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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 05/13/08

12:15 AM Showtime
Mixed Blood (1985 USA): Director Paul Morrissey's film career began in Andy Warhol's Factory circa 1965, where he helmed such oddball non-commercial features as Chelsea Girls and The Loves of Ondine. During the 1970s, Morrissey capitalized on Warhol's fame and directed better-than-you'd-expect efforts such as Women in Revolt and Blood for Dracula, both of which became midnight movie hits. By the 1980s, however, Andy's interest in the film business had waned, and Morrissey was compelled to finance his own productions. Thus, films such as the truly wretched Spike of Bensonhurst (1988), and the lead entry in this week's TiVoPlex, Mixed Blood. Making its widescreen television debut this morning, Mixed Blood is a gritty and violent look at drug dealing in New York's Alphabet City, a genuinely unpleasant neighbourhood at the time and one with which Morrissey was personally quite well acquainted. The film features Marilia Pera (decades before her star turn in Walter Salles' Central Station) as Rita, a Brazilian drug lord whose street corner minions are engaged in a running war with a Puerto Rican gang anxious to usurp her authority. If you spent time in Lower Manhattan during that turbulent decade, Mixed Blood will bring back memories of a city teetering on the edge of anarchy. It's a vibrant, brash and rude experience, and airs again at 3:15 AM, on 5/18 at 11:00 PM, and 5/19 at 2:00 AM.

11:15 AM Turner Classic Movies
Walk Softly, Stranger (1950 USA): Though not quite the success the sum of its parts would suggest, this RKO melodrama is still of sufficient interest to warrant investigation. Joseph Cotten stars as the titular stranger, who arrives one day in the All-American burg of Ashton, promptly assumes a new identity, and proceeds to convince Widow Brentmann (Spring Byington, a little less cloying than usual) that he once rented a room in the house she now owns. He meets beautiful cripple Elaine (Alida Valli) and seduces her with more lies from his imagined past, but his real past soon catches up with him in the form of Whitey (Paul Stewart, good as always), a criminal colleague who shows up on the doorstep one dark and stormy night. Directed by Robert Stevenson, Walk Softly Stranger's intriguing premise is badly undermined by an absurd final reel, and the film crashed and burned at the box-office, losing a remarkable three quarters of a million 1950s dollars for RKO, who promptly shipped Alida Valli back to Italy. Cotten's performance, however, is excellent: his character is a consummate smoothy not a million miles removed from his Uncle Charlie in Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt.

6:30 PM Sundance
Burning the Future: Coal in America (2008 USA): You probably won't be surprised to learn this, but coal is not a clean fuel, and in order to get it cheaply and quickly, enormous environmental damage is unavoidable. (You might, however, be surprised to learn that we still generate over a third of our electricity from this source.) This depressing film takes a look at the West Virginia coal industry, where strip-mining has disfigured the landscape, polluted the water, exacerbated flooding, and driven species to the brink of extinction. It also examines politicians of both parties who promote the much ballyhooed ‘clean coal', an oxymoron intended to buy the industry some time before climate change REALLY kicks in and leaves a figurative lump of coal in our collective stockings.

Wednesday 05/14/08

1:35 AM HBO2
Hacking Democracy (2006 USA): Perhaps I'm expecting too much, but you would need a sizable miniseries to adequately tell the tale of voter disenfranchisement that has become the shameful cornerstone of American 'democracy'--the most recent example being Indiana's absurd voter ID law. Hacking Democracy is a great starting point, but it can only do so much. For better or worse, it focuses on gadfly Bev Harris and her compatriots at Black Box Voting, an organization dedicated to electoral transparency. Harris' work is important, but it's only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the thoroughly compromised machinery of America's electoral systems, which are now dominated by for-profit corporations who keep their 'proprietary' software close to their vests. Hacking Democracy is essential viewing, but I'm looking forward to someone making a documentary about the crown prince of sleazy electioneering, former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell. Also airs 5/18 at 1:00 PM.

