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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