TCM Genre movies schedule...

Discussion in 'Science Fiction & Fantasy' started by Klaus, Sep 27, 2011.

  1. Agent Richard07

    Agent Richard07 Admiral Admiral

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    Interesting. I didn't know that Gene had gone that far on a regular basis.

    As for JoAnna Cameron, I was reading some other stuff last night that suggests that perhaps the 'casting couch' aspect of Hollywood eventually got to her and she left. Maybe that's more speculation though. The other theory I read is that she got typecast. As what? How? Don't know. People fall out of acting for a number of reasons, so who knows what happened.
     
  2. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    July schedule:

    WED 7/2 - THU 7/3: It's a "Talk to the Animals" theme night.
    8:00 PM: Francis (1950): Aka Francis the Talking Mule.
    9:45 PM: Doctor Dolittle ('67)
    12:30 AM: The Day of the Dolphin ('73): Mike Nichols film with George C. Scott and Paul Sorvino, scripted by Buck Henry.
    2:30 AM: Black Moon ('75): Some kind of weird surrealist French thing directed by Louis Malle.
    4:30 AM: The Raven ('63): Roger Corman's horror-comedy take on the Poe poem, with Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, and Boris Karloff.

    THU 7/3
    12:45 PM: Village of the Damned ('61)
    6:00 PM: The Picture of Dorian Gray ('45): With a young Angela Lansbury!

    SAT 7/5
    Noon: Attack of the 50 Foot Woman ('58)

    SUN 7/6: Harryhausen double feature!
    8:00 PM: Jason and the Argonauts ('63)
    10:00 PM: The 7th Voyage of Sinbad ('58)

    SAT 7/12
    Noon: Queen of Outer Space ('58)

    TUE 7/15
    11:15 PM: Sinbad the Sailor ('47): With Douglas Fairbanks. Not really any genre elements, aside from Sinbad being a mythological character.

    SAT 7/19
    Noon: The Wasp Woman ('59)

    SUN 7/20
    2:00 AM: The Visitor ('79): Arty film about cosmic forces of good and evil battling over a telekinetic girl. WIth Mel Ferrer, Glenn Ford, John Huston, and a young Lance Henriksen -- plus Sam Peckinpah and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar?
    3:45 AM: Tentacles ('77): John Huston, Shelley Winters, and Henry Fonda vs. a man-eating giant octopus.

    MON 7/21
    2:00 AM: World on a Wire ('73): Originally Welt am Draht, an obscure early VR-themed film made for television by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Sounds a bit Matrix-y in concept.

    SAT 7/26
    Noon: Valley of the Dragons ('61): They've shown this one before, a B-movie taking the premise of a Jules Verne story about people being transported to a comet and using it to set up an iguanas-as-dinosaurs movie.
    6:00 PM: King Solomon's Mines ('50)
    8:00 PM: Metropolis ('26)

    SUN 7/27
    12:45 AM: The Mummy ('32): Karloff!
    8:00 PM: Cat People ('42)
    9:30 PM: Curse of the Cat People ('44): Which I gather is not a sequel or even a horror film, despite the title.

    MON 7/28
    11:45 PM: The Seventh Seal ('57): Ingmar Bergman movie about chess or something...
     
  3. Greg Cox

    Greg Cox Admiral Premium Member

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    Thanks again for posting this. Some annotations:

    The Raven: Obligatory shout-out to Richard Matheson, who wrote the script. Fun movie.

    Curse of the Cat People: Worth checking out, although it is only tenuously connected to the original movie and involves no supernatural cat people whatsoever. If you're expecting a sequel to Cat People, you'll be disappointed, but if you ignore the title, it's a fascinating and poetic look at childhood. Also, I believe, the directorial debut of Robert Wise, who later went on to direct The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Andromeda Strain, The Haunting, The Sound of Music, West Side Story, and, of course, Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
     
  4. RJDiogenes

    RJDiogenes Idealistic Cynic and Canon Champion Premium Member

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    Hmm. Mostly stuff they've shown before, and not too long ago. There's a couple of things from the late 70s that don't sound familiar, oddly enough, and the French surrealist one might be interesting.

    I missed Pretty Maids All In A Row, but, fortunately, it's on On Demand.
     
  5. Mr. Adventure

    Mr. Adventure Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Queen of Outer Space is a fun piece of fluff. From the uniforms and costumes pinched from Forbidden Planet to all the 50's gams and pulchritude on display. It all looks absolutely fantastic in widescreen Cinemascope HD on TCM.

    It at least acknowledges that it's scientifically inaccurate in its depiction of Venus. As with all these women-only movies you wonder why these ladies would ever want the pigs they're offered, I guess when you're the only men in the world you have some leverage. The commander and doctor aren't bad but the two crewmen ("Watch it, doll!") are pretty bad though it seems that's perhaps done with a knowing wink.

