TCM Genre movies schedule...

[Harvey]

Klaus wrote:

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I didn't realize there were restored sections to The Thing... what parts?

I think they've been restored for a few years now -- at least since the 2003 DVD release. Link here.

[Klaus]

ty! I've not seen it in years, and I don't think I've seen any of those.... have to check it out.

[RJDiogenes]

Actually, I think I have seen that cut....

[Klaus]

Anybody live near Kennedy Space Center? Or the ISS?

TCM to Screen ‘Forbidden Planet’ on Land and on the Space Station

[Christopher]

Could I request that this thread be pinned? It seems to have become a pretty regular feature, and it's a bit hard to track down when it falls off the main page (since the natural search term would be "TCM" but the board's search engine can't handle anything shorter than four characters).


Tonight at 8 Eastern is the 1932 The Mummy with Boris Karloff. It's the kickoff of an "Egyptian Antiquities" night and is followed by Charlie Chan in Egypt (which isn't really genre, unless you count the mystery genre) at 9:30 and Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy at 11.

Otherwise for the week, we've got Fail Safe (1964) at noon Monday, and then a horror marathon Wednesday night:

8 PM: The Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933)
9:30 PM: Doctor X (1932)
11 PM: Mark of the Vampire (1935)
12:15 AM: House of Dracula (1945)
1:30 AM: Zombies of Mora Tau (1957)
2:45 AM: Night of the Living Dead (1968)
4:30 AM: I Walked With a Zombie (1943)

Then more horror/supernatural stuff on Friday (gee, must be October):

9 AM: The Reptile 1966
10:30 AM: The Curse of the Cat People (1944)
11:45 AM: The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959)
1:15 PM: I Married a Witch (1942) (this one's a comedy)
2:45 PM: Curse of the Demon (1958)
4:30 PM: The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964)

And on Friday at 6 PM we get Harryhausen's last Sinbad movie, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger from 1977.

Saturday night at 8 PM, also from '77 but representing a different generation of genre filmmakers and FX artists, is Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which for some reason TCM's schedule classifies as horror.

The following week, we have two versions of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on consecutive days: the 1932 Fredric March version on Monday 10/8 at 6 AM and the 1941 Spencer Tracy version on Tuesday 10/9 at 9:45 AM.

Then on Wednesday 10/10 it's another horror marathon (I guess we'll get one per week):

8 PM: The Haunting ('63)
10 PM: The Uninvited ('44)
Midnight: House on Haunted Hill ('59)
1:30 AM: Dead of Night ('45)
3:30 AM: The Innocents ('61)
5:15 AM: 13 Ghosts ('60) (not the Scooby-Doo version)

And on Saturday 10/13:

10:15 AM: Prehistoric Women ('67)
Noon: Jungle Jim in the Forbidden Land ('52)

[Greg Cox]

Thanks for posting that all in one spot. I've seen practically all of those before, but there's plenty of fun films there.

(Although, I admit, I was hoping for some of the more esoteric Hammer Films this time around, like maybe Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde or Twins of Evil.)

[Mr. Adventure]

Believe it or not, I've never actually seen Close Encounters, I think I'll set the DVR for that one.

[Ar-Pharazon]

Mr. Adventure wrote:

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Believe it or not, I've never actually seen Close Encounters, I think I'll set the DVR for that one.

I've only ever seen it once all the way through. Same for ET.

This would be a good one to see in all it's remastered glory on blu-ray.

[Prince of Space]

TCM will be showing horror/sci-fi movies every Wednesday in October, as well as all day on Halloween. Also, The Phantom of the Opera (1925) will be on Sunday the 28th.

[Christopher]

Well, The Mummy wasn't at all what I expected. Karloff was only wrapped in bandages for one scene, and was barely seen moving in that form. I guess the cliche image of the shambling, bandage-wrapped mummy comes more from the later films made in the '40s. Here, Imhotep spent most of the film in human disguise and was a very Dracula-like figure, using his hypnotic powers to dominate the will of the leading lady so as to make her his.

It was weird that the flashback sequences were undercranked like a silent movie. I always figured that the sped-up nature of the silent movies we've seen comes from playing them back at the later standard of 24 frames per second when originally they were presumably screened at a lower frame rate matching what they were filmed in (18 fps?). But this was made early enough in the era of talkies that people would've remembered the original playback speed -- yet here the flashbacks are deliberately undercranked, implying that even then, silent films were commonly perceived as playing faster than normal. I don't know what to make of that. (I wonder if it was done to give the flashback scenes a sense of being old, the way that later color films would do flashbacks in black and white or with a sepia tinge.)

[Greg Cox]

Christopher wrote:

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Well, The Mummy wasn't at all what I expected. Karloff was only wrapped in bandages for one scene, and was barely seen moving in that form. I guess the cliche image of the shambling, bandage-wrapped mummy comes more from the later films made in the '40s. Here, Imhotep spent most of the film in human disguise and was a very Dracula-like figure, using his hypnotic powers to dominate the will of the leading lady so as to make her his.

Oh yeah, the original Mummy is very much an Egyptian-flavored riff on Dracula, right down to Edward Van Sloan as Imhotep's scholarly antagonist. (He also played Van Helsing in the Lugosi Dracula.)

The whole shambling mummy thing came later, with The Mummy's Hand, which was the first of the "Kharis" series. The Mummy's Hand is basically a reboot of "The Mummy" (using some of the same flashback sequences) that gets a lot more mileage out of the bandaged Mummy makeup.

[Mr. Adventure]

Christopher wrote:

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It was weird that the flashback sequences were undercranked like a silent movie. I always figured that the sped-up nature of the silent movies we've seen comes from playing them back at the later standard of 24 frames per second when originally they were presumably screened at a lower frame rate matching what they were filmed in (18 fps?). But this was made early enough in the era of talkies that people would've remembered the original playback speed -- yet here the flashbacks are deliberately undercranked, implying that even then, silent films were commonly perceived as playing faster than normal. I don't know what to make of that. (I wonder if it was done to give the flashback scenes a sense of being old, the way that later color films would do flashbacks in black and white or with a sepia tinge.)

I've read that the playback rate was governed by the guy cranking the camera and that there wasn't a set standard until sound came along and required synchronization. Sometimes these things are apocryphal but it sounds reasonable.

[Greg Cox]

Oh, a quick bit of research confirms that the screenplay of The Mummy was written by John Balderston, the co-writer of the original Broadway stage adaptation of Dracula, and who also contributed to the screenplay of the Lugosi movie.

So any similarities to Dracula are hardly coincidental!

[Agent Richard07]

Christopher wrote:

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Otherwise for the week, we've got Fail Safe (1964) at noon Monday...

They aired that one a few weeks ago. After seeing that I decided to get the 2000 remake with George Clooney and an all-star cast. That too was shot in black & white and had pretty much the same sets and dialogue.

[RJDiogenes]

That's a great schedule. I've seen most of them and have many on DVD, but I'm looking forward to seeing The Reptile and Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake. There's also a 1936 comedy on Friday morning called Mummy's Boys that I want to see.

Greg Cox wrote:

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Oh, a quick bit of research confirms that the screenplay of The Mummy was written by John Balderston, the co-writer of the original Broadway stage adaptation of Dracula, and who also contributed to the screenplay of the Lugosi movie.

So any similarities to Dracula are hardly coincidental!

I'm trying to remember something I read about the original Mummy movie-- maybe that it originally wasn't even a Mummy, but more of an immortal being, like Richard Anderson in Night Strangler. I'll have to research when I get a minute....