Cinéma Inhabituel for August 16-31

A Guide to the Interesting and Unusual on TCM

By Ed Garea

MOVIES ON THE BIG SCREEN

South Pacific, director Joshua Logan’s widescreen adaptation of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s classic musical and featuring memorable performances by Mitzi Gaynor, Rossano Brazzi, Ray Walston and Juanita Hall, is celebrating its 60th anniversary by coming to selected theaters on August 26 and 29.

SUMMER UNDER THE STARS

August 16 – Miriam Hopkins: Some nice Pre-Codes are set for this day, beginning at 6:00 am with The Stranger’s Return (1933). Hopkins is a woman recently separated from her husband who arrives at her grandfather’s farm in the Midwestern town of Pottsville. Over the course of time she grows to love the farm and the country life. She also finds a bittersweet romance with neighbor Franchot Tone. A beautifully rich and touching film that deserves a wider audience.

At 8:00 pm comes one of the most sophisticated comedies ever made, Trouble in Paradise (1932). Hopkins and Herbert Marshall play jewel thieves who fall in love only to see that love threatened by Marshall’s interest in their latest mark, Kay Francis. Directed by the great Ernst Lubitsch, the film sparkles with witty dialogue and plot situations. Those watching it for the first time are in for a rare treat.

One of the most notorious Pre-Code films comes our way at 11:30 pm with the airing of the 1933 The Story of Temple Drake. Based on William Faulkner’s novel, Sanctuary, Hopkins plays a Southern wild child who gets more than she bargained for one stormy night after a car wreck. Though Hopkins is the star, supporting player Jack LaRue steals the film as the sadistic thug Trigger, who has his way with Hopkins and more in a sizzling scene. Though nothing is shown onscreen, the implications are evident, seen in the state of shock that comes to be worn by the once lively Temple like a mask of doom.

Finally, at 4:00 am, Hopkins is the prostitute Ivy to Frederic March’s Dr. Jekyll in the 1932 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. No matter how often I’ve seen it I always return for another viewing.

Aside from the aforementioned Pre-Codes, two classic “woman’s pictures” are also airing this day. First up at 4:00 pm is the sturdy The Old Maid (1939), a soaper set during the Civil War, Bette Davis is Charlotte Lovell and Hopkins her cousin Delia Lovell in a story about illegitimacy, sacrifice and family secrets. It’s followed at 6:00 pm by Hopkins and Davis once again in Old Acquaintance (1943). Bette is a serious novelist and Hopkins her best friend since they were children. Hopkins sees Bette writing her novels and figures she can do just as well. She exceeds all expectations, though her books are trashy. It’s sort of a Eudora Welty meets Danielle Steele story with each giving as good as they get. Adding to the fun is a physical confrontation made even juicer by the fact that in real life the ladies hated each other’s guts. When the time came to film it, the set was packed with spectators who were hoping it would degenerate into a type of MMA matchup. Still highly watchable today and proof that they don’t make ‘em like that anymore, as witnessed by the lame 1981 remake, Rich and Famous, starring Candace Bergen and Jacqueline Bisset.

August 21 – Anita Louise: At 6:00 am, Everything’s Rosie, a rare film from RKO in 1931. The comedy team of Wheeler and Woolsey did such great business for the studio it came to think that profits could be doubled by starring the pair in separate films. It didn’t work; fans were used to seeing them together. Here Woolsey is a carnival con artist who adopts orphan Anita Louise. When she falls in love with a handsome law student, he settles down in the young man’s small town, and uses his carnival pitch to save a local auction house while charming the local society by pretending to be European royalty.

At 8:00 pm comes a real rarity, Glamour for Sale, from Columbia in 1940. I haven't seen it, and apparently, neither has anyone else. The only synopsis I can get comes from IMDb: An undercover man (Roger Pryor) recruits an escort-service rookie (Anita Louise) to inform him of scams. Sounds lurid, but keep in mind it was made by a major studio in 1940.