    Marvel at the giant spider (which honestly is done as well as any from that era), the surprisingly nasty charred remains of the queen after she's disposed and more (did I mention all those 50's legs on display?). I thought Zsa Zsa was wasted as the love interest, she should've been the mean queen for sure. There's also a "televiewer" that looks remarkably like a very stylish modern bezelless HDTV (painted gold...).

    All in all a lot of good silly retro fun.
     
  6. RJDiogenes

    RJDiogenes Idealistic Cynic and Canon Champion Premium Member

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    ^^ And the televiewer emitted a very 90s modem sound when it connected. :D Yeah, Queen of Outer Space is definitely a classic B-Movie. Lots of fun.

    I also saw Black Moon a week or so ago. Surrealist indeed, and almost hypnotically so. And it turns out that girl was only about sixteen when it was made. Gotta love the French.
     
  7. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Here we go again. It's a thin month for SF/fantasy on TCM, so I'm including some very borderline things.

    FRI 8/1
    5:45 PM: The China Syndrome ('79): Cautionary tale of a nuclear-plant accident, released just two weeks before the Three Mile Island incident.

    SAT 8/2
    10:00 PM: Around the World in 80 Days ('56)

    MON 8/4
    12:30 AM: Forbidden Planet ('56)

    TUE 8/5
    4:30 AM: Gay Purr-ee ('62): Animated musical produced and co-written by Chuck Jones. Only animated role of Judy Garland, and feature debut of Robert Goulet.

    WED 8/6
    4:00 PM: Angel on My Shoulder ('46): Reincarnation fantasy that's been shown before.

    TUE 8/12
    6:00 AM: The Horn Blows at Midnight ('45): Wow, TCM can't get enough of this one, can they?

    FRI 8/22
    1:30 AM: Doctor X ('32): Pre-Code horror film about cannibalistic murders, directed by Casablanca's Michael Curtiz (in two-tone Technicolor) and starring Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray.

    SAT 8/23
    4:00 AM: Robin and Marian ('76): Sean Connery as an older Robin Hood.

    WED 8/27
    4:15 AM: Ghosts - Italian Style ('69): Actually Questi-Fantasmi, an Italian haunted-castle film with Sophia Loren.
    6:00 AM: The Hunchback of Notre Dame ('39)
    11:15 PM: Seven Days in May ('64): Then-near-future cautionary tale about an American military coup.

    THU 8/28
    8:00 PM: Journey to the Center of the Earth ('59)


    Also of interest might be a Charlie Chaplin marathon all day Thursday the 14th, and Richard Lester's The Three Musketeers at 8 PM on the 15th (though its sequel -- actually the second half of what was shot as a single film -- is not on the schedule).
     
  8. RJDiogenes

    RJDiogenes Idealistic Cynic and Canon Champion Premium Member

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    That's a thin schedule, all right. I have Forbidden Planet on DVD, of course, (several times over) and I'm pretty sure I have Doctor X. There's really nothing else I'm anxious to see, except maybe Seven Days In May.
     
  9. Klaus

    Klaus Vice Admiral Admiral

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    It's always thin in August because of "Summer Under the Stars"... which other than the lack of genre content is one of my favorite months of their calendar.
     
  10. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    It's paradoxical that something called "Summer Under the Stars" would be lacking in movies about outer space... ;)
     
  11. Klaus

    Klaus Vice Admiral Admiral

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  12. Greg Cox

    Greg Cox Admiral Premium Member

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    That would be "Summer Beyond the Stars."
     
  13. Sto-Vo-Kory

    Sto-Vo-Kory Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    ^You're in for a treat. Seven Days in May is a fantastic movie.
     
  14. Klaus

    Klaus Vice Admiral Admiral

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    That it is, and a little extra scary in our current hyperpartisan climate. :eek:
     
  15. RJDiogenes

    RJDiogenes Idealistic Cynic and Canon Champion Premium Member

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    ^^ Yeah, it is scary how prescient some of the old cautionary tales are.

    Indeed, I'm looking forward to it.
     
  16. Noname Given

    Noname Given Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I personally would still have to ask (and I loved 'Seven Days in May' from the first time I saw it - Kirk and Burt at the top of their game); why is it considered a 'genre' film in that it's not science fiction; and not a 'fantasy' beyond the fact that its just a dramatic/political fiction film (and a good one too)?
     
