• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

TCM Genre movies schedule...

Tarzan and the Slave Girl

This was a fun entry and a bit naughty for 1950. Most of the naughtiness comes from Lola, a feisty, sassy, (not to mention, busty) girl with a French accent and shoulders like Ronda Rousey played by a game Denise Darcel who apparently got her start in burlesque and has no problem stealing the show. The movie seems to recognize this as well and plays it up. What's fun is Lola isn't a foil for Tarzan as much as she is for Jane and the two of them get a lot to do together in this one. From catfights to escaping capture (via slicing their captor with his own knife) and climbing rock walls and maybe even passing the Bechdel test it's a nice change of pace for these movies.

The script allows for things to be happening without always directly involving Tarzan himself by allowing for subplots to break up the main plot which involves a vaguely Egyptian, vaguely Roman tribe (with some outfits borrowed from Flash Gordon serials) kidnapping lovely slave girls including Jane and Lola. There's also a storyline involving a nasty disease which ends up afflicting the tribe and the ruler's son. Tarzan goes to save the girls and the tribe with a serum provided by an itinerant doctor (for whom Lola serves as his plucky nurse).

Tarzan uses his yell sparingly but I liked that made it special when it happens. It not as epic as some pictures (just an elephant or so) but it also doesn't involve a bunch of stock footage which is nice. Cheetah gets a few actually funny moments, and sorry, but Boy is not missed.

Fun matinee type fluff.
 
From Hell It Came

Stop me if you've heard this one before, natives kill their prince for becoming tainted with knowledge of western science and bury him into a log coffin. Said native AND coffin come back to life as a hybrid monster looking like a wallking log coffin merged with the face (not head) of Unicron!

There are American doctors on the island studying the effect of fallout on the islanders and interestingly for 1956 the lead female doctor is more concerned with science and her male counterparts are the ones interested in getting hitched and not wanting to mess with superstition. There's also a horny widow and the actress is having a great time chewing the scenery with her completely inauthentic English? Irish? accent. Did they imply she's Australian?

Well through a combination of mysticism and the Doctors experiments on the hybrid it has come to life to seek revenge on the island particularly on his former lover who betrayed him during his execution and the cast works to send "Tobanga" back to whence he came.

Fun if you give it a chance.
 
It’s a bit early for the July schedule, but I’ve got nothing else I feel like doing tonight, so…

TUE 7/3
8:00 PM: King Kong (’33)

THU 7/5
8:00 PM: The Blob (’58)

FRI 7/6
4:15 AM: The Swarm (’78): Michael Caine vs. killer bees.
6:15 AM: The Green Slime (’69): The cheesy Italian/Japanese monster classic.
8:00 AM: Satellite in the Sky (’56): Weak British rocketship movie.
9:30 AM: From The Earth To The Moon (’58): Jules Verne adaptation from War of the Worlds director Byron Haskin.
11:30 AM: Forbidden Planet (’56)
1:15 PM: Countdown (’68): Robert Altman’s near-future moon-landing movie, with James Caan and Robert Duvall.
3:15 PM: 2001: A Space Odyssey (’68)
6:00 PM: 2010: The Year We Make Contact (’84)

SAT 7/7
8:00 AM: Homesteader Droopy (’54): Tex Avery short.
10:00 AM: Tarzan and the She-Devil (’53): Final Lex Barker Tarzan film. They’ve stopped preceding them with Popeye shorts.
Noon: Gabriel Over the White House (’33): The creepy pro-dictatorship propaganda film again.

SUN 7/8
Noon: Here Comes Mr. Jordan (’41): Reincarnation fantasy remade in 1978 as Heaven Can Wait.
8:00 PM: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (’68): Musical adaptation of Ian Fleming’s flying-car fantasy novel, co-written by Roald Dahl and starring Dick Van Dyke.

MON 7/9
8:15 AM: Fail-Safe (’64): Sidney Lumet’s nuclear thriller with Henry Fonda and Walter Matthau.

TUE 7/10
9:45 AM: The Tell-Tale Heart (’41): 20-minute short adapting the Poe story.

FRI 7/13
6:15 AM: Dead Men Walk (’43): George Zucco vs. his resurrected evil twin.
8:30 AM: The Disembodied (’57): Jungle voodoo movie starring Allison Hayes (Attack of the 50-Foot Woman).
9:45 AM: The Plague of the Zombies (’66): Hammer horror film influential on later zombie movies.
11:30 AM: The Devil's Own (’66): Originally The Witches, Hammer witchcraft film with Joan Fontaine.
1:15 PM: I Walked With A Zombie (’43): Jacques Tourneur’s thoughtful take on voodoo.