10:00 AM Encore Dramatic Stories
Gas (1981 CAN): Not to be confused with Roger Corman's 1970 counterculture feature Gas-s-s-s, Gas is a desperately bad comedy about—wait for it—petroleum. Imagine the unthinkable: the price of gas has risen to an ungodly dollar a gallon, and intrepid reporter Jane Beardsley (Susan Anspach) is trying to find out why. The determinedly unfunny Howie Mandel is her comic foil, and a fine supporting cast, including Sterling Hayden and Donald Sutherland, can't disguise the fact that this Canadian tax-break production is completely bereft of either laughs or inspiration. It's unavailable on home video, so those with a penchant for Le Bad Cinema will want to pump some of this Gas into their living room this morning.

6:00 PM Showtime
Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit, and the Era of Predatory Lenders (2006 USA): Produced during the relatively good economic times of 2006, this documentary is now more relevant than ever. Taking a cold-eyed look at the business of usury, the film exposes many of the dirty secrets and underhanded tactics engaged in by credit card companies, who have many of us working hard every day to insure their shareholders get a decent slice of our paychecks. Maxed Out also emphasizes that even if you don't carry a credit card balance, you DO own a slice of the national debt—a debt that has continued to grow since the film was produced. An unpleasant but necessary reminder that all bills eventually come due, Maxed Out was written and directed by James Scurlock, who (believe it or not) is not related to Morgan Spurlock.

Thursday 05/15/08

9:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Capricorn One (1978 USA): A manned mission to Mars goes off the rails in this conspiracy theory thriller from director Peter Hyams. When a spaceship design flaw is uncovered at the eleventh hour, NASA scrubs the mission--but compels the astronauts to play-act their trip to Mars for the benefit of their congressional overseers and the television audience. The astronauts (James Brolin, Sam Waterston, and—yikes!—O.J. Simpson) go along with the masquerade, but soon begin to suspect they're not intended to make it back to Earth alive. Can they escape NASA's nefarious clutches—or will the whole story be uncovered by crusading journalist Robert Caulfield (Elliot Gould)? The story is a bit dull and predictable, but the good cast (which also includes Brenda Vaccaro, Hal Holbrook, Telly Savalas, James Karen, and Karen Black) are fun to watch.

Friday 05/16/08

8:00 PM Showtime
End of the Century (2003 USA): Last week, we had Too Tough to Die, a hagiographic salute to string-bender Johnny Ramone. This week we get the back-story in End of the Century, a first rate rockumentary tracing The Ramones path from the backstreets of Queens to bowery dives and the concert halls of Europe. The genius of The Ramones was their apparent simplicity—personified by the identikit outfits, bowl haircuts, and repetitive, stripped-down songs—but that simplicity was an act, as this film reveals in fascinating interviews with all concerned. By the time End of the Century was released, Dee Dee and Joey Ramone were already dead, with Johnny to follow shortly, underscoring the film's importance as ‘the last word' of those intimately involved.

11:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Count Yorga, Vampire (1971 USA): I always got a kick out of this title: isn't it OBVIOUS that any guy called ‘Count Yorga' is going to be a vampire? Why do we need the title to spell it out for us? And why wasn't the sequel called The Return of Count Yorga, Vampire? Perhaps Simon, King of the Witches, is to blame. Anyhoo, Robert Quarry stars in this florid but thoroughly enjoyable AIP horror pic as Count Yorga (vampire), a Bulgarian nobleman (vampire) who moonlights as a fortune teller. After conducting a séance, our hero (vampire) is driven back to his mansion by clients Paul and Erica (Michael Murphy and Judith Lang), who have no idea their hitcher is hungering for their hemaglobin. After a night on the tiles, Paul loses consciousness, but Erica loses much more—and after she devours a cat, blood specialist Hayes (Roger Perry) begins to suspect that Yorga (vampire) might be responsible. Quarry makes for an excellent villain, and the film does its best to transcend its PG-rated roots with plenty of the red stuff and a heaping helping of décolletage.

