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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 04/22/08

2:05 AM Encore Action
Hell Raiders (1968 USA): Not to be confused with Hell Commandos, Hell Squad, Hell in the Pacific, or Hell is For Heroes, Hell Raiders is the rarest of schlockmeister Larry Buchanan's package of mid-60's made-for-TV AIP remakes. Based on 1958's Sam Arkoff-produced cheapie Suicide Battalion, Hell Raiders stars John Agar as the commander of a special squad sent behind enemy lines to destroy top secret documents that have fallen into enemy hands. Like most of Buchanan's television output, this is a dull retread of the original, which wasn't much of a film to begin with, but if you want to see how the guy responsible for The Eye Creatures and Zontar: The Thing from Venus tackled a routine war programmer, look no further. It's boring, badly made, and rife with historical inaccuracies—but that's what we love (well, some of us at least) about Larry Buchanan!

7:00 PM Starz
The Pixar Story (2007 USA): I generally avoid hagiographic documentaries that overstate the importance of their subject matter, but it would be hard to overstate the achievements of the already legendary Pixar Studios. Directed by Leslie Iwerks, the granddaughter of animation pioneer Ub Iwerks, The Pixar Story wisely spends the bulk of its running time on the studio's rough and tumble early days, when success was less than assured and tinsel town glamor was in short supply in beautiful downtown Emeryville, California. Iwerks also avoids dumbing down the material, allowing her interview subjects to hold forth at length on the tricky technical issues Pixar labored to overcome throughout the production of 1995's breakthrough feature Toy Story. If there's still any magic left in the world of motion pictures, Pixar has it, and this terrific film offers worthy tribute. Also airs at 10:00 PM.

Wednesday 04/23/08

6:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
Rogue Cop (1954 USA): It's been a few years since I last saw Roy Rowland's version of William P. McGivern's outstanding police procedural, but after re-reading the book I'll be interested in revisiting it. I frequently cast film versions in my head as I read novels, and I had the lead character in this one pegged as the Sterling Hayden type. On reflection Hayden was probably too much of a straight shooter at this point in his career to play a corrupt cop implicated in the murder of his own brother, so actual star Robert Taylor will have to do. Screenwriter Sydney Boehm had collaborated with McGivern on The Big Heat a year earlier and would work with him again on 1955's Hell On Frisco Bay, another underrated, hard-boiled fifties crime drama.

10:15 PM Turner Classic Movies
Murder in the Private Car (1934 USA): A delightful if somewhat out of character comic thriller from MGM, Murder in the Private Car features Mary Carlisle (still with us today, age 96) as Ruth, a working-class gal who suddenly learns she's heir to a vast railway fortune. After her secret is discovered by a private investigator, Ruth is sent to meet her wealthy pater familias (Berton Churchill), accompanied by best friend Georgia (Una Merkel) and boyfriend John (Russell Hardie), but encounters danger along the way. A meeting with daddy dearest is scheduled on his specially designed carriage—but a disembodied super-villain, some escaped zoo animals (including, of course, a gorilla), and a dead body conspire to put the kibosh on the coffee klatch. Imagine an old dark house riding atop the wheels of steel, and you'll have a good idea of where this film is going in its brief 63 minute running time.

Thursday 04/24/08

4:35 AM The Movie Channel
Dark Water (2002 JAP): Here's an Asia Extreme graduate, one of many Japanese fright-fests that would later spawn an unnecessary (though not entirely awful) American remake. Directed by Ring master Hideo Nakata, it's the tale of a divorcée who moves into a new apartment with her six-year-old daughter and finds it riddled with leaks and suffused with rising damp. When Mom espies a mysterious young girl playing on the rooftops - a girl who ostensibly disappeared a few years ago - the supernatural gears grind into motion, and she begins to fear for her own child's safety. Simple and effective (and also hugely influential), Dark Water remains one of the best of the J-Horror wave, and is essential viewing for genre fans. Also airs at 7:35 AM.

Friday 04/25/08

1:45 AM Encore Westerns
Fury at Showdown (1957 USA): Last week I recommended ‘B' western The Iron Sheriff purely on the strength of Sterling Hayden's performance. Here's another oater that deserves a look-see thanks to some interesting casting and some quality names behind the camera. Fury at Showdown features Academy Award nominee Nick Adams as peace-lovin' cattle man Tracy Mitchell, who's trying to help his just released from prison sibling Brock (John ‘husband of Bo' Derek) readjust to normal society. Unfortunately, Brock has a massive chip on his shoulder after doing time for justifiable homicide, and his hotheadedness soon gets him in trouble with sleazy local lawyer Deasey (Gage Clark), whose brother also happened to be the man Brock shot in the first place. In addition to a good performance by Adams, Fury at Showdown benefits from the solid work of Oscar-winning composer Harry Sukman (Song Without End) and Oscar-winning cinematographer Joseph LaShelle (Laura), rendering it worthy of more than minor second feature status.

5:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Party (1968 USA): It all looks hopelessly racist now, but time was when Peter Sellers' portrayals of Indian gentlemen were considered comedy gold. Such is the unfortunate case with Blake Edwards' The Party, in which Sellers portrays Hrundi V. Bakshi, an aspiring actor from New Delhi who accidentally gatecrashes a swank Hollywood soiree and proceeds to ruin it. It's impossible to watch this film without reflecting on the racial connotations of casting a white man as a brown man, and even though it's quite funny at times—birdy num nums, anyone?—impossible to watch guilt-free, even after considering that Satyajit Ray, of all people, once wanted to cast Sellers in an Indian role. This is a hard film to like (for obvious reasons) and a hard film to dislike (for other obvious reasons), but Sellers undeniably delivers one of his best and most fully-formed characterizations here.