August 22 – Dana Andrews: Two psychotronic movies are on tap, one a classic, the other a rarity. First up at 3:15 pm is Curse of the Demon, a 1957 shocker with Andrews as a cynical psychic investigator checking out devil-cult leader Niall MacGinnis, based on the infamous Aleister Crowley. Unknown to Andrews, MacGinnis slips him a parchment ensuring that he’ll be visited by MacGinnis’s pet demon unless he can find a way to pass it back. 

Later, at 3:45 am, Andrews stars with Jeffrey Hunter and Anne Francis in the 1965 thriller Brainstorm. Hunter is Jim Grayam, a scientist employed by Benson Industries. He saves the attractive but married Lorrie Benson (Francis) from a suicide attempt. As the two become romantically involved, Lorrie’s husband, rich industrialist Cort Benson (Andrews), learns of the affair through his spies. He plots to stop the affair and destroy Grayam's career by arranging a series of incidents (ranging from accusing him of obscene phone calls to wrecking the workplace) that make it look like the scientist's mind has snapped. When it comes to light that Grayam was institutionalized as a young man over a nervous breakdown, these fabricated incidents make it look like Grayam has become unbalanced again. Watch for the surprise (unhappy) ending. Directed by William Conrad (best known as TV private investigator Frank Cannon).

August 24 – Peter Lorre: Lots to watch and enjoy today, beginning at 6:00 am with the 1941 Columbia production, The Face Behind the Mask. Lorre is Janos Szaby, a kind, innocent immigrant to America. However, soon after he arrives, he is caught in a fire and his face is horribly burned and disfigured. Although a skilled watchmaker, his hideous features make it impossible for him to get work. Driven by despair he turns to crime to live and discovers that he’s very good at it, soon making enough money to purchase a very lifelike mask to hide his features. Though he hates this life of crime, can he afford to leave? Directed by Robert Florey, this is an excellent example that a low budget movie need not be a bad one.

At 7:30 am Lorre is the drunken plastic surgeon Dr. Einstein in Frank Capra’s misfire, Arsenic and Old Lace. It was filmed in 1941, but could not be released until the Broadway play it was based own had finished its run, which was in 1944.

Another horror comedy airs at Noon. Lorre stars with Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Kay Kyser and his band in RKO’s You’ll Find Out (1940). The horrific trio are totally wasted as the real horror turns out to be Kyser and his lame music.

Following at 2:00 pm, Lorre is a Nazi Fifth Columnist who runs afoul of patriotic gangster Humphrey Bogart in the wonderfully droll All Through the Night (1942).

At 4:00 pm, shady undertaker Waldo Trumbull (Vincent Price) and his sidekick Felix Gillie (Lorre) begin creating their own customers when business slows down in AIP’s The Comedy of Terrors (1963). Boris Karloff, Joe E. Brown and Basil Rathbone also star. The screenplay is by Richard Matheson from his novel.

A rarity can be seen at 5:45 pm when Scent of Mystery (1960) airs. Denholm Elliott stars as an English mystery writer on holiday in Spain who stumbles upon a plot to kill young American tourist Sally Kennedy (Beverly Bentley). AKA Holiday in Spain, it was directed by the great cinematographer Jack Cardiff. Whatever fame it enjoys is due to the fact it was the first (and only until Polyester in 1981) film to be made in “Glorious Smell-O-Vision.” Only audiences in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles were able to experience this technical marvel by which over 30 aromas were sent through plastic tubes attached to each theater seat. Scents included wine, seafood, garlic, peppermint, bananas, pipe tobacco, perfume, and gunsmoke.

The classic thriller M (1931), the film about the hunt for a child killer that that made Lorre a star, can be seen at 8:00 pm, followed by Lorre’s excellent performance as Raskolnikov in Josef von Sternberg’s 1935 adaptation of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment at 10:00 pm.

Lorre is a mystery writer trying to reconstruct the life of notorious criminal Zachary Scott in The Mask of Dimitrios (1944) at 11:45 pm. At 3:15 am he is the brilliant but unbalanced surgeon, Doctor Gogol, who gives pianist Colin Clive the hands of a knife throwing murderer after an accident crushes his hands in the 1935 oddity Mad Love. Finally at 4:30 am, federal agent Robert Wilcox infiltrates a prison island to build a case against its corrupt, sadistic warden, Lorre, who has made slaves out of the men and keeps the only woman (Rochelle Hudson) in a cage as his uncooperative mistress, in the 1940 Island of Doomed Men. 

