TiVoPlex
By John Seal
May 11, 2004
From the obscure to the obscurest to the merely overlooked or underappreciated; they all have a home in the TiVoPlex! All times Pacific.
Tuesday 05/11/04
11am Turner Classic Movies
Murder on the Waterfront (1943 USA): TCM’s Tuesday schedule is devoted this week to films with the word "murder" incorporated in the title, and I’m naturally gravitating towards this one, the most obscure of the bunch. It’s a Warner's program about Nazi spies trying to get their hands on a top-secret thermostat (!) and features John Loder and Warren Douglas as the Navy men whose job it is to keep the instrument safely out of Hun hands, which do not in any way resemble Hulk hands. IMDb lists this with a jaw-slackening 49 minute running time, which if accurate must be some sort of record for a "feature" film produced during the 1940s. Director B. Reeves Eason could really churn them out in those days; this was one of six pictures he directed in 1943 alone!
9pm More Max
The Man Without a Past (2002 FIN): This lovely little film from Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki features Markku Peltola as a mugging victim who loses his memory and ends up friendless, jobless, and homeless in Helsinki. The film is hardly downbeat, however, as our hero’s life comes back together thanks to the kindness of strangers, a heaping helping of grit and determination, and, erm, the Salvation Army. If you enjoyed the deadpan humor of the Swedish comedy Elling (recommended earlier this year by yours truly) or previous Kaurismaki films like the bizarre Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989), you should make time for the Oscar-nominated The Man Without a Past, which makes its American television debut this evening.
Wednesday 05/12/04
4am Sundance
Family (2001 DEN): Released inauspiciously on September 11, 2001, this Danish documentary tracks the efforts of filmmaker Sami Saif (a former employee of Lars Von Trier’s Zentropa Real) to find his long-lost father in Yemen. Spurred to action by the sudden deaths of his mother and brother, Saif engages in an ambitious search for his last living relative with the aid of his partner and co-director Phie Ambo. Shot on digital video and 8mm - and blown up to wide-screen 35mm - this is an emotional and rewarding retracing of the divergent paths taken by father and son.
6pm Sundance
At Five in the Afternoon (2003 IRA): The newest film from wunderkind director Samira Makhmalbhaf makes its TV debut this evening. Co-written by the director and her equally-talented father, Mohsen, the film is set in post-Taliban Kabul, where a young woman (Aghele Rezaie) dreams of ascending to her nation’s presidency, much to the chagrin of her conservative father. Combining two themes of great importance to Makhmalbhaf-philes - the role of women in contemporary Iran and education - At Five in the Afternoon is a worthy successor to her earlier triumphs The Apple (1998) and Blackboards (2000). How many directors can brag about having three truly great films on their resume? This one can, and she’s still only 24 years old. Also airs 5/15 at 8:15pm.
Thursday 05/13/04
Trio Noon
Dusty and Sweets McGee (1971 USA): This is without a doubt the film I’m most excited about this week, a long-forgotten counterculture oddity from director and Scientologist Floyd Mutrux. Long buried in the Warner Bros vaults, this rare drug drama features TiVoPlex regular Billy Gray as a strung-out junkie on the lookout for his next fix. Mutrux, who tape-recorded hours of conversations with real-life junkies in preparation for this project, used (aside from Gray) a cast of real-life dopers to add veracity to this non-judgmental look at drug addiction, and an embarrassed Warner's studio quickly pulled the film from distribution. While Dusty and Sweets McGee’s harrowing shooting-gallery scenes have long since been outdone by films as disparate as Christiane F. (1981) and Drugstore Cowboy (1989), it remains to be seen whether the Trio censor’s scissors will allow them to remain intact this afternoon. Regardless, this film - never released on home video - is incredibly hard to see in any way, shape, or form, so we’ll take what we can get. Fittingly (considering Mutrux went on direct American Hot Wax in 1978), the memorable oldies soundtrack - including Duke of Earl, The Locomotion, and a track by Jimmy Page’s arch nemesis Jake Holmes - serves as a bittersweet counterpoint to the wretched excesses of the film’s protagonists.