Saturday 05/17/08

3:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Juggernaut (1974 GB): This old-fashioned Richard Lester-directed disaster movie takes place aboard the Britannic, a brand new passenger liner with a little problem: a terrorist calling himself Juggernaut has planted bombs throughout the ship. Juggernaut plans to trigger the bombs unless his cash demands are met—but Her Majesty's Government don't make deals under duress, and despatch bomb expert Fallon (Richard Harris) to take care of matters. Heli-dropped aboard whilst the ship steams a circular course through the ocean, Fallon must disarm seven separate bombs, whilst above decks the passengers and crew enjoy a fancy dress ball hosted by Captain Brunel (Omar Sharif) and Chief Purser Curtain (Roy Kinnear). It's a better film by far than its waterlogged predecessor The Poseidon Adventure, but cinemagoers didn't feel the same way and it flopped at the box-office. If you're a fan of the genre, you'll love it.

Sunday 05/18/08

7:45 AM IFC
Onibaba (1964 JAP): If you like a good horror story, you'll want to make time for Onibaba, a film long overshadowed by the better known Kwaidan (which precedes it at 5:00 AM) in the Japanese supernatural shocker sub-genre. Whilst the latter film was an anthology of four stories, Onibaba tells only one, but what a story it is. Jitsuko Yoshimura (previously seen in the deliciously perverse Insect Woman) plays a young woman whose mother-in-law (Nobuko Otowa) acquires - and begins to wear - the mask of a slain samurai. Slowly the mask starts to exert a pernicious influence on the older woman, transforming her in unexpected and disturbing ways. Featuring a superb score by Hikaru Hayashi (Violence at Noon) and shot in glimmering black-and-white Tohoscope, Onibaba is on a par with English-language thrillers like The Innocents (1961 GB) and The Haunting (1963 GB). Gorehounds will be disappointed; however, those who prefer their chills doled out sparingly will be well satisfied.

Monday 05/19/08

4:15 AM IFC
Decline of Western Civilization (1981 USA): The heavy metal sequel to this Penelope Spheeris' rockumentary has always garnered more airtime than the original film, which documents the Los Angeles punk rock scene of the late 1970s. It's an invaluable film featuring amazing interviews with Darby Crash, John Doe, the legendary X-Head, and many others, as well as terrific live footage of great bands like Catholic Discipline, Fear, and The Germs. By the time the film was shot the movement had passed its peak; by the time the film was released, L.A. punk was dead (long live hardcore). It's a fitting epitaph for one of the most exciting music scenes of the last fifty years.

5:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Hobson's Choice (1954 GB): Surprisingly NOT a film about a new brand of mass-marketed coffee, Hobson's Choice is a gently comedic tale of Victorian-era English working-class life. Charles Laughton stars as Henry Hobson, a boot-maker of some repute and a trio of rapidly maturing female offspring. Unwilling to pay three dowries, Hobson decrees that none shall marry—but eldest daughter Maggie (Brenda de Banzie) bucks her father's authority and weds shy shoemaker Will (John Mills) and proceeds to encourage her younger sisters to do the same thing. Based on a popular Great War-era play, David Lean's film examines both the social and economic upheavals of the late 19th century, but focuses firmly on the personal side of the equation, with Hobson pere ultimately making his peace with Hobson fille. A long time favorite on American public television stations, Hobson's Choice returns to the airwaves this evening after a much too lengthy absence.

10:30 PM Turner Classic Movies
Cathy Come Home (1966 GB): Marxist gadfly Ken Loach got his start during the mid 1960s working on the BBC's Wednesday Play series. Most of these filmed ‘plays' have long been forgotten (not to mention lost by the archivally-challenged Beeb) but Cathy Come Home remains the exception to the rule—and for good reason. Carol White plays the titular heroine, a young woman who starts a family and then loses it after her husband becomes unemployed and her children are taken away by social services. Loach's depiction of working class life in the British welfare state is unflinching and brutal and made massive waves in 1966, and even today will have you shifting uncomfortably in your easy chair. It's unnerving but essential viewing.