Classic Movie Picks: October 2013

by Lani and A.J.

Each month, I scour the Turner Classic Movies schedule for upcoming films that I can't miss. The highlights are posted here for your reading and viewing pleasure! (All listed times are Eastern Standard, check your local listings or TCM.com for actual air times in your area. Each day's schedule begins at 6:00 a.m.; if a film airs between midnight and 6 a.m. it is listed on the previous day's programming schedule.)

This month I've turned over the Classic Movie Picks to my co-blogger, A.J. While we both enjoy the spooky films that play during October, he is the real horror aficionado in this partnership. I'm looking forward to his picks, hope you enjoy them, too! - Lani

Murder...?
10/5, 2 PM - Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993)

The original script for Annie Hall contained a murder mystery plot that was ultimately cut to make the story wholly a romantic comedy. If you’ve ever wondered what Annie Hall with a murder mystery would be like, then I highly recommend Woody Allen’s underwatched 1993 film. Woody Allen and Diane Keaton play couple whose marriage has grown stale until Keaton suspects their neighbor of murdering his wife. Will a murder mystery be able to rejuvenate their marriage? Did their neighbor even murder anyone? Manhattan Murder Mystery is Rear Window as directed by Woody Allen and the result is a fun, romantic, and genuinely intriguing mystery movie, and a great light start to October.

Vampires

I remember a time when vampires used to be scary and so does TCM. Before they were angsty, brooding anti-heroes that graced magazine covers, vampires were the ultimate movie monster.

10/11, 9:30 PM - Isle of the Dead (1945)

Boris Karloff stars in this movie about a group of people trying to survive a war, a quarantine, and, as if things weren’t bad enough, a suspected vampire. This movie is produced by one of the masters of classic horror, Val Lewton. He’s one of the few movie producers that is also thought of as an “auteur,” a title usually only given to directors. His films are famous for their stripped-down, sparse style and emphasis on mood and shadows.

Also Playing…

10/13, 12 AM - Nosferatu (1922)

10/19, 9:15 PM - Mark of the Vampire (1935)

Anthology Horror
If you want more than one spooky story in a single movie TCM has 3 anthology horror movies airing this month.

10/11, 11 PM - Dead of Night (1945)

In this Ealing Studios production a man fears that his reoccurring dream in coming true so other guests at a country house share supernatural stories of their own. When this movie was released in America one of the stories was cut because U.S. distributors thought movie ran too long. They made the movie shorter, but confusing. Fortunately for this broadcast the missing story has been restored and should make for good spooky night.

Also Playing…

10/20, 2 AM - Kwaidan (1965)

10/31, 2:45 AM - Twice-Told Tales (1963)

Monsters Need Love Too!

10/26, 11 PM - Cat People (1942)

Val Lewton’s films were at their best when the producer worked with director Jacques Tourneur. Cat People is among their most highly regarded pictures. In this collaboration, an American man marries a Serbian immigrant who fears that she will turn into a cat person from the fables of her homeland. These RKO horror movies had a low budget, but Lewton used that disadvantage to make better films. His films focused less on spectacle and more on character, an eerie mood, and scaring us more by showing us less.

10/31: Halloween with Christopher Lee...

All day long on Halloween, TCM will be showing films starring Christopher Lee, including two he starred in for Hammer Films, the UK company whose horror movies made Lee famous.

12:15 PM - Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1965)
3:45 PM - Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (1969)
5:30 PM - Horror Express (1972)

Horror Express is not a Hammer Film but hoped to cash in on the success of those movies by getting Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing to star in a movie with a monster. The result is a Hammer knock off that actually works. Lee, who usually played Dracula and other monsters, gets to be the hero. He plays on archeologist attempting to transport his recent mysterious discovery on the Trans-Siberian railway, but his discovery proves to be too monstrous to contain. Peter Cushing plays a fellow Englishmen helping Lee try to stop the mysterious deaths on the train. If Murder on the Orient Express meets The Thing meets Hammer Horror sounds like an intriguing combination, then you won’t go wrong with Horror Express.

…and Vincent Price

It just wouldn’t be Halloween without a Vincent Price movie or two. Perhaps Vincent Price being the star of the month for October is less than a coincidence. Some of his non-horror, dramatic movies are being highlighted Thursday nights earlier in the month. Fortunately, Halloween falls on a Thursday, so there will be a full night of Price movies to enjoy.
8 PM - Pit and the Pendulum (1961)
9:30 PM - The Haunted Palace (1963)
11:15 PM - The Masque of the Red Death (1964)

Happy Halloween!

