TCM
TiVo ALERT
For
June
23-June 30
DAVID’S
BEST BETS:
TOP
HAT (June
23, 1:00 pm): As a general rule, I don't like musicals,
especially those with dancing. (Don't confuse that with movies with
great music in which people don't suddenly break out in song. I like
a lot of those.) So what's different about Top
Hat?
At the top of the list is Fred Astaire. As with most musicals, the
plot is secondary. He's a dancer who wakes up the woman (Ginger
Rogers) living in an apartment below him with his tap dancing.
He falls in love, there are a few misunderstandings, and the two
eventually get together. Astaire has great charisma and charm, and
his dancing is so natural looking. He makes it look as easy as
walking. The storyline is typical of a good screwball comedies from
the 1930s (this one came out in 1935). But it's the dancing and the
memorable songs, written by Irving Berlin, such as "Cheek to
Cheek" and "Top Hat, White Tie and Tails," that
make this movie a must-see and among my favorite musicals.
CAGED (June
26, 2:45 pm): Unlike nearly all the others in the unusual but
often-visited women-in-prison film genre, Caged is
well acted. Eleanor Parker was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar as
the young innocent Marie Allen, Agnes Moorehead is great as
warden Ruth Benton, and Hope Emerson was nominated for a Best
Supporting Actress Oscar as the deliciously evil matron Evelyn
Harper. Almost anything bad you can imagine happens to Marie: her
new husband is killed in a robbery, she ends up in prison because she
is waiting in the getaway car, she's pregnant while serving her
sentence, she's victimized by other inmates and Harper, she has to
give up her baby for adoption, and finally becomes bitter and
hardened from all of her bad experiences. The story is similar to
other women-in-prison movies minus the T&A. We still get a shower
scene (no nudity as this is during the Code era) and the
stereotypical prison lesbian. But there's a huge difference
between Caged and the women-in-prison films of the
1970s. It's not only the excellent acting, but the powerful dialogue
and actual plot – it was nominated for a Best Writing
Oscar – that makes this gritty, stark, realistic film
stand out among others in the genre.
ED’S
BEST BETS:
THE
POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (June 27, 12:30 pm): This
is the original – and the best – version of James M. Cain’s
classic novel (which also inspired Albert Camus, by the way). When it
comes to noir, one would think that the MGM gloss was
off-putting, but I think it actually helps the film. Garfield has
never been better and Turner has never been more gorgeous. Not only
can we see that they’re going to hook up, we can understand why
they must hook up. The performances from the supporting cast are
superb, the photography by Sidney Wagner is sharp and inviting, and
Tay Garnett’s direction workmanlike, as he keeps the characters and
the story in constant play. Despite the complaints of the changes in
Cain’s original story (for censorship purposes), the film still
outdoes the 1981 Nicholson-Lange remake in terms of the heat between
the stars, not to mention the fact that Turner, while hardly a
serious actress, ran rings around Lange’s performance.
ISLAND
OF LOST SOULS (June 28, 2:15 pm): A gruesome and
unsettling adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr.
Moreau starring Charles Laughton at his most fiendish as the
mad doctor isolated on a remote island who is conducting experiments
transforming jungle animals ostensibly into human brings, but in
reality coming up with half-human abominations. Moreau's theory is
that evolution can be sped up through experimental skin grafting. The
man-beasts who populate the island know his laboratory as “the
house of pain.” When Richard Arlen, the sole survivor of a
shipwreck, arrives at the island Moreau wastes no time in trying to
mate him with his most successful creation, a panther woman (Kathleen
Burke). But Moreau’s empire comes crashing down after the arrival
of Captain Donahue (Paul Hurst) and Parker's fiancee Ruth (Leila
Hyams) who have come for the missing Arlen. The finale is equally
gruesome as Moreau gets a taste of his own medicine from his
creations. Banned in England, many film historians credit it with
helping to speed enforcement of the Code.
WE
AGREE ON ... THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME (June 28, 1:00 pm)
ED:
A.
The original, and of the 18 remakes (!), still the best version based
on the classic short story by Richard Connell. Said to be the second
most used plot device (boy meets girl is the first), it’s about
psychopathic hunter Count Zaroff (Leslie Banks), who has hunted every
species on earth except for one: Man. On his isolated island,
surrounded by coral reefs, he hunts any luckless person who happens
to crash on his shores, adding them to his trophy case. When renowned
big-game hunter Robert Rainsford (Joel McCrea) is marooned there, the
game takes on a new life, as McCrea finds himself turned from honored
guest to hunted prey. Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong are brother and
sister, previous shipwreck survivors who are kept on the estate at
Zaroff’s pleasure. Director Ernest B. Schoedsack keeps the action
and the suspense moving without a let up. (Irving Pichel is listed as
co-director, but it was Schoedsack’s film. Pichel worked more as a
dialogue director.) Banks makes an excellent Zaroff, and when
photographed at certain angles by cinematographer Henry W. Gerrard,
he makes for an even more disturbing presence. (Banks had been
wounded in the First World War resulting in a partially paralyzed
face on his right side.) McCrea is his usual excellent self and Wray
adds the required sex appeal. If the sets look somewhat familiar, it
should come as no surprise, for the film was shot at the same time
as King Kong (which
was released later due to the time needed for special effects). One
reason Schoedsack was interested in making the film was to show the
futility and cruelty of hunting, and what better way for him to make
his point? A note to bad film fans: Bloodlust,
the 1961 remake, is featured as an episode of Mystery
Science Theater 3000.
DAVID:
A. This is a
fast-moving 63-minute movie that has famous big-game hunter and
writer Bob Rainsford (Joel McCrea) on the other end of the hunt. He
is the lone survivor of a yacht that wrecks – we later find out
it's not the first and it's no accident – and blows up in a pretty
good bit of special effects for a 1932 film. After everyone else on
the yacht is eaten by sharks, Rainsford ends up swimming ashore to a
small island owned by Russian expatriate Count Zaroff (played
deliciously evil by Leslie Banks), who lives there with a few
henchmen and a pack of hunting dogs. Zaroff recognizes Rainsford and
introduces him to two other previously shipwrecked guests, siblings
Eve Trowbridge (Fay Wray) and her very drunk and clueless brother
Martin (Robert Armstrong). That Martin gets it about 25 minutes or so
into the film is a good thing as Armstrong's drunk schtick is the
lone annoyance of this film. It turns out Zaroff is also a big game
hunter, hunting the biggest game of all – he says ominously as he
rubs the scar on the top of his head – man. He wants Rainsford to
join him, but Rainsford is outraged and refuses. So the would-be
hunter becomes the hunted. He and Eve are sent to the jungle to see
if they can survive what Zaroff calls "outdoor chess." The
action during the hunting part of the movie, filmed at night on
the King Kong set, is nonstop and a lot of fun to
watch. As Ed wrote, the storyline has been remade countless times,
including episodes of TV comedies Gilligan's Island and Get
Smart.
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