10:35pm Flix
Jaws of Satan (1981 USA): Some films truly are so bad they’re good, but most bad films really are terrible. Jaws of Satan is probably closer to the latter category than the former, but it hasn’t been sighted on television for a decade or so (when it last popped up on TNT’s much-missed 100% Weird) and I definitely plan on giving it another look. Television actor Fritz Weaver stars as Father Tom, a Druid in priest’s clothing who battles the eponymous fallen angel, personified here in the form of a giant snake. A mite bit inefficient when you’re the Prince of Darkness, I would have thought, but Old Scratch starts brainwashing the local rattlers and sic-ing them on the inhabitants of a small Alabama town, who apparently don’t have a local snake-handling evangelist to turn to in time of emergency. Nine-year-old Christina Applegate, five years prior to playing Kelly Bundy on Fox’s lascivious Married...with Children, made her screen debut here. Yep, the more I write, the better - or worse - it sounds.
Friday 05/14/04
7am Turner Classic Movies
Captain Hurricane (1935 USA): This very obscure RKO feature stars James Barton, Gene Lockhart and Henry Travers as a trio of Jack Tars who rescue a beautiful woman (Son of Kong’s Helen Mack) from a shipwreck and take her in as a housekeeper. Soon the three gobs are competing amongst themselves for her charms, and their friendship is put to the test. This was the penultimate film of director John Robertson, "who wore a Stetson hat" and was the subject of a Byrds song in 1967, and also features Lon Chaney Jr. in an uncredited role as a sailor. It’s followed at 8:15am by the first of this week’s East Side Kids features, 1940’s Boys of the City, a haunted house comedy-thriller remade a mere three years later as Spooks Run Wild. Directed by noir specialist Joseph H. Lewis, this is one of the better entries in the series, and costars - in addition to the usual gang of idiots - Minerva Urecal as a creepy housekeeper.
9pm Turner Classic Movies
Hercules, Samson and Ulysses (1965 ITA): Yes, Captain Oveur, I DO like gladiator movies, and this is one of the best. Sadly, TCM doesn’t seem to have access to a wide-screen print, a problem that also detracted from their airing of Andre De Toth’s 1963 sword-and-sandal epic Gold for the Caesars last year. Still, this should look better than the worn-out TV prints we all grew up watching, and I’m still panting in anticipation. If you enjoy the sight of muscular men in short skirts, this film can’t be beat, as it features several, including Kirk Morris as Hercules and Richard Lloyd as Samson (Sadly, THIS Richard Lloyd is not the guitar genius from New York art rockers Television, but some Italian guy with an Anglo screen pseudonym). In this peplum epic, Old Testament stud Samson squares off against the aforementioned mythological heroes, but the three soon decide to oil up their pecs together and team up to take on a very fake-looking sea monster. If homoerotic subtext is your bag, look no further.
10:20pm Sundance
American Eunuchs (2003 USA): I’d never heard of this film until I started working on this week’s column. I know next to nothing about it, haven’t seen it, and can’t offer an opinion. But it’s called American Eunuchs, and any film called American Eunuchs is, by default, a perfect TiVoPlex candidate. Tune in with me to this cutting-edge documentary and learn all about the wonderful world of voluntary castration. Also airs 5/17 at 9pm.
Saturday 05/15/04
5pm HBO
28 Days Later… (2002 GB): The best British horror film of recent years - heck, one of the best recent horror films, period - makes its cable debut this evening. If you missed its surprisingly successful American theatrical run last year and haven’t already picked up the DVD, here’s your chance to take a look. Cillian Murphy stars as Jim, who wakes up in a London hospital one morning to discover that he’s amongst the last survivors of a plague unleashed on the British Isles after the escape of dozens of genetically-modified monkeys from a research lab. It sounds like a predictable set-up, but thankfully this isn’t a Resident Evil-style slash-a-thon, but an intelligent and thoughtful (and exciting and gory!) post 9-11 look at the diseases of fear and paranoia. The film echoes earlier post-Apocalyptic films such as Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Cornel Wilde’s underrated made-in-Britain gem, No Blade of Grass (1972), but stakes out its own positions as Jim and his friends end up in the care of a beleaguered British army unit who have their own perverse ideas about the survival of the human race. The first 20 minutes of this film, stunningly shot by Dogville cinematographer Anthony Dod Mandle on the deserted streets of The Big Smoke to the accompaniment of the Goth rock orchestrations of Canada’s Godspeed You, Black Emperor!, are drop-dead brilliant, and while the film can’t maintain the ambience and tension it establishes during the first reel, it remains a deeply satisfying alternative to the carelessly-made fright flicks of recent years. Also airs at 8pm and throughout the month of May.
