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

From the obscure to the obscurest to the merely overlooked or underappreciated; they all have a home in the TiVoPlex! All times Pacific.

Tuesday 04/12/11

8:45 AM Flix
The Violent Ones (1967 USA): An independently produced tale of racial tension in the southwestern United States, The Violent Ones tells the story of three gringos suspected of the rape and murder of a young Hispanic woman. The suspects are drifter Lucas Barnes (David Carradine, nattily attired in a turtleneck), redneck Joe Vorzyk (Aldo Ray, in a grubby tee-shirt), and well-heeled Mike Marain (erstwhile pop star Tommy Sands), and they’re been kept in jail by Sheriff Vega (Fernando Lamas) for their own protection: the locals are in the mood for a necktie party! With a title like The Violent Ones, viewers might understandably be disappointed by this film’s relative dearth of aggro: Lamas (who also directed) overacts terribly and the action seems to consist of little more than scenes of him shouting and/or a truck driving around in circles. On the plus side, Carradine is good, Ray is Ray, and the film — unavailable on home video — is airing in its correct aspect ratio. Also airs at 11:45 AM.

5:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
So Evil My Love (1948 GB-USA): A Victorian-era thriller based on a novel by Joseph Shearing (real name: Gabrielle Margaret Vere Long), So Evil My Love provided star Ray Milland the opportunity to make a film in the land of his birth after making his fortune in Hollywood. The result is a marginally above average period piece in which Milland headlines as Mark Bellis, a rascal who takes advantage of widow Olivia Harwood (Ann Todd) when she foolishly invites him to stay in her lodgings (this is not a metaphor). The oily Bellis soon insinuates his way into her life and involves the poor woman in an underhanded plot to blackmail well-off friend Susan Courtney (Geraldine Fitzgerald). You, sir, are a cad! Featuring a terrific array of British character actors, including Martita Hunt, Moira Lister, Hugh Griffith, and Finlay Currie, So Evil My Love was directed by fellow ex-pat Lewis Allen, also newly returned home after many years in Tinseltown.

Wednesday 04/13/11

12:25 AM The Movie Channel
Antonia’s Line (1995 HOL): This one’s a bit hard to describe. Willeke van Ammelrooy plays the title character, a Dutch woman who returns to her village after the end of the Second World War to bury her deceased mother. So far, so straightforward, but when Mom sits up in her coffin and starts singing during the funeral service it becomes quite obvious that this is no ordinary character study! Things stay quirky from there, as Antonia shacks up with a farmer (but only once a week), a character known as Mad Madonna (Catherine ten Bruggencate) expresses her displeasure with Catholic dogma by howling at the moon, and amateur philosopher Crooked Finger (Mil Seghers) bemoans life in general. At times pastoral in tone, at others displaying the influences of magical realism, and at all times cheekily and proudly feminist, Antonia’ s Line won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 1996. Also airs at 3:25 AM.

Continued:       1       2       3       4