TiVoPlex
By John Seal
August 8, 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 08/10/04
10:10am Encore True Stories
Reckless Indifference (2000 USA): Those God damn kids! William Gazecki, the award-winning director of the controversial Waco: The Rules of Engagement (1997) and the even more questionable Crop Circles: Quest for Truth (2002), produced and directed this intriguing look at the juvenile justice system. Focusing on the death of a California teenager in a suburban drug den called "The Clubhouse", Reckless Indifference could perhaps be considered the West Coast equivalent of Joe Berlinger’s superb Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1997), with marijuana replacing rock-and-roll in the homicide blame game. The fact that the victim’s father was an LAPD cop brought the case considerable media attention, which in turn encouraged an overzealous DA to throw the book (and the threat of life imprisonment) at the dead juvie’s doper buddies. Also airs at 5pm and 8/15 at 10:30am and 5pm.
1:30pm Encore Action
Returner (2002 JAP): This week’s speculative pick comes with caveats. Returner sounds like a Far East version of American cornpone classics like Terminator and Independence Day, with a glossy veneer of video-game graphic "style" layered on to give the film a contemporary cachet. That’s not a recipe that would normally pique my interest, but any time an Asian live-action film gets a wide-screen airing on American television, I’ll be there to take a look, even if I’m only peeking through my fingers. Takeshi Kaneshiro, a fine actor who got his start in Hong Kong classics like Wong Kar Wai’s Chungking Express (1992), stars as a time-traveling gunman transported to the future to help forestall an alien invasion of Earth, but this being a Japanese film, Yakuza are conspiring with the aliens and Kaneshiro’s task turns out to be doubly dangerous. Reportedly including cameo appearances by everyone’s favorite robots in disguise, The Transformers, this sounds like two hours of sci-fi silliness.
5pm Turner Classic Movies
My Name is Nobody (1974 ITA): The great lost Sergio Leone spaghetti western, My Name is Nobody is actually credited to Leone colleague Tonino Valerii, but has the rotund Roman’s fingerprints all over it. Featuring Henry Fonda’s return to the genre after his myth-shattering appearance in 1969’s Once Upon a Time in the West, it’s a much fluffier soufflé, but enjoyable nonetheless. In one of the film’s many in-jokes, Fonda plays a gunfighter trying to retire to (of all places) Europe, but finds his plans upended by up-and-coming pistol-packer Terence Hill, who wants to learn his craft at the knee of the master. Hill was (and is) a massive star in Italy thanks to his appearances in the long-running Trinity series of western comedies (frequently with sidekick Bud Spencer, the Italian Gabby Hayes), and he was briefly afforded some American box office exposure thanks to this film. Desperately in need of a digital upgrade - unless you’re happy with the bare-bones, grey-area DVD currently on the market - My Name is Nobody will never be mistaken for Leone’s finest, but with Fonda, Hill and composer Ennio Morricone on board, entertainment is guaranteed. TCM claims to be airing a wide-screen print, which - if true - is very exciting news indeed, as the film hasn’t had so much as a pan-and-scan airing on American television in donkey’s years.
Wednesday 08/11/04
3:20am Encore
Old Dracula (1974 GB): I think the only mystery about this film is why star David Niven signed the contract to appear in it. No, this isn’t the best item on the illustrious actor’s resumé. Until last February, however, it had been absent from cable for a decade or more, and isn’t available on home video, so bad movie fans (or those who worship Niven) will rejoice at the reappearance of this vampire "comedy". Directed by Clive Donner (The Nude Bomb) and co-starring the wonderful and late lamented Teresa Graves (Get Christie Love), the film was originally released as Vampira, but re-released with its current title to cash in on the success of Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein. Jeremy Lloyd, a veteran of British TV’s evergreen series Are You Being Served?, supplied the occasionally witty screenplay, which involves medical malpractice and (of course) blood-sucking. If the film’s lowly production values don’t get the better of you, you can revel in the cast of comfortably familiar British faces, including Monty Python’s token female Carol Cleveland, Carry On regular Bernard Bresslaw, Hammer scream queens Linda Hayden and Veronica Carlson, Freddie Jones, and - yes! - Colonel Peacock himself, Frank Thornton. Add in a score by genius composer David Whitaker (Psychomania), and you’ve got a winner for the psychotronic crowd. Also airs at 6:20am.
3:30am Sundance
Band of Outsiders (1964 FRA): Roll out the carpet for this one: Sundance is airing the beautiful Criterion Collection print of this Jean-Luc Godard crime film about an unlikely threesome (Sami Frey, Claude Brasseur, and the soon-to-be-ex-Mrs. Godard, Anna Karina) out to rob Karina’s father of his illgotten gains. Beautifully shot by the great Raoul Coutard (the original Breathless, Shoot the Piano Player, Weekend, Z, and many other classics), Band of Outsiders also features a terrific, jazzy Michel Legrand score. This is one of the greatest films of the nouvelle vague and certainly one of the highlights of Godard’s illustrious career.
Thursday 08/12/04
5am IFC
The Vanishing (1988 HOL): If you had the misfortune of tuning in to Fox Movie Channel a month or two back with expectations of seeing the original version of this film - only to be confronted by the inferior-in-every way American remake of the same title - help is on the way. IFC is airing director George Sluizer’s terrific Dutch-language version this morning, and while it may not have Kiefer Sutherland, Sandra Bullock, or Jeff Bridges with a silly accent, it compensates with an intriguing and suspenseful plot. You may not have heard of any of the actors in this film, but at least you’ll end up caring about the characters they play.
