dramatic developments, leads to a tragic finale. Setsuko Hara stars as Taeko Nasu and Toshiro Mifune co-stars as Denkichi Akama. The original, which ran well over 200 minutes, has been lost for years. An almost three-hour version survives as the most complete version of the film.

EISENSTEIN

July 25: Sergei Eisenstein made his debut with Strike (1925), a powerful account of a 1912 strike by factory workers in Czarist Russia and its violent suppression. It airs at 8:00 am.

LAUREL AND HARDY

July 22: A double feature of the comic duo begins at 4:00 am with the rarely seen Saps at Sea (1940). The boys accidentally set sail with an escaped killer. Following at 5:00 am, a reunion goes predictably wrong in 1938’s Blockheads

NOIR ALLEY


July 21: Escaped convict Humphrey Bogart undergoes plastic surgery, then hides out at Lauren Bacall’s place until his face heals in the engrossing 1947 noir Dark Passage (12:30 am). She later helps him clear his name.

July 28: Hard-boiled L.A. cop Van Johnson (Is there any other kind?) sets out to solve the murder of his former partner, who might have been on the take, in 1949’s Scene of the Crime.

PRE-CODE

July 16: At 6:00 am, card sharp from the other side of the tracks Barbara Stanwyck marries society guy Joel McCrea in 1934’s Gambling Lady. Later, at 2:15 pm Stanwyck uncovers a plot to starve children for their trust fund money in Night Nurse (1931). Following immediately after at 3:30 pm, Babs marries German immigrant Otto Kruger, only to face anti-German hysteria during World War I in the seldom aired Ever in My Heart (1933).

At 3:35 am it’s Pat O’Brien as Hildy Johnson and Adolphe Menjou as Walter Burns in the original The Front Page (1931).

July 17: At 10:45 am, fading dipso director Lowell Sherman helps waitress Constance Bennett become a movie star in What Price Hollywood? (1932).

July 21: Inspector Lionel Barrymore is hot on the trail of art thief John Barrymore in 1932’s Arsene Lupin (Noon).

July 24: Beginning at 6:45, Constance Bennett and Joel McCrea in Rockabye (1932), followed at 8:00 am by Bennett in Our Betters (1933). At 9:30 am, Marie Dressler and Lionel Barrymore lead an all-star cast in Dinner at Eight (1933). 

At 10:00 pm, Barbara Stanwyck is a mail-order bride sent to farmer George Brent in William A. Wellman’s The Purchase Price (1932).

July 26: William Haines uncovers a bank robber posing as a psychic who uses his radio appearances to deliver coded messages to his gang in 1930’s Remote Control, at 11:30 am. At 5:30 pm Haines returns as an unhappily married radio announcer who kills his wife, then leads the hunt for her killer in Are You Listening? (1932).


July 29: Nightclub singer Marlene Dietrich ruins the life of stodgy professor Emil Jannings in the 1930 classic The Blue Angel.

July 31: It’s an entire day of Pre-Code films, beginning at 6:00 with John Gilbert in Downstairs (1932), and ending at 6:30 pm with Cagney and Blondell in Blonde Crazy (1931). Along the way enjoy such fare as Faithless (1932) at 10:00 am, Hell’s Highway (1932) at 11:30 am, Safe in Hell (1931) at 12:45 pm, Jewel Robbery (1932) at 2:00 pm, and the strongest of the lot, Three on a Match (1932) at 3:15 pm.

PSYCHOTRONICA AND THE B HIVE

July 20: Telepathic Dennis Quaid is part of an experiment to project physics into people’s dreams in the thriller, Dreamscape (1984). Max von Sydow and Kate Capshaw co-star at 2:30 am. Following at 4:15 am, farmer von Sydow is framed and railroaded into an asylum by his sister (Liv Ullmann) and her doctor husband (Per Oscarsson) in The Night Visitor (1971).

July 21: Gordon Scott rescues five survivors of an airplane crash in Tarzan and the Lost Safari (1957) at 10:00 am.

Christopher Walken and Natalie Wood have a Brainstorm in this 1983 sci-fi thriller airing at 6:00 pm. It was Wood’s last film.

July 23: A morning and afternoon of psychotronic films begins at 6:00 am with the original Godzilla (1954), followed by the American version, Godzilla: King of the Monsters (1956) at 7:45 am. Other highlights include The Black Scorpion (1957) at 1:15 pm; Roger Corman’s A Bucket of Blood (1959) at 4:00 pm; and House on Haunted Hill (1958) at 5:15 pm.

July 25: The horrors of slavery are mixed with a dose of sex and violence in Mandingo (1975), airing at 2:30 am. James Mason, Susan George, Ken Norton and Perry King star.

July 27: Trucker Jan-Michael Vincent refuses to get involved with shady characters in White Line Fever (1976) at 2:45 am. Immediately following at 4:30 am, independent trucker Jerry Reed stands up to the bag guys with the help of Peter Fonda and Helen Shaver in High Ballin’ (1978).

July 28: Gordon Scott tries to help a doctor establish a mission in the 1958 Tarzan’s Fight For Life at 10:00 am.


July 30: The day is devoted to the films of producer Val Lewton. Besides the familiar horrors such as The Seventh Victim (1943) at 7:30 am, The Ghost Ship (1943) at 8:45 am, and Cat People (1942) at 5:00 pm, the day also features Mademoiselle Fifi (1944) at 6:00 am, and his JD classic, Youth Runs Wild (1944) at 3:45 pm. But perhaps the real must see of the day is the rarely shown Please Believe Me, a film Lewton produced for MGM in 1950 after a career spent at RKO. Directed by Norman Taurog, the film concerns three gold digging men (Robert walker, Mark Stevens and Peter Lawford) who pursue a shipboard romance with Deborah Kerr, who a they think is an heiress.

Giant ants threaten L.A. run 1954’s Them! at 8:00 pm.

URGENT MESSAGE

To Mary Lewis, if you are out there, please know that I lost your e-mail address and I need you to get in touch with me. I have your answer, and, no, it does not concern Van Heflin, as you thought.

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