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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 12/09/08

8:15 PM Sundance
Breezy (1973 USA): William Holden and Kay Lenz star as lovers in this unlikely May/December romance from - of all people - director Clint Eastwood. Lenz plays hippie chick Breezy, who escapes an over-amorous admirer by hiding from him on the property of Frank Harmon (Holden), a cranky old businessman cut from the same cloth as most contemporary Eastwood characters. The two slowly begin to fall for each other, raising the inevitable question: can a hippie and a straight find true love, or is it just a one-night stand? Slightly marred by a cloying conclusion, Breezy is nevertheless considerably better than you might think, especially if you can overlook Lenz's penchant for sunny optimism and New Age glad-handing.

9:55 PM MGM HD
Last House on the Left (1972 USA): The great-granddaddy of the video nasties and Wes Craven's first film, Last House on the Left makes an extremely rare TV appearance this evening on MGM HD. The misanthropic, darkly comic tale of four miscreants (including the incomparable and unforgettable David Hess) and the misdeeds they visit upon a pair of teenage girls, Last House has a well-deserved reputation as one of the most squirm-inducing films ever made. Appropriately enough for a film from the future director of Scream, it's been sliced and diced countless times by innumerable censors, and it will be most interesting to see exactly which version MGM will be airing tonight. My guess is they'll be drawing from their 2002 DVD release, which matched up what remained of the original print with seven restored minutes obtained from a German source. If Pasolini's Salo made you shiver and shake, prepare for another shock to the nervous system. (If, on the other hand, Salo made you salivate, you've got a serious problem.)

Wednesday 12/10/08

5:15 AM HBO Signature
The Snake Pit (1948 USA): Olivia de Havilland stars as an amnesiac committed to a state hospital in this groundbreaking pic from director Anatole Litvak. De Havilland plays Virginia Cunningham, a young bride whose hubby (Mark Stevens) has seen fit to provide her board and lodging at the local insane asylum. Here she meets kindly Dr. Kik (pipe smoking Leo Genn), who tries to help her recover both memory and sanity, but ultimately presides over her complete mental breakdown and subsequent rehabilitation. Based on a best selling book by Mary Jane Ward, The Snake Pit set the tone for the new psychodrama genre, and garnered six Oscar nominations, including nods for Litvak and de Havilland. Though time has lessened its impact somewhat, it remains a periodically powerful indictment of our attitudes toward mental illness.

10:30 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974 USA): Oh boy. I can remember watching a pan-and-scan copy of this film and thinking, "I bet this would look great in its correct aspect ratio" (I really do think like this). Well, here it is. Robert Shaw plays the ringleader of a gang who hijack a New York City subway train and hold the passengers for ransom. Walter Matthau is the tough Big Apple cop out to stop them. This film probably influenced Quentin Tarantino (though what hasn't?), as that most overrated of auteurs gave color-coded names to HIS gangsters in Reservoir Dogs, just as this film did 20 years earlier. It remains one of the great suspensers of the 1970s, if not of all time.

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