SAT 7/14
8:00 AM: Batty Baseball (’44): Tex Avery MGM cartoon.
10:00 AM: Tarzan’s Hidden Jungle (’55): Gordon Scott takes over as Tarzan. Vera Miles co-stars, though not as Jane.

FRI 7/20
11:30 AM: The Body Snatcher (’45): Robert Wise directs Karloff & Lugosi.
2:30 PM: Doctor X (’32): Michael Curtiz-directed mad doctor movie, horror but not SF. With Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray.
4:00 PM: The Return of Doctor X (’39): Resurrection horror film with Humphrey Bogart, billed as a sequel to the above but unconnected to it.

SAT 7/21
2:30 AM: Dreamscape (’84): Psychic thriller with Dennis Quaid and Christopher Plummer.
8:00 AM or so: Old Smokey (’38): Early MGM “Captain and the Kids” short.
10:00 AM: Tarzan and the Lost Safari (’57): Gordon Scott #2, and Tarzan’s first color film.
4:00 PM: Fail-Safe (’64) again.
6:00 PM: Brainstorm (’83): Douglas Trumbull-directed virtual-reality thriller with Christopher Walken and Natalie Wood in her final role.

SUN 7/22
6:15 PM: The Phantom Tollbooth (’70): Chuck Jones-directed live action/animated adaptation of Norton Juster’s classic children’s book.

MON 7/23
6:00 AM: Gojira (’54)
7:45 AM: Godzilla, King of the Monsters (’56): American recut of Gojira with Raymond Burr. Almost a parallel film unfolding alongside the original, although Burr’s involvement does alter one or two key scenes. Watching them back-to-back could be interesting.
9:15 AM: The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters (’54): The comedy troupe faces a family of mad scientists.
11:45 AM: Phantom of the Rue Morgue (’54): Karl Malden remake of Murders in the Rue Morgue.
1:15 PM: The Black Scorpion (’57): Giant-bug horror movie with Willis O’Brien animation. Not bad, though it was riffed on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
2:45 PM: Beast from Haunted Cave (1959): Monster movie produced by Roger Corman’s brother.
4:00 PM: A Bucket of Blood (’59): Roger Corman directs Dick Miller as a murderous wannabe artist.
5:15 PM: House on Haunted Hill (’58): Vincent Price’s “spend a night in a haunted house” classic.
6:45 PM: The Killer Shrews (’59): Another MST3K-ified monster movie, this one quite bad.

SAT 7/28
8:00 AM: The Little Wise Quacker (’52): Barney Bear goes duck-hunting, if anyone cares.
10:00 AM: Tarzan’s Fight for Life (’58): Gordon Scott’s third theatrical Tarzan film in production order, although it was released after Tarzan and the Trappers, a compilation of a failed 3-part TV pilot starring Scott.
Noon: King Kong (’33) again.

MON 7/30
7:30 AM: The Seventh Victim (’43): Val Lewton Satanism thriller.
11:30 AM: Isle of the Dead (’45): Lewton vampire thriller with Karloff.
5:00 PM: Cat People (’42): Another Lewton classic.
8:00 PM: Them! (’54): Giant ants!
 
Thanks for doing this again.

One quibble regarding PLAGUE OF ZOMBIES. It's a good movie worth checking out, but I question whether it was truly that influential on later zombie movies. By contrast, it's one of the last of a dying breed: an old-fashioned voodoo-themed zombie flick of the sort that would soon be eclipsed almost entirely by your modern, flesh-eating, Romero-styled zombie. Despite the title, there is no NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD-style "plague" in the movie. It's about dead people brought back to life by voodoo to labor mindlessly in a copper mine . . ...

It's the end of an era, not a precursor of the future.
 
Seeing the original Godzilla reminds me of the first Godzilla movie I ever saw...the American Re-Cut of Godzilla 1985.

Even as cut up as it was, that scene at the start with the giant parasite louse still freaks me a little.
 
I caught Eyes of Laura Mars for the first time from TCM recently in June. Not a great movie, but very stylish, and great cast. A bearded Brad Dourif. Tommy Lee Jones on his way up.

Interesting story from John Carpenter of a fated and psychic connection between Mars and the killer. Outstanding movie poster with the glowing eyes of Mars.

Worth a look (ha ha), maybe.
 
Greg Cox said:
One quibble regarding PLAGUE OF ZOMBIES. It's a good movie worth checking out, but I question whether it was truly that influential on later zombie movies. By contrast, it's one of the last of a dying breed: an old-fashioned voodoo-themed zombie flick of the sort that would soon be eclipsed almost entirely by your modern, flesh-eating, Romero-styled zombie. Despite the title, there is no NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD-style "plague" in the movie. It's about dead people brought back to life by voodoo to labor mindlessly in a copper mine . . ...

