New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

9:30 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Fall of the House of Usher (1949 GB): First the good news: this British take on Edgar Allan Poe’s classic tale hasn’t been seen on American television for a very long time. Now the letdown: it’s not very good. Of course, quality or the lack thereof is not always the deciding factor in the TiVoPlex, and I’m very excited about the opportunity to see this film again! Directed by a 24-year-old filmmaker named Ivan Barnett - who’s still with us today, but only ever helmed two additional features - The Fall of the House of Usher is poverty row gothic and looks it. Underscoring the film’s down-at-heel origins, only one cast member - Gwen Watford, here playing Lady Usher - ever appeared again on the big screen. I guess everyone else was more interested in continuing their career in dinner theater.

Friday 10/26/12

7:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
Jungle Cavalcade (1941 USA): Frank Buck was a big name in the 1930s and early ‘40s, his prowess as a big game collector reflected in a series of motion pictures, of which Jungle Cavalcade is a late example. If you’ve seen one Buck pic you’ve pretty much seen ‘em all, but for those of you who haven’t, think of them as The Endless Summer: Safari Edition. In Jungle Cavalcade’s case, it might also be entitled Frank Buck: The Clip Show, as the film consists almost entirely of scenes excerpted from earlier Buck adventures.

12:05 PM Starz In Black
Screen Door Jesus (2003 USA): Here’s what I wrote about this film when it first screened on Starz in Black back in 2009:

I'd never previously heard of this film, but with a title like Screen-Door Jesus, is there really any reason NOT to watch it? It's a shot-in-Texas indie about a woman who finds the image of Jesus imprinted, or etched, or something, into her screen door. And it won the Golden Starfish at the Hamptons International Film Festival! I'm sure you'll agree that any film that wins a Golden Starfish is worth 90 minutes of your time.

Screen-Door Jesus turned out to be a pretty decent little character study, so if you missed it in 2009 - perhaps you were distracted by that piece of Jesus toast that was all the rage back then - give it a look this afternoon.

Saturday 10/27/12

Midnight Turner Classic Movies
Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story (2007 USA): Ballyhoo artist extraordinaire Castle gets his due in this hugely entertaining TCM original documentary. Castle, of course, was the king of the movie gimmick, pioneering the use of such tools of the trade as the Fright Break, the Punishment Poll, and Percept-O (the seats that vibrated during the first run of The Tingler). The story is told in full here and includes a great selection of interview subjects, including the late Forry Ackerman, Bob Burns, and David Del Valle. It’s followed at 1:45 AM by Macabre (1958), a Castle chiller featuring a kidnap victim hidden in a sealed coffin. You’ll be relieved to know 1958 audience members were insured in case of "death by fright," but you and I are not so lucky.

10:30 AM Encore

(This review previously appeared at http://www.berkeleyside.com/2011/06/28/big-screen-berkeley-the-missouri-breaks/)

The Missouri Breaks (1976 USA): By the 1970s, the western was no longer the happy hunting ground William S. Hart, Tom Mix, and Roy Rogers had populated during the genre’s first half century. Black and white tales of good guys and bad guys were out, and filmmakers began to turn the genre on its head: now the baddies were frequently the characters the audience empathized with. The white man’s injustice towards Native Americans became a popular theme, and spaghetti westerns even introduced the idea that - gasp! - there might be a place for Marxist dialectics in the Old West.

Directed by Arthur Penn, The Missouri Breaks is a typical example of the American revisionist style. The film stars two of Hollywood’s biggest names - Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando - but neither of their characters are men you’d invite home to meet mother. (Unless, of course, your mother was Joan Crawford.)

Continued:       1       2       3