Classic Movie Picks: September 2013

by Lani

Each month, I scour the Turner Classic Movies schedule for upcoming films that I can't miss. The highlights are posted here for your reading and viewing pleasure! (All listed times are Eastern Standard, check your local listings or TCM.com for actual air times in your area. Each day's schedule begins at 6:00 a.m.; if a film airs between midnight and 6 a.m. it is listed on the previous day's programming schedule.)

The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011)
This 15-episode documentary, directed and narrated by Mark Cousins and adapted from his 2004 book, was originally broadcast as a TV series in the UK and (as far as I know) this is its U.S. broadcast premiere. The series takes a comprehensive overview of the history and art of motion pictures, spanning over 100 hundred years and focusing not just on Hollywood, but on cinema from around the world. Monday nights in September we'll get the first five installments of the series, which will continue through December. Tuesdays in primetime will feature films which are related to that week's "chapter."

9/2, 4:15 PM - Pitfall (1948)
Insurance investigator Dick Powell and crooked private eye Raymond Burr clash as they both investigate an embezzler -- and fall for the man's girlfriend, played by Lizabeth Scott. Straight-arrow Powell should know better than to fall for a femme fatale, but when has that ever stopped a noir hero? This film just become available on DVD, due to exposure received at the Telluride Film Festival in a retrospective of films of director Andre de Toth. Today, it's being shown as part of TCM's annual tribute to the festival.
BONUS: 9/2, 8 AM - History is Made at Night (1937)
Charles Boyer and Jean Arthur star in this lush romance which is also part of the Telluride tribute. He's a suave and chivalrous waiter, she's a society lady with a maniacally jealous husband -- together, can they find true love and happiness?

9/14, 8 PM and 9/22, 11:30 AM - Lifeboat (1944)
Alfred Hitchcock's 1944 film Lifeboat is showing twice this month, once as an installment of "The Essentials" on 9/18, and again on 9/22 as part of TCM's month-long "Sundays with Hitch" programming. When thinking about Hitchcock's best films, Lifeboat is generally not the first, or even tenth, film to come to mind. However, it is one film from Hitch's "golden age" of the 40s and 50s that I have not seen, and the premise is very intriguing. After their ship is sunk by a Nazi U-boat, a group of passengers aboard a lifeboat must survive each other and the sea. The technical constraints of this story require the hand of a master to make the film work -- so I can't wait to see what Hitchcock was able to do.

9/24, 9 PM - L'Atalante (1934)
This is the only full-length film by French director Jean Vigo who died in 1934 at the age of 29 of tuberculosis. He died thinking he was a failure, but history has named him a master poetic realism. In L'Atalante, Luminous Dita Parlo plays a new bride who finds that life aboard her husband's barge is not the adventure she hoped for and they nearly lose everything when she sneaks off to experience Paris nightlife. The film has gone through many restorations over the years because of editing done by the original distributor. The final missing piece was found in an Italian vault in 1990 and since then the film has been receiving accolades along the lines of "greatest film ever made."

Friday Night Spotlight - Future Shock!
Film critic Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune hosts this month's Friday night series presenting visions of the future on film. The films include Fritz Lang's early classic Metropolis, as well as more recent sci-fi fare like Steven Spielberg's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence and Minority Report. Sometimes the best part of watching a film set in the future is being able to compare its vision to what actually happened. My favorite film in the line-up is Escape from New York (1981); director John Carpenter creates a wonderfully spooky atmosphere and Kurt Russell is simply iconic as the tough anti-hero Snake Plisskin. Luckily by 1997, when Escape is set, New York City had not been converted into a maximum security prison, so that film's depiction of the future remains, thankfully, fictional. On the other hand, Total Recall (1990), another film in the Future Shock series, was eerily accurate in its depiction of some of the aspects of future life -- video phones, full body security X-rays, TV ads on the subway...one character even plays tennis with a device similar to the Nintendo Wii. (Check out our From the Vault review of Total Recall for more of that film's predictions of the future.) If you are looking for a more kid-friendly movie from this series, try The Time Machine (1960), a well-made adventure starring Rod Taylor as the time traveler.