August 25 – Carroll Baker: At 4:15 am Baker plays the mother of tragic Playboy centerfold and budding actress Dorothy Stratten  (Mariel Hemingway) in the 1980 biopic Star 80. Eric Roberts is Paul Snider, her jealous, opportunistic husband, and Cliff robertson is Hugh Hefner.

August 26 – Anthony Quinn: Quinn stars as the proud but exploited boxer Mountain Rivera in Rod Serling’s Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962) at 8:00 pm. Jackie Gleason and Mickey Rooney co-star.

At 2:15 am, strongman Quinn purchases peasant girl Giulietta Masina to be his wife and co-star in Federico Fellini’s brilliant 1954 feature, La Strada.

August 28 – Lew Ayres: Ayres is the doomed gangster Louie Ricarno in the uneven The Doorway to Hell (1930) at 7:30 am. Jimmy Cagney, as his right-hand man Steve Mileaway, steals the picture.

At 3:00 am Basil Rathbone is a magician who impersonates the head off an asylum and hypnotizes inmates so they’ll commit axe murders in 1942’s Fingers at the Window. Lew Ayres and Laraine Day join forces to track him down.

August 30 – Marcello Mastroianni: In 1986’s Ginger and Fred, Mastroianni and Giulietta Masina are second-rate ballroom dancers who were known for their imitation of Astaire and Rogers. Now, a nostalgic television special wants to reunite the pair. Though director Federico Fellini is past his prime, he still has enough left in the tank to present an entertaining satirical send-up of the modern freak show – television. It airs at 10:00 am and is a movie definitely worth seeing. Mastroianni and Masina are still dazzling.

At 12:15 pm Mastroianni stars in the offbeat 1973 comedy A Slightly Pregnant Man. Jacques Demy wrote and directed this misfire of a comedy about a driving school owner (Mastroianni) who is complaining of feeling run down to wife Catherine Deneuve. He sees a doctor who determines that he is pregnant. An expert later concludes that the hormones in the chicken he’s been eating have made him sufficiently feminine to carry a child. With his permission, the doctors publicize this event, and he becomes a model for a maternity clothing company creating a new line of paternity clothes. Many other men around the world become pregnant as well. In the end we learn that he had a hysterical (false) pregnancy. It may not be Demy’s best, but it still beats Ah-nuld in Junior.

In what may be Fellini’s most personal film, 8 1/2 (1963), Mastroianni is filmmaker Guido Anselmi. Already exhausted from the success of his latest blockbuster film and feeling pressured to come up with another smash hit Anselmi is stricken with creative block as he attempts to get the new movie off the ground. Overwhelmed by his work and personal life, the director heads off for a mountain resort to recharge and come up with a new idea. There he retreats into his thoughts, which often focus on his loves, both past and present, and frequently wander into fantastical territory. As he tries to sort everything out, Anselmi finds his production becoming more and more autobiographical. The film airs at 8:00 pm.

August 31 – Joan Crawford: Amazingly, there’s only one Pre-Code film scheduled. At 9:00 am Joan is streetwalker Sadie Thompson, trapped on a South Seas island with fire and brimstone missionary Walter Huston in director Lewis Milestone’s take on Somerset Maugham’s classic story in Rain (1932). Though a flop at the time the film has been discovered as a cult item by cinephiles, even though Joan looks hideous in the most garish make-up I’ve ever seen. 

Devotees of bad cinema can tune in at 6:15 pm to catch Joan in the unintentionally hilarious Torch Song from 1953, her first Technicolor film and first musical in about 20 years. She was 50 when she made this campy stink bomb, old enough to know not to parade around in blackface.

At 2:00 am Joan is a rehabilitated axe murderer who comes home to more of the same in William Castle’s Strait-Jacket (1964). Has Joan regressed or is someone trying to drive her back to the nuthouse? It’s followed at 3:45 am by yet another showing of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). Give it a rest, people.