It's the end of an era, not a precursor of the future.
Click to expand...

Well, I've never seen Plague of Zombies or even heard of it; I'm just repeating what Wikipedia said about it.
 
Christopher said:
Well, I've never seen Plague of Zombies or even heard of it; I'm just repeating what Wikipedia said about it.
Click to expand...

Figured as much. But, yeah, it's odd thing to say about a movie that was the OPPOSITE of being influential, since voodoo-themed zombie flicks pretty much died out right after it! :)

Still a fun, spooky movie with a couple of genuine shocks.
 
Greg Cox said:
Figured as much. But, yeah, it's odd thing to say about a movie that was the OPPOSITE of being influential, since voodoo-themed zombie flicks pretty much died out right after it! :)
Click to expand...

I still find it weird that "zombie" has ended up totally losing its original definition and coming to be assigned to creatures that have nothing to do with vodoun beliefs or lore. I mean, Romero didn't even call his undead creatures "zombies" -- that was a later movie that co-opted that term. I think Romero referred to his creatures as "ghouls" behind the scenes.

And then there's the whole brain-eating thing that didn't even get added to the movie lore until the 1980s but has quickly come to be seen as intrinsic. The entire meaning of the word "zombie" has metamorphosed so quickly and continued to evolve before our eyes.
 
So did anyone watch Dreamscape last Saturday? I'd never seen it, just heard of it.

It was pretty enjoyable, a good-guy counterpart to Nightmare on Elm Street. Wonder why they never made sequels.
 
CorporalCaptain said:
I had a power outage from a bad storm in the area, so I missed it this time, but I enjoyed Dreamscape when I was younger.
Click to expand...

I saw it for the first time last weekend, I was expecting some kind of horror type story from what I'd heard but it was really more sci-fi and some thriller elements than anything else.
 
I found Dreamscape streaming on ShoutFactory's site a few weeks ago, and I reviewed it on my blog:

https://christopherlbennett.wordpre...-older-movie-review-dreamscape-1984-spoilers/

I actually went into it expecting sci-fi or fantasy and found there was more of a horror flavor to it than I'd anticipated, in terms of the way it played up the characters' fears and the monsters in their nightmares. It was okay but not great, with effects that really haven't aged well and may not have been that impressive in their day either. But Christopher Plummer is terrific in it, in a role that has some interesting resonances with his later role as General Chang in Star Trek VI.
 
August:

FRI 8/3
8:00 PM: The Mystery of the Wax Museum ('33)
11:00 PM: Doctor X ('32): I think I described these two movies (both with Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray) in last month's list.

SAT 8/4
2:00 AM: The Vampire Bat ('33): Another Atwill/Wray pairing also featuring Dracula/Frankenstein hench-actor Dwight Frye. More a mad-doctor movie than a vampire movie, apparently.
3:15 AM: Mark of the Vampire ('35): Another borderline-vampire movie with Atwill, Lionel Barrymore, and Bela Lugosi, directed by Dracula's Tod Browning, remaking his silent film London After Midnight. Not sure it actually belongs on a genre-film list, but it's a slim month.

THU 8/9
4:00 PM: Fail-Safe ('64): The '60s nuclear-crisis film that isn't Dr. Strangelove.

FRI 8/17
4:00 AM: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ('32): The good verison, with Fredric March.

MON 8/20
10:00 PM: King Solomon's Mines ('50)

TUE 8/21
10:15 AM: A Midsummer Night's Dream ('35)

WED 8/22
3:15 PM: Curse of the Demon ('58): Originally Night of the Demon, a satanism thriller directed by Jacques Tourneur.

FRI 8/24
4:00 PM: The Comedy of Terrors ('64): Tourneur-directed, Richard Matheson-scripted horror comedy uniting Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, and Basil Rathbone.

SAT 8/25
3:15 AM: Mad Love ('35): The Peter Lorre mad-doctor thriller.

And that's about it. I thought I spotted Douglas Trumbull's Brainstorm on the schedule (Thu 8/23 at 3:45 AM), but it's actually a 1965 thriller of the same name, whose only draw to genre fans is that it stars Star Trek's Jeffrey Hunter and Forbidden Planet's Anne Francis and has music by Trek composer George Duning. (It's also directed by actor William Conrad.)
 
TUE 8/21
10:15 AM: A Midsummer Night's Dream ('35)
Click to expand...
That's visually stunning. I have to wonder whether contemporary audiences would appreciate it or find it entertaining, but I think it's absolutely exquisite.
 
