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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 7/9/13

6:30 PM The Movie Channel
Rites of Passage (2012 USA): Everyone needs to earn a living one way or another, which undoubtedly explains why Wes Bentley, Christian Slater, and Stephen Dorff all signed up for Rites of Passage. That’s a pretty impressive trio to headline a low-budget horror flick, but the threesome add sufficient value to make the film worth a gander – suggesting they did, indeed, earn their pay. Dorff plays Nash, an anthro professor whose students are eager to apply their learning by recreating an ancient Chumash ritual, which – side benefit! – requires the ingestion of psychotropic substances. It’s all in the name of research, of course – until one of the student’s brothers (Bentley) decides to participate, loses his ever lovin’ mind, and starts killing people. The uninvited presence of meth maven Delgado (Slater) doesn’t help matters, either, and the body count soon begins to mount. Rites of Passage isn’t particularly gory and admirably attempts something a little different, but despite the best efforts of its Master Thespians is unable to achieve full lift-off. Not terrible, just a bit dull. Also airs at 9:30 PM.

Wednesday 7/10/13

6:45 AM Turner Classic Movies
A Woman of Affairs (1928 USA): As any sentient film fan knows, John Gilbert was one of the biggest movie stars of the 1920s, but fell on hard times when talking pictures came into vogue. The claim that he was done in by a squeaky voice has been disproven ever since TCM started airing his talkies, with the most popular theory now being that Louis B. Mayer strongly disliked Gilbert and stuck him in a bunch of substandard pictures in order to ruin his career. It worked, and Gilbert drank himself to death at the age of 38. Today marks the 116th anniversary of the actor’s birth, and TCM celebrates with a selection of his late period pictures, including A Woman of Affairs, in which Gilbert was cast opposite real-life paramour Greta Garbo in a tale of love amongst the English aristocracy. One of the last silent films to be made in Hollywood (the film was released in December 1928, post-dating The Jazz Singer by 14 months), it’s a lovely to look at MGM production that suffers from an impossibly fruity Bess Meredyth screenplay (which, oddly, earned an Academy Award nomination). It’s followed at 8:30 AM by Desert Nights (1929), Gilbert’s first talkie and the film that marked the beginning of his career’s downward spiral; at 9:45 AM by Redemption (1930), in which he portrays a Russian nobleman in love with a Gypsy girl (Renee Adoree); and at 11:00 AM by Way For a Sailor (1930), in which he plays one of a trio of hard-drinking, hard-living Jack Tars (the others are Wallace Beery and Jim Tully).

Thursday 7/11/13

11:15 AM Encore Family
Going Ape! (1981 USA-GB): Tony Danza stars as Foster, a lucky guy living with a trio of orangutans, in this braindead family movie from Paramount. Foster’s inherited the apes from his late circus-owning dad, but there’s a codicil to the will that provides him with some unwelcome complications: specifically, son must keep the apes healthy and happy for the next five years, or the $5 million dad’s left him will end up in the coffers of the local zoological society. Hilarity ensues as Foster tries to keep the orangutans in line and frustrated girlfriend Cynthia (Halloween III’s Stacey Nelkin) happy. Poorly written and flatly directed by Jeremy Joe Kronsberg (yes, the same guy behind Every Which Way But Loose and Any Which Way You Can), Going Ape! modestly benefits from a enthusiastic Danny DeVito performance as high-wire performer Lazlo.

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