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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 7/5/11

7:30 AM Fox Movie Channel
A Hatful of Rain (1957 USA): By the late ‘50s, mainstream Hollywood tentatively stopped tiptoeing around the realities of drug abuse. The burgeoning social problem, once confined to traveling road shows and B pictures, had graduated to the A list with 1955’s Nelson Algren screen adaptation, The Man with the Golden Arm. A Hatful of Rain, whilst not quite as brutal as its predecessor, is nonetheless a worthy and serious look at heroin addiction, featuring Don Murray as a young, disabled Army vet who can’t get the monkey off his back after being discharged from hospital. Supported by his family - including wife Eva Marie Saint and brother Tony Franciosa - Murray struggles to get control of his addiction, only to lose every time. Filled with wonderful location footage of New York City, and featuring an appearance by TiVoPlex favorite William Hickey, this is a prime example of the “problem pictures” of the period, right down to its downbeat but realistic finale.

8:00 AM Sundance
The Shock Doctrine (2009 USA): Director Michael Winterbottom is cinema’s renaissance man. Dramas, comedies, noirs, documentaries - he seems to revel in trying his hand at as many different genres as possible. The Shock Doctrine is his first non-fiction effort, and not surprisingly, it’s really good. Based on muckraker Naomi Klein’s best-seller of the same name, the film examines the horrendous impact neo-liberal capitalism has had on the planet over the last half-century, and presents a dizzying array of information in a succinct 82 minutes. Luckily, Klein and narrator Kieran O’Brien are on hand to help you make sense of it all. Also airs at 12:40 PM.

7:30 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Thief of Bagdad (1924 USA): I’m a huge fan of Alexander Korda’s 1940 Technicolor spectacle The Thief of Bagdad, but Douglas Fairbanks’ silent version is pretty darn good, too. Fairbanks plays the title character (in this iteration of the tale, we never learn his real name), a wily chap who disguises himself as royalty in order to win the hand of a beautiful princess (Julanne Johnston). Not so fast, bub: Dad (Brandon Hurst) wants his prospective sons-in-law to go on a mission to locate, and return with, the rarest treasure they can find. Can the Thief beat the competition, or will the evil Mongol Prince (Sojin) cross the finish line first? Produced on an epic scale, The Thief of Bagdad could be considered the apex of the 40-year-old Fairbanks’ career - it’s my favorite of his films, at any rate.

11:30 PM Turner Classic Movies
Tarzan the Fearless (1933 USA): After MGM hit pay dirt with 1932’s Tarzan the Ape Man, producer Sol Lesser decided to cash in and produce his own Jungle Lord chapter play. The full serial is now considered lost, but this abridged feature remains. Buster Crabbe plays Tarzan this time, and though he’s a bit too All-American for my liking, acts the pants off Johnny Weissmuller (not a great challenge, I admit). Happily, TCM will be airing the 86-minute "British cut" of Tarzan the Fearless; there’s also an hour-long American version that is too truncated to make a lick of sense.

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