  17. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Just finished watching Cat People and Curse of the Cat People. They're an interesting pair. The same cast, the same producer and writer, but two very different films, one a psychological horror film with supernatural aspects, the other a more contemplative tale about childhood fantasies. As a pair, they make for some interesting ambiguities. If everything Amy experienced in Curse was her runaway imagination, is it possible that Irena's cat transformations in the former film were really just her own delusions after all? Alternatively, could it be that Irena's ghost really did come to watch over Amy as some sort of redemptive act?

    I also wonder about Elizabeth Russell. In the first film, she appeared briefly as the "catlike" Serbian woman who called Irena "sestra" ("sister," as all Orphan Black fans know) -- implicitly one of the witchy cat people Irena believed herself to be one of. (And it's interesting that she looked so much like Julie Newmar.) But in the second, she has a much bigger role as the estranged daughter of the elderly actress, with no evident relation to her role in the first film. If we follow the lead of Curse and assume nothing truly supernatural happened in the former, it doesn't seem likely that Barbara Farren would've been speaking Serbian to a woman she mistook for her sister somehow. Although, conversely, if we assume the first film was real, it's not out of the question that Barbara could be one of the cat people; since she wasn't in a relationship with a man, there was nothing to trigger it. Although she was pretty unhappy, and that was supposed to set it off too, I think. Ahh, I guess it works better if we assume they're unrelated.

    One thing I'm not clear on is about the psychiatrist in the first film. What was his motivation for the things he did? Was he just a creep out to take sexual advantage of his patient? Or was he supposed to be sincerely trying to determine the truth of her cat-person nature, in a way that seems creepy in retrospect but wasn't seen that way at the time?

    The casting was pretty good in these films. Simone Simon was lovely and effective at being both adorable and eerie (fitting for a cat woman). And Ann Carter was luminous and ethereal as little Amy in the sequel, with a thousand-mile stare that really fit her character. Kent Smith was charming enough in a bland sort of way as Oliver, though he became kind of a jerk to his daughter in the second film, even though it's somewhat understandable given his fears about Amy turning out like Irena. But at least he learned he was being a jerk, once the teacher set him straight.

    (I noticed something in these films that I've also noticed in listening to the Superman radio serial from the '40s, which is how progressive and forward-looking America, or at least its media culture, considered itself to be at the time. A lot was still backward compared to today, but there was this sense that they were moving into the future, embracing modern science and medicine and reason and conquering old superstitions and fears -- as in the characters of Cat People embracing psychiatry as a modern solution, or the teacher in Curse talking sense into Ollie by telling him what the books say about how children should be raised. It's almost the template for Star Trek's Federation, this very optimistic and activist society that has utter faith in the triumph of its science and its enlightened attitudes. It's an interesting contrast with today, where we're so technologically advanced and more socially advanced in many ways, but so many people are skeptical of intellectualism and progress and trying to revert to traditional beliefs or ways. In some ways, I see more modernity in those '40s productions than I do in the present day.)

    I'm also rather pleased by what, for the time, was a rather progressive portrayal of black characters. The waitress in the first film and Edward the house servant in the second were in traditional roles for the era, but weren't stereotyped or caricatured in their speech or personalities, coming off as well-spoken, likeable people.
     
  18. Sto-Vo-Kory

    Sto-Vo-Kory Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Christopher prefaced next month's list by saying that he was including some borderline genre films, since August had such a scarcity of pure genre offerings.
     
  19. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Seven Days of May came out in 1964 and was set in the 1970s; according to Wikipedia, maps and license plates in the film were dated 1970, and the 1962 novel it was based on was set in 1974. The poster tagline read "The time is 1970 or 1980 or, possibly, tomorrow." So it was a speculative work set in the future, and that makes it science fiction. (The fact that it's written by Rod Serling and scored by Jerry Goldsmith makes it of additional interest to genre fans.)
     
  20. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Not a genre movie, but I just watched Richard Lester's The Three Musketeers (just hours before tonight's BBC America episode of The Musketeers, based on the same source). I wasn't too impressed by the movie, which is practically an attempt to turn the Musketeers into the Marx Brothers, only without the witty dialogue. All the constant slapstick and swordfighting gets kind of tedious. I didn't even find Raquel Welch as lovely here as I usually do. Also, it's odd that they scheduled this under the rubric of a Faye Dunaway showcase night, because she's hardly in it.

    The Musketeers other than D'Artagnan are thinly defined, with Frank Finlay in particular leaving little impression as Porthos; but I can see that Oliver Reed's Athos was evidently the template for Tom Burke's version in the current TV series. They resemble each other strongly, aside from Reed's version being older and more heavyset. On the other hand, I found Charlton Heston rather mediocre as Richilieu; I guess I've been spoiled by Peter Capaldi.

    I'd been thinking I should track down the sequel, since technically this was only half the movie; but after seeing this much, I'm not really all that interested in the rest.