Saturday 04/26/08

5:00 PM HBO
28 Weeks Later (2007 GB): A surprisingly good sequel to director Danny Boyle's magnificent zombie epic 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later is refreshingly free of many of the worst symptoms of sequelitis, which include poor casting, ill-developed plot developments, and general creative ennui. Written and directed by up and coming Spanish director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (Intacto), the film features the great Robert Carlyle as Don, a Londoner who has avoided becoming zombie chow by abandoning his wife (Catherine McCormack) and doing a runner. Now the caretaker of a ‘Green Zone' established for fellow survivors in the heart of London, Don is coping with the guilt of his decision, and is understandably thrilled when children Tammy and Andy (played by the delightfully named Imogen Poots and Mackintosh Muggleton) return from exile overseas. The kids still have issues, however, and are determined to return to their old home in the London suburbs in hopes of finding clues to the fate of their mother. When they find Mum alive and apparently well, they return with her to Green Zone safety—not knowing that she carries a virus that can infect the living with zombie germs. Like all good zombie films, 28 Weeks Later works as both political allegory and gut-munching gorefest, and airs again at 8:00 PM.

Sunday 04/27/08

5:00 AM IFC
The Pianist (2002 FRA-GER-UK-POL): Thanks to his rather appalling personal behavior, Roman Polanski remains persona non grata in the United States, but he received a modicum of Hollywood recognition in 2003 when The Pianist earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Director. Besides being well deserved, the nomination helped expose Polanski to a new generation of filmgoers willing to separate the man's artistic accomplishments from his preference for jailbait. Based on the autobiography of musician Wladyslaw Szpilman, The Pianist stars Adrien Brody as the titular ivory-ticker who survived the Holocaust by living amidst the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto. Masterfully written by Ronald Harwood and deeply informed by the personal experiences of Polanski himself, who if not for sheer happenstance would have died at Auschwitz or Matthausen, The Pianist also airs at 11:45 AM.

4:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Abel Gance: The Charm of Dynamite (1968 GB): WOW. That's the all caps word that best describes my reaction upon learning that TCM would be airing this very rare Kevin Brownlow documentary this afternoon. Produced for the BBC, The Charm of Dynamite was unseen in the US until 1976 and has since been resting comfortably in a film vault. If you're not familiar with Kevin Brownlow, he's one of our greatest film historians, and his voluminous history of silent cinema, The Parade's Gone By, is essential reading. If you're not familiar with Gance, however, you're about to discover one of the most important—and still most under-appreciated—of early filmmakers. Narrated by Lindsay Anderson and shot by Chris Menges, The Charm of Dynamite makes the case that Gance was both a technical and narrative pioneer who literally changed the way filmmakers and audiences understood cinema. If that sounds like hyperbole, stay tuned...

5:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
J'Accuse! (1919 FRA): ...to watch his silent classic J'Accuse! (I Accuse!), which is also making its TCM premiere tonight. Shot during and in the immediate wake of World War I, it's the first of the great anti-war motion pictures, a film so powerful that a contemporary critic implied that, if only it had been on general release in 1913, the war would never have been fought. Utilizing footage shot by an in-uniform Gance on the frontlines, the film is both unrelenting and hauntingly beautiful, blending a familiar story of lost love and wartime rapacity with artistic editing and flights of fantasy equalled only by D. W. Griffith and Sergei Eisenstein amongst the director's contemporaries. Later edited significantly to blunt its pacifist message, J'Accuse! airs tonight in a 150 minute-cut incorporating much restored footage, and airs again 4/28 at midnight. If that's not enough Abel for you, it's followed at 8:00 PM by La Roue (1922), an epic tale of life in the French railyards that cemented Gance's reputation as the world's most technically innovative filmmaker (Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin came to HIM for tips). Originally running a Warholian 9 hours(!), La Roue airs tonight in a truncated but beautifully restored four hour print. Now, can we get Gance's 1927 biopic Napoleon scheduled on TCM? Considering it was the first widescreen film ever made and the now near-ubiquity of widescreen television sets, it seems the time will soon be ripe for this amazing multi-screen epic to finally get mainstream exposure.

9:00 PM Sundance
Cinderella (2006 ROK): This week's Asia Extreme feature is unfortunately going head to head against Abel Gance, so unless you have TiVo you're going to have to choose one or the other. Luckily, it's a fairly easy decision to make, as this South Korean thriller is one of the poorest pictures to grace Sundance's Sunday night slot. It's yet another take (see also Kim Ki-Duk's Time) on the plastic surgery trend so popular on the Korean peninsula, and doesn't extend the argument much further than ‘be careful what you wish for, because it might be worse than what you have'.

Monday 04/28/08

3:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
Riot in Juvenile Prison (1959 USA): An impressive selection of juvenile delinquency (J.D.) pictures kicks off in the wee hours with this Edward L. Cahn picture about the dangers of co-ed incarceration—or does it? Riot in Juvenile Prison is listed in the print version of the program guide, but isn't listed on TCM's website. I'll be recording the time slot just in case, but if it doesn't make an appearance, stay tuned at 4:15 AM for Teen-Age Crime Wave (1955), a warning from our old friend Fred Sears about the dangers of peer pressure and bank robbery; at 5:45 AM by Violent Playground (1958), a quality Basil Dearden-helmed crime flick starring Peter Cushing, Stanley Baker, David McCallum, and legendary stuntman Nosher Powell; at 7:45 AM by The Young Don't Cry (1957), in which Sal Mineo tries to overcome his hardscrabble upbringing in an orphanage; and at 9:15 AM by Robert Altman's The Delinquents (1957), featuring young Tom Laughlin as an angst-stricken teen struggling to stay on the straight and narrow. Comb back your ducktail and sharpen your switchblade for a morning of extremely bad behavior!