6:30pm HBO
Death in Gaza (2004 GB): This gut-wrenching documentary about the Israeli occupation of Gaza ends with a brutal real-life footnote: director James Miller was shot and killed by the Israeli Defense Forces as he was working on the project. Planned as the first of two films focusing on the travails of Palestinian and Israeli youth in the face of the seemingly endless cycle of Middle Eastern bloodshed, Death in Gaza was completed by producer Saira Shah, who also provides narration. A blunt and brutal film that - like the equally remarkable Israeli doc Detained (2000) - doesn’t shy away from the bitter and virulent anti-Semitism of its subjects, Death in Gaza is highly recommended but hard to watch. Also airs at 9:30pm, 8/14 on HBO Signature at 3:30am, and 8/16 on HBO at 1:30pm, 4:30pm, 8:55pm, and 11:55pm.
Friday 08/13/04
8:35pm Flix
C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud (1989 USA): Possibly the worst film airing on any channel this week - okay, with the possible exception of big-budget bloater Dreamcatcher (2003) - Bud the Chud is, nonetheless, worthy of mention in TiVoPlex. The sequel to the bloody 1984 film C.H.U.D. (it stands for Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, if you’re interested), it’s basically a comedy remake of its predecessor that cross-pollinates elements from the superior Return of the Living Dead series with a narrative trope lifted wholesale from George Romero’s magnificent and underappreciated Day of the Dead (1983). I use the word "comedy" advisedly, as you probably won’t find much to laugh at, but the film definitely belongs on the periphery of the "So Bad it’s Good" universe - the universe within which Dreamcatcher comfortably resides - and it does feature a mind-boggling cast, including the great Gerrit Graham (as Bud himself!), Robert Vaughn, June Lockhart, Larry "M*A*S*H" Linville, Norman Fell, and Bianca Jagger. There’s even a Robert Englund cameo. Be warned: this film is truly awful, but you may not be able to take your eyes off it.
Saturday 08/14/04
3:30pm HBO
Pootie Tang (2001 USA): This black action spoof about a smooth street hero whose patois is as dense as a post-modernist academician's prose doesn't always hit the target - in fact, it too often hits below the belt - but it's still a very entertaining, quite funny, and occasionally insightful look at how black culture is subverted by corporate culture. Based on a sketch comedy character that I was totally unfamiliar with prior to seeing this, Pootie is played with aplomb by Lance Crouther, there are some very funny cameos by Chris Rock in multiple roles, and Wanda Sykes, playing Pootie's main squeeze Biggie Shortie, shouldn't be overlooked either. Ubiquitous Robert Vaughn is on hand as the evil Dick Lecter, head of Lecter Corp., the big company that wants to put Pootie's good name on the fast food, cigarettes, and malt liquor the company is foisting onto the African-American community. Naturally the right-on Pootie won't play along…but the bad folks at Lecter (any relation to Hannibal?) have a devious plan… Clocking in at less than 80 minutes, this low-budget feature could have used a few re-writes, but its heart is in the right place. A good (profanity and bling-bling free) rap soundtrack make this an enjoyable family film for the over-tens. Also airs at 6:30pm.
9pm Turner Classic Movies
The Enforcer (1951 USA): I recommended this Warner’s gangster film a few weeks back, but hadn’t seen it in years. After watching it again, I’m more impressed than ever and think that The Enforcer deserves a much better reputation than it has; it’s a minor classic, and one of the finest films of Humphrey Bogart’s career. Completed by director Raoul Walsh when original helmer Bretaigne Windust fell ill, the film is nasty, brutish, and short, and gorgeously shot by cinematographer Robert Burks, who spent the balance of the 1950s working with Alfred Hitchcock, who knew a quality DP when he saw one. Burks shot Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, The Trouble with Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Wrong Man, Vertigo, North by Northwest, and The Birds for Hitch, and he remains one of the unsung heroes of his profession. The Enforcer also benefits from an astonishing performance by Zero Mostel as a weak-willed would-be killer, as well as fine work by Ted De Corsia as a rough-edged informer and the marvelously oily Everett Sloane as a criminal mastermind. Look for Susan Cabot and beautiful Patricia Joiner in uncredited cameos as targets of Sloane’s villainous operation.
Sunday 08/15/04
11:30pm Turner Classic Movies
Lawman (1971 USA): Before throwing himself completely into right-wing revenge fantasies like Death Wish, British-born director Michael Winner made this surprisingly even-tempered western starring Burt Lancaster as the sheriff of Bannock, a typical cattle town of the Old West. When one of Bannock’s citizens ends up dead, Lancaster travels to the neighboring town of Sabbath to arrest the man apparently responsible, but encounters uncooperative townsfolk and a cowed lawman (Robert Ryan) unwilling to turn over the miscreant and is forced to take matters into his own hands. What sets Lawman apart from later Winner opuses such as the aforementioned Death Wish series is Gerald Wilson’s screenplay, which slowly but inexorably chips away at the inflexible Lancaster’s moral character, leaving him little better than the bad man he was sent to track down. The interesting supporting cast includes Robert Duvall, Lee J. Cobb, Ralph Waite, and Wilford Brimley - as a corpse!
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