September:

SAT 9/1
8:00 AM: Dumb-Hounded (’43): Debut appearance of Droopy (though he didn’t yet have that name).
10:00 AM: TCM resumes showing Popeye shorts before its Saturday morning Tarzan movies, though it’s keeping them in sync, with Popeye #21 Pleased to Meet Cha! (’35) preceding Tarzan #21 Tarzan and the Trappers (’58) with Gordon Scott – see my note on the July 28 schedule.
2:00 PM: Them! (’54)
3:45 PM: The Time Machine (’60)

MON 9/3
3:45 AM: La Jetee (’62): French short film that was the basis for Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys.
1:45 PM: I Married a Witch (’42): Proto-Bewitched comedy with Fredric March & Veronica Lake.

WED 9/5
6:00 AM: Son of Sinbad (’55): Arabian Nights mashup with Vincent Price as Omar Khayyam, apparently.

SAT 9/8
4:00 AM: Scarecrows (’88): A band of criminals gets its comeuppance from evil scarecrows, or something like that.
8:00 AM: The Alley Cat (’41): MGM cartoon introducing two cat characters who would later be folded into Tom & Jerry’s supporting cast.
10:00 AM: Popeye #22 The Hyp-Nut-Tist (’35) and Tarzan #22 Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure (’59), which still stars Gordon Scott but revamps the series with a more serious, book-authentic take with an educated, well-spoken Tarzan.
8:00 PM: Robin and Marian (’76): Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn as the aged leads of the Robin Hood legend.

SUN 9/9
5:15 PM: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (’68)

MON 9/10
2:30 AM: World on a Wire (’73): Originally Welt am Draht, German-language TV miniseries dealing with artificial intelligence and simulated worlds.
5:45 PM: Seven Days in May (’64): As usual, I count this presidential-coup political thriller as SF because it was set a decade in the future when it came out.

SAT 9/15
8:00 AM: The “MGM cartoon character debuts” series continues with Henpecked Hoboes (’46), the debut of Tex Avery’s George and Junior, a pair of bears parodying George and Lennie from Of Mice and Men.
10:00 AM: TCM breaks with the sequence here, jumping to Popeye #24 For Better or Worser (’35), the first Popeye cartoon to use rotating background models for a 3D effect, followed by MGM’s 1959 remake of Tarzan the Ape Man starring Denny Miller – basically the Never Say Never Again of Tarzan movies, a remake competing with the main series because of a rights loophole.

TUE 9/18
3:30 AM: Mothra (’62): The runtime suggests it’s the original Japanese version.
8:45 AM: Cat People (’42)
10:00 AM: The Seventh Victim (’43): Val Lewton Satanism thriller.
10:00 PM: Cabin in the Sky (’43): All-black musical about the battle for a gambler’s soul, with Eddie “Rochester” Anderson and Lena Horne.

FRI 9/21
5:30 PM: Doctor Dolittle (’67)

FRI 9/21-SAT 9/22: “Genie in a Bottle” marathon.
8:00 PM: A Thousand and One Nights (’45): Musical take on Aladdin, with Phil Silvers as anachronistic comic relief, not unlike Disney’s Genie.
9:45 PM: The Brass Bottle (’64): Tony Randall unleashes a djinn (Burl Ives), and Barbara Eden plays his girlfriend. The movie that inspired Sidney Sheldon to create I Dream of Jeannie for Eden.
11:30 PM: The Boy and the Pirates (’60): Bert I. Gordon film in which a genie sends a boy back to pirate days.
1:00 AM: Bowery to Baghdad (’55): The Bowery Boys find Aladdin’s lamp.

SAT 9/22
8:00 AM: The Little Goldfish (’39): MGM cartoon debuting… nobody in particular. Sounds like a reverse Finding Nemo, with a pet goldfish getting swept out to sea.
10:00 AM: Popeye #25 Dizzy Divers (’35) and Tarzan #23 (not counting last week’s remake) Tarzan the Magnificent, the last Gordon Scott Tarzan film. The villain is Jock Mahoney, who takes over as Tarzan in the next film – a move that would give modern Internet fandom apoplexy.

SAT 9/29
3:45 AM: Eye of the Devil (’66): Occult/witchcraft thriller with Deborah Kerr, David Niven, and Donald Pleasence.
8:00 AM: The House of Tomorrow (’49): One of Tex Avery’s spoof cartoons about the technology of the future. TCM inexplicably lists it as a Tom & Jerry cartoon.
10:00 AM: Popeye #26 You Gotta Be a Football Hero (’35) – but no more Tarzan. (Instead, it’s followed by The Saint in New York.)
 
Christopher said:
The villain is Jock Mahoney, who takes over as Tarzan in the next film – a move that would give modern Internet fandom apoplexy.
Click to expand...

Hah!

And, yes, can you imagine the uproar if the guy who played Killmonger in BLACK PANTHER took over as T'Challa next movie? :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top