6pm Sundance
Gerry (2002 USA): An exhibition in minimalism, Gerry does not bother to even have a plot. The film gets its point across by using mood and atmosphere and by relying heavily on audience involvement. Gus Van Sant manages to make the characters, as played by Matt Damon and Casey Affleck, part of the atmosphere and the admittedly stunning background. Gerry moves at a snail’s pace and does not pretend to go beyond what it intends to do in the first place, and that is exploring the feeling of being lost in the desert. It is not a work of genius by any stretch of the imagination; the film is akin to showing what it’s like to watch paint dry by showing paint drying. It can, and will, bore a lot of people that can’t, or refuse to be, fully immersed in it. So while it is not the most entertaining film around, it certainly is strangely compelling and worth at least a try. (With thanks to Walid Habboub for this recommendation.)
11:50pm Sundance
L.I.E. (2001 USA): Films about pedophilia aren’t exactly box-office gold, but between Larry Clark, Harmony Korine, and Todd Solondz, the topic hasn’t exactly been ignored by filmmakers. In my opinion, Clark is little more than a pornographer (in the worst sense of the word), Korine an overrated no-talent, and Solondz a solid filmmaker, with his Happiness (1997 USA) making a valiant stab at confronting the issue in a relatively honest way. It’s qualities are matched, if not trumped, however, by Michael Cuesta’s L.I.E., a film about a 15-year-old boy (Paul Dano) taken in by a local bigwig (Brian Cox) who also happens to, erm, like young boys. Cox is outstanding, bringing pathos, tenderness, and sliminess to his role in equal measure, but Dano is the real star, offering an utterly guileless and charming performance as a befuddled and confused teenager. Also notable are Billy Kay as semi-pro male prostitute Gary and Marcia DeBonis as Dano’s school guidance counselor. Although saddled with an overdramatic (though plausible) conclusion, this is a very impressive freshman effort by a director to keep an eye on.
Sunday 05/16/04
11:15am Flix
Mixed Company (1974 USA): It isn’t even close to being PC, but there’s something endearing about this "family" comedy-drama about a husband and wife who end up adopting a house full of needy children, including a boy from the ghetto, an American Indian, and a Vietnamese orphan. Joseph Bologna plays Dad, a tough-guy basketball coach with the proverbial heart of gold, and Barbara Harris is Mom, a social worker with, er, a heart of gold, too. There’s also an out-of-character appearance by cuddly Tom Bosley as an inveterate racist friend of the family. The film hasn’t aged gracefully and it makes its point bluntly and repeatedly, but I like it anyway, and Bologna and Harris are both excellent.
9pm Turner Classic Movies
Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928 USA): It’s been a while since this wonderful Buster Keaton silent has aired, and though the film is relatively well-known - at least in comparison to many of the other features aired in TCM’s Silent Sunday Night slot - it deserves a mention. This time Buster stars as a cowardly young man who proves his mettle in hilarious fashion when he ends up a crewmember aboard his father’s riverboat. Ernest Torrence makes a fine straight man as the boy’s stern old man, and Buster’s real-life dad Joe makes an uncredited appearance as a barber. Shot on location on northern California’s Sacramento River, Steamboat Bill Jr. includes some of Buster’s finest physical comedy sequences, including the windblown finale.
Monday 05/17/04
3am Turner Classic Movies
Mr. Wise Guy(1942 USA): Can I get a woo-hoo? Yes, we’re getting two East Side Kids movies instead of one this week. Of course, taken together they only add up to a single poorly-written, under-budgeted full-length feature, but never mind. This time the lads finally get their comeuppance, and are sent up the river to Wilton Reform School to do time for a crime they (naturally) didn’t commit. The usual complications ensue with a pair of gangsters (this time played by "Big Boy" Williams and Billy Gilbert) before Muggs and company square things with the coppers and everything’s copasetic again.
6pm Sundance
Cul de Sac: A Suburban War Story (2002 USA) : Only in America could a man steal a tank and drive it blithely through city streets. That’s exactly what happened in Claremont, California, in 1995, and this film takes a look at the man behind the wheel (Do tanks have steering wheels? Sorry if I’m using the wrong terminology). The amateur cavalryman, an unemployed plumber hopped up on bennies, ended up dead when jumpy and presumably outgunned police took him down. Cul De Sac is an unusual look at a blue-collar San Diego community whose high unemployment rate and strong ties to the military-industrial complex inexorably led to this bizarre confrontation, which is certainly more interesting than what you see on your average episode of Cops.
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