TCM TiVo Alert for October 23-31

TCM TiVo ALERT

For

October 23–October 31

DAVID’S BEST BETS:

HANNAH AND HER SISTERS (October 23, 10:15 pm): In this 1986 Woody Allen film, Mia Farrow is Hannah, whose husband (played by Michael Caine), falls in love with one of her sisters, a free-spirit (Barbara Hershey). Woody, as Hannah's ex-husband, steals every scene as a hypochondriac convinced he's going to die. He ends up with Hannah's other sister (Dianne Wiest). The acting is spectacular, with Caine winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and Wiest for Best Supporting Actress, and an all-star cast. 

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (October 26, 2:00 am): It's horrifying in parts, but the story is told so well and the acting is superb. Alex (Malcolm McDowell) is the leader of the Droogs, a gang of thugs who get high on drug-laced milk and then terrorize London with "a little of the old ultraviolence," They brutally beat up, rape and/or kill arbitrary people for kicks (pun intended). The scenes are graphic, but some include a bit of entertainment. You'll never hear the song "Singin' in the Rain" the same way again. Alex is caught by the authorities and agrees to go through a process to remove his violent behavior by being repeatedly exposed to graphically violent scenes. He's then sent out into the world without the ability to defend himself, and payback is a bitch. Director Stanley Kubrick points the finger at people and government for society's violence and its failings. It's very well done, but be warned again, it's deeply disturbing. 

ED’S BEST BETS:

CURSE OF THE DEMON (October 24, midnight): A wonderful old-fashioned horror thriller concerning anthropologist Dr. John Holden (Dana Andrews) who made his reputation debunking the occult. He is about to meet his match in the persona of one Julian Karswell (Niall MacGinnis), a practitioner of the black arts much in the style of Alistair Crowley. Those who he perceives as a threat are slipped a small parchment and are later visited by one of the scariest and best monsters in the history of film. But this is more than a mere horror film. It’s a wonderful give and take between the skeptical Holden and the sinister Karswell. The audience is sucked right into the film from the beginning when a colleague of Holden’s, Dr. Harrington (Maurice Denham) gets his when the monster drops in on him. And remember, “It’s in the trees! It’s coming!” (Which Kate Bush sampled for her song “The Hounds of Love.”) Don’t miss this one – it’s a genuine classic of the genre.

THE OLD DARK HOUSE (October 31, 8:00 pm): Director James Whale’s dark comedy about a group of travelers (Charles Laughton, Gloria Stuart, Lillian Bond & Melvyn Douglas) who are stranded at the home of the eccentric Femm family (headed by the marvelous Ernest Thesiger) and their butler, Morgan (Boris Karloff), during a storm. As the night progresses the stranded guests are treated to unnerving banter among the Femms, dark family secrets, and several attempted murders. There’s even a psychotic Femm locked upstairs in a room. After a so-so theatrical run the studio shelved the film and over the years it was considered lost. But in 1968 director Curtis Harrington, Whale’s protege, located it and convinced Kodak to restore it to its original form. It is now considered a masterpiece of horror and comedy.

WE DISAGREE ON ... SOYLENT GREEN (October 26, 4:30 am)

ED: B. I like science fiction movies in general, and while I liked Soylent Green, I can’t go higher than a B. The pluses are a solid story and an unforgettable performance by Edward G. Robinson in his last film. On the other hand, there are the minuses. First and foremost is Charlton Heston. If Soylent Green were made from wood, Chuck would have gone under 10 minutes into the movie. Bricks show more emotion. Not that Chuck gets much support. Chuck Connors makes Heston look like De Niro and Leigh Taylor-Young has mastered the craft of Not Acting. Also, the direction is lacking. Richard Fleischer would never be my choice to direct such a film. He’s more comfortable with the likes of Mandingo, Amityville 3-D, and Red Sonja. And yet another reason for my grade is that the screenplay is on the verge of ridiculous. I agree – most sci-fi scripts are ridiculous: gigantic ants, monsters from the sea, etc., but it’s the logic contained within the script that makes it passable. Soylent Green has a great idea for a plot – it doesn’t get any better than an overpopulated Earth in the future with a food shortage – but the screenplay fails to follow through. Point of basic logic: if the world was that bad in the future, would we see that kind of boom in the population? And this is New York; shouldn’t there be more Asians and Hispanics in the mix. Check out Blade Runner by comparison. One last point: If, at the end, we’re going to raise people for food, what are we going to feed them? It’s an entertaining movie with a terrific performance by Eddie G., but it’s not the stuff of greatness.

DAVID: A+. Charlton Heston was certainly wooden in a number of pictures, but he was the master of the epic – Ben-Hur, El Cid and The Ten Commandments – and even better in what I call his "Post-Apocalyptic Trilogy" – Planet of the Apes, The Omega Man, and Soylent Green. In the latter film, Heston plays tough New York City Police Detective Robert Thorn in the year 2022. Something awful has happened that has resulted in almost no fresh food or water (only the very wealthy and/or politically-connected are able to obtain some). There are serious problems with the death of most animals and plant-life, overpopulation, poverty, pollution and people surviving on wafers provided by the Soylent Corp., which comes out with a new "high-energy plankton" called Soylent Green. It's supposed to be better than Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow, though they all look like plastic.(Regarding Ed's questions about overpopulation, one explanation is with everyone poor, out of work and nothing to do, there is one thing you can do for free to pass the time: unprotected sex. And since we don't know what happened to cause famine, it could have been particularly fatal to certain races.) As a cop, Thorn has some perks, primarily a tiny apartment that he shares with Sol Roth (Edward G. Robinson), an elderly scholar who remembers what life was like before the environmental disasters (likely caused by mankind). Thorn is investigating the murder of a high-level Soylent executive (Joseph Cotten in a far too small role). Thorn immediately suspects a conspiracy is the cause of the murder. While at the murder scene, an expensive apartment complex, Heston lifts fresh food, including a small steak and some fruit. One of the most joyous moments in the film has Thorn and Roth eating the food with the latter talking about the old days. Eddie G.'s performance, sadly his last, is one of his finest. It's beautifully tragic, and even though I've seen the film a dozen times, the scene in which Eddie G. goes to a place called "Home," a government-assisted suicide facility that looks like Madison Square Garden, always brings tears to my eyes. Heston is outstanding as the tough cop who defies orders from his superiors and fends off attempts to kill him by Soylent assassins in his pursuit of solving the murder. Most of the last 30 minutes of the film contains no dialogue. It goes from Eddie G.'s suicide scene (Heston says he knew his co-star was dying in real life and the reactions he has to the death were also real) to Thorn following Roth's body and others onto a truck heading to a Soylent factory, where the detective finds out how Green is made, to the chase scene that ends up in a church/homeless shelter where an injured and possibly dying Thorn screams, "Soylent Green is people! We gotta stop them somehow!" It's a magnificent film that you can watch over and over again without it losing any of its impact.

For the complete list of films on the TCM TiVo Alert, click here.