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Sunday 06/17/07

12:10 Encore Mystery
Bloody Mama (1973 USA): It's always fun to watch Shelley Winters devour the scenery, and she does so with gusto in this enjoyable if historically inaccurate 1930s gangster pic. She plays Ma Barker, the matronly leader of a killer brood which includes four sons — psychotic sadist Herman (Don Stroud), milquetoast Arthur (Clint Kimbrough), drug addict Lloyd (Robert de Niro!), and out of the closet Fred (Love Boat regular Robert Walden) — in addition to adopted bisexual lover Kevin (Bruce Dern). The film's promotional material screamed that 'the family that slays together stays together', and sure enough, the Barkers cut a bloody swath across Arkansas during the Great Depression, kidnapping a rich businessman (Pat Hingle) and generally laying waste to The Natural State from Jonesboro to Texarkana. Say it with bullets, indeed!

9:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Visages d'Enfants (1925 FRA): The second Jacques Feyder silent feature to air of late on TCM, Visages d'Enfants (Faces of Children) is a moving story of a young Swiss boy's maturation after the death of his mother. Haunted by his memories of her (and devastated by her mountainside funeral), Jean (Crainquebille's Jean Forest) refuses to accept his father's new wife, and even the intervention of a kindly priest (Henri Duval) cannot heal his wounds. Written by Feyder's wife Francoise Rosay, Visage d'Enfants' timeless themes of childhood betrayal and adult cruelty ring as true today as they did in 1925, and this remains on the finest of all French silent films.

Monday 06/18/07

9:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Voodoo Island (1957 USA): Boris Karloff stars in this cheapjack horror effort from low budget producer Robert E. Kent and director minion Reginald Le Borg. Dear Boris plays television personality Phillip Knight, who's made a name for himself as the debunker of the supernatural and has now been hired by developer Howard Carlton (Owen Cunningham) to convince the rubes that his new remote Pacific property isn't overrun by ghoulies, ghosties, and things that go bump in the night. Sadly for Howard, his island actually IS a hotbed of voodoo activity, which is rather surprising considering that Santeria is strictly a Caribbean phenomenon. Far from Karloff's best, Voodoo Island also features Rhodes Reason, Elisha Cook Jr., and Jean Engstrom as a seductive practitioner of the love that dares not speak its name.

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