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From the obscure to the obscurest to the merely overlooked or underappreciated; they all have a home in the TiVoPlex! All times Pacific.

Tuesday 06/03/08

3:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
The Family Secret (1951 USA): Shh! Don't tell anyone, but young David (John Derek) has been a naughty, naughty boy. He's killed his best friend Al - which qualifies as extremely naughty, even though it WAS accidental. Luckily for David, his old man (Lee J. Cobb) is Howard Clark, a high-powered lawyer who can pull some strings with the District Attorney. Unfortunately, Dave decides that discretion is the better part of valor, feigns ignorance of the crime, and implicates innocent bookie Joe Elsner (Whit Bissell). A rare Columbia programmer, The Family Secret features a fine cast struggling manfully to overcome a turgid storyline--and they almost succeed. Any film with Cobb or Bissell in major roles gets the TiVoPlex nod, however.

5:00 AM Fox Movie Channel
Moontide (1942 USA): Produced by Hollywood legend Mark Hellinger, who would succumb prematurely to a heart attack in 1947, Moontide is an atmospheric melodrama about Bobo (Jean Gabin), a sailor with a dark past. Bobo thinks he may have killed a man, and has retreated to a fogbound river barge where he rescues and adopts would-be suicide victim Anna (Ida Lupino). The troubled pair attempt a fresh start--but when Bobo's old pal Tiny (Thomas Mitchell) shows up, the skeletons threaten to come out of the closet. Reminiscent of other Gabin tragedies such as Le Jour se Leve and Quai des Brumes--and quite possibly an influence on films as recent as 2003's Young Adam--Moontide co-stars Claude Rains and Jerome Cowan, who somehow manage to avoid getting into a catfight together.

12:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Rebellion of the Hanged (1954 MEX): Film of the week alert! I've never seen this Mexican drama, but considering its pedigree, it's got to be great. Exhibit one: the men behind the camera, director Emilio Fernandez and cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa. Both were giants during the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema and worked together on dozens of features, including stone cold classics such as Enamorada (1946) and La Perla (1947). Exhibit two: the man in front of the camera, Pedro Armendariz, a superb actor who also had a long and illustrious career in American films. Exhibit three: Screen Writers Guild co-founder John Bright, who wrote some top notch pre-Code features (including The Public Enemy and Three on a Match) before adapting B. Traven's story Rebellion of the Hanged for this feature, which, of course, has never appeared on home video. Are you salivating yet? It's followed at 1:30 PM by The Big Boodle (1957), a fascinating car crash of a film featuring Armendariz and a floundering Errol Flynn in a tale of death and deceit in pre-Castro Cuba.

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