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11:15 PM Turner Classic Movies
Incubus (1966 USA): This is the only feature film ever shot entirely in Esperanto, the ‘international language’ invented in 1887 by Polish intellectual L.L. Zamenhof. It also stars William Shatner. Still not convinced to check it out? It’s a horror film shot by Conrad Hall and scored by Dominic Frontiere. Still not convinced? Then there’s no hope for you—cancel your cable or satellite subscription and trash the TV.

Sunday 5/02/10

11:15 AM The Movie Channel
Pontypool (2009 CAN): There’s always time for another first in the TiVoPlex. For example, there’s this film, the first travelogue I’ve ever recommended - though frankly, it’s a pretty odd choice for the genre. Located near the South Wales coalfields, Pontypool is a decaying industrial town with a terrific rugby team, one of the best male chorus’s you’ll ever hear, and the country’s highest standard gauge railway.

What?

It’s a horror film about a small Canadian town being overrun by virus-carrying zombies? A virus spread by words and sounds, not by infected saliva? Starring Steven McHattie as a radio DJ holed up in a basement studio, trying to spread word to the outside world of Pontypool’s desperate plight?

Yeah, of course I knew that!

Also airs at 2:15 PM!

9:30 PM Turner Classic Movies
Captain Salvation (1927 USA): This silent feature has aired previously on TCM, but I don’t think I’ve written about it before. Directed by Old John Robertson (presumably whilst wearing a stetson hat), the film tells the tale of a sailor torn between his love for the sea and his love for God. Lars Hanson stars as aspiring pastor Anson Campbell, whose heart bleeds for Bess Morgan (Pauline Starke), a woman of questionable virtue sailing aboard the same convict ship Anson just so happens to be crewing. When she rejects the untoward advances of the ship’s skipper (Ernest Torrence), Anson realizes she has a heart of gold, and determines to help her regain her good name and the respect of their neighbors back in Maple Harbour, Massachusetts. Hanson had previously played Reverend Dimmesdale in Victor Sjostrom’s superior 1926 version of The Scarlet Letter, so playing another liberal clergyman wasn’t much of a stretch for him. Captain Salvation is no lost silent classic, but it’s still worth a look for William Daniel’s excellent shipboard cinematography and Starke’s nuanced performance as the bad girl who just might not be so bad after all.

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