TCM TiVo ALERT
For
June
8–June 14
DAVID’S
BEST BETS:
CAPTAIN
BLOOD (June 13,
4:00 pm): The movie that
launched the career of Errol Flynn as a swashbuckling icon
is not only historically important, but is an excellent film. The
cast is top-notch with Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone,
Guy Kibbee and Lionel Atwill. Flynn is Dr. Peter
Blood, condemned to a Jamaican plantation to serve out a sentence for
treating an English rebel. When the Spanish invade Jamaica, the fun
and the action begins. Blood leads a prison rebellion with the men
stealing a Spanish ship – the Spaniards are busy looting the town –
and later the French on his way to becoming a hero when England is
overthrown by William of Orange. Flynn is as dashing as you'll see
him on screen showing great charisma during the fight scenes, though
he needed work at times with dialogue. Flynn and de Havilland are
perfect together without being over-the-top in the romance
department, and of course, Rathbone is outstanding.
A
FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (June
13, 8:00 pm): The first of the brilliant "Spaghetti
Westerns" trilogy, starring Clint Eastwood as "The Man With
No Name" (an undertaker calls him Joe, but his real name is
never revealed) and directed by Sergio Leone, is a rip-off
of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (also
a great movie). What a great rip-off! Eastwood is a stranger who also
happens to be an excellent gunslinger who comes to a small Mexican
town that's in the middle of a long and bloody feud between
the Rojo brothers and the Baxter family.
Eastwood's character sees an opportunity for money – as he
does in the two other Leone's Westerns in which he stars – by
"working" as a gun-for-hire for both. The 1964 film is
funny, clever, action-packed and tells a great story. This film
changed the face of Westerns, proving a blood-and-guts hard-hitting
style could be great.
ED’S
BEST BETS:
ISLAND
OF LOST SOULS (June 8, 3:30 am): A gruesome and
unsettling adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The Island of
Dr. Moreau starring Charles Laughton at his
most fiendish as a 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 his creations give Moreau a
taste of his own medicine. Banned in England, many film historians
credit it with helping to speed enforcement of the Code.
DRESSED
TO KILL (June 13, 8:30 am): No, it’s not the
highly overrated 1980 Brian DePalma film, but rather the
last of the Sherlock Holmes series from Universal in 1946. Holmes and
Watson (Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce) are racing to
recover stolen 5-pound bank note plates from associates of the jailed
thief that stole them. The key to the location of the plates is
hidden inside the coded tunes of three music boxes made by the thief
in Dartmoor Prison. Opposing Holmes are the
thief’s associates, led by the beautiful Patricia Morison.
It takes all of Holmes’ powers of deduction, but he’s stumped
until an inadvertent remark by Watson gives him the answer. Most
movie series end on a flat note, but Dressed to Kill only
makes us wish the duo of Rathbone and Bruce had gone on to
make more entries in the series.
WE
DISAGREE ON ... ADVISE AND
CONSENT (June 9, 3:30 pm)
ED:
B-. In the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, the “insider”
political drama was all the rage, giving the appearance of genuine
insight into the goings-on in Washington. This movie, based on
Allan Drury’s 1959 potboiler, Advise and Consent,
becomes just another overwrought melodrama under the direction of
noted Hollywood hack, Otto Preminger. The plot concerns the
appointment of controversial Robert Leffingwell (Henry
Fonda) as Secretary of State. Leffingwell lies about being
a former Commie during his confirmation hearing later admitting to
the president (Franchot Tone) that it’s true, the result
of a youthful indiscretion. It gets worse from there, with
accusations and political blackmail about another
senator’s homosexual encounter during the war. The film is
tedious, only coming to life in the climax when the vote is taken for
confirmation. The voting ends in a deadlock, leaving it to the vice
president (Lew Ayres) to cast the deciding vote, but a couple of
surprises keep the audience involved until the end. Despite its
promise of muckraking, the film is a quiet and timid look at the
machinations of the political process. It really scored a low with
its stereotyping of homosexuality, as the persecutional fervor
undercuts the film’s aim of exposing and attacking
witch-hunting. The viewpoint of the film is that, a few bad apples
aside, the system works just fine, letting the system off all too
easily. This timidity makes it seem hopelessly dated and wastes
excellent performances why the stars.
.
DAVID:
A-. This
1962 film about the confirmation process of a secretary of state
nominee (Henry Fonda) was ahead of its time. Having the president
(Franchot Tone) dying while the proceedings are occurring
is overdramatic, but the storyline rings true with politics of
later years that saw and still see numerous presidential nominees
have their entire lives scrutinized just for the sake of partisanship
and not for the betterment of the country. The cut-throat style
of politics shown in this film is about as authentic as it
gets. It relies a lot on dialogue, but the script is
so good that it elevates the quality of the film. Add the
excellent all-star cast – Fonda, Lew Ayres,
Charles Laughton, Walter Pidgeon, Peter Lawford and
Burgess Meredith (in a small but memorable role) – and
great directing by Otto Preminger, who makes the viewer feel
like a Washington insider, and you get a film
that's interesting, intelligent and compelling.
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