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9:00 PM Sundance Channel
Vampires (2010 BEL): This amusing Belgian mockumentary has been compared to its Low Countries compatriot Man Bites Dog (1992), but it’s a much lighter morsel than that bleak black comedy. Carlo Ferrante headlines as George, an upper middle-class family man who - along with wife Bertha and kids Samson and Grace - subsists on hemoglobin. The film records the family’s everyday activities, as they dine out (on humans, of course!) and stay in (during the day, of course!). Vampires lacks real bite (sorry) but still has the potential to tickle your funny bone.

Thursday 1/26/12

9:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
The Skipper Surprised His Wife (1950 USA): My dirty mind compels me to include this rarely seen and decidedly mediocre MGM comedy in this week’s column. Directed by Elliott Nugent and featuring Robert Walker as a sailor who runs his home like he runs his ship, there are precious few surprises of any variety in this film...and certainly none of the carnal kind, as the bishop said to the actress. On the plus side, a guy named Finnegan Weatherwax plays a character named Muscles. Surprisingly, he does not appear to be related to famed Lassie wrangler Rudd Weatherwax.

5:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Intent to Kill (1958 GB): Helmed by TCM man of the month Jack Cardiff, Intent to Kill stars Herbert Lom as Menda, a left-wing South American caudillo traveling to Montreal for some emergency brian surgery. Like most red South American presidents of the period Menda has a lot of enemies, and a trio of assassins has been dispatched to kill him before he can get within a hundred feet of an operating table. The professional killers, however, haven’t counted on indefatigable neurosurgeon McLaurin (Richard Todd), who not only operates but throws a spanner in the works by moving Menda to a different room. (They may be killers, but apparently they’re not very smart.) Subterfuge and mistaken identities ensue, all conjured from the pen of Hammer Film’s favorite screenwriter, Jimmy Sangster.

11:50 PM Starz
Incendies (2010 CAN-FRA): From a British film set in Canada we move on to a Canadian film set (mostly) in the Middle East. Written and directed by Denis Villeneuve, Incendies tells the troubling story of Simon and Jeanne Marwan (Maxim Gaudette and Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin), siblings estranged from their mother (portrayed in flashback by the great Luban Azabal) but forced to re-engage posthumously due to the terms of her will. Mom’s will stipulates that they travel to an unnamed country in the Middle East to deliver a message to a previously unknown half-brother and to their father, who Simon and Jeanne have long presumed dead. Awkward! Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at last year’s Academy Awards, Incendies ended up losing to Susanne Bier’s In a Better World, reviewed here just a few weeks ago. Also airs at 2:50 AM.

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