TiVoPlex
By John Seal
March 21, 2005
From the obscure to the obscurest to the merely overlooked or underappreciated; they all have a home in the TiVoPlex! All times Pacific.
Tuesday 03/22/05
8:05am Encore True Stories
The Farm: Angola USA (1998 USA): The mundane, dangerous, and downright depressing lives of six prison inmates are recorded in this Sundance award-winning documentary about a notorious Louisiana prison built on the grounds of an Old South plantation. Featuring interviews with the inmates, including one on Death Row, the film is a quiet reminder of the humanity of those who have sinned against society, even of those who have committed the most heinous crimes. Rehabilitation and humane prison conditions are not popular topics these days, but films like The Farm serve as important reminders that society is on shaky ethical ground when it condemns its miscreants to a Hell on Earth. Also airs 3/28 at 3:20pm.
9am Sundance
The Flower of Evil (2003 FRA): Or in the original French, La Fleur de Mal, which sounds much more elegant and a bit less like a bad bodice-ripper. Part of Sundance’s recent mini-Claude Chabrol festival, The Flower of Evil isn’t classic Chabrol, though it is the prolific auteur’s 50th film. Starring Nathalie Baye and Benoit Magimel, the film explores the incestuous and duplicitous lives of an upper middle-class family who - in a plot development reminiscent of Clouzot’s Le Corbeau - are receiving poison pen letters accusing them of a litany of evil, including collaboration with the Nazis. It all adds up to a comfy, if slightly hollow, examination of Chabrol’s favorite theme: the seamy underbelly of French bourgeois life. Also airs at 10pm and on 3/27 at 9am.
1:30pm Encore Action
The Beast of War (1988 USA): This film seems to be in perpetual play on cable, and I've always been mildly intrigued by the premise: a Soviet tank crew tries to survive during the Afghan Civil War of the '80s. I finally got around to watching it recently, and though not perfect, The Beast of War is an above-average war flick, best compared perhaps to David O. Russell's Three Kings. Filmed in Israel, the Afghan mujahedeen are played by Israeli actors, whilst the Russians are played by Americans, notably Jason Patric and the excellent George Dzundza. Thankfully, unlike certain other films made by Americans about Russians, the actors speak in their normal voices instead of using potted movie accents. The film is quite relevant in light of all that has happened recently in Afghanistan, especially in an early scene of the film where the tank's educated (and Marxist) Pashtun crewmember explains the three principles of life in his country: hospitality, revenge, and sanctuary. Perhaps the Taliban weren't making silly excuses when they wouldn't hand over Osama Bin Laden. Also airs 3/27 at 9:40am.
5pm Turner Classic Movies
The Mind Reader (1933 USA): This Warner’s quickie stars Warren William, Allen Jenkins, and Clarence Muse as three former carnies who use a mind-reading scheme to bilk money from gullible victims. When true love arrives on the scene in the shape of new customer Constance Cummings, William is forced to make a choice: love or money? His ultimate decision won’t surprise you, but the film’s gritty ambience - including references to the Mann Act! - will please fans of pre-Code cinema. Based on a play by Vivian Crosby, The Mind Reader is another fine low-budget feature from director Roy Del Ruth.
Wednesday 03/23/05
3:30am Showtime
Evil Alien Conquerors (2002 USA): Picking up where Morons From Outer Space left off, this silly comedy features Napoleon Dynamite’s Diedrich Bader and SNL-regular Chris Parnell as a pair of hapless space invaders sent to subdue the Earth with a matching set of miniature swords. Written and directed by Chris Matheson, this low-budget comedy - which surely must have gone straight to video - also features Tori Spelling, deadly cows, and an enforcer (Tyler Labine) from the planet Kabijj who has orders to take matters into his own hands. Basically, this is an extended SNL sketch, which - unsurprisingly - runs out of steam pretty rapidly, but it does provide a few cheap chuckles, and is making its television premiere this morning. Also airs at 6:30am.
10:35am Encore True Stories
Tracks of Glory (1991 AUS): An Antipodean take on the Chariots of Fire trope, Tracks of Glory stars American-born actor Phil Morris as a world-class cyclist who overcomes adversity, intolerance, and his Aussie opponent (Cameron Daddo) on his way to vehicular victory. Set at the turn of the 20th century, this made-for-TV film does a good job of capturing the dusty ambience of back-of-beyond Australia, but doesn’t provide a whole lot in the thrills department. If uplifting period dramas are your thing, however, this film delivers the goods.
Thursday 03/24/05
Noon Showtime 2
X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963 USA): With the arrival on American shores in 1948 of the mind-bending drug Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, Hollywood was bound to pick up on the visual and narrative possibilities of this reality-distorting compound. Even before Timothy Leary popularized LSD at Harvard University, producer William Castle had referenced psychedelics in his classic horror opus The Tingler (1959). In 1963, Roger Corman’s X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes became the second feature to obliquely use LSD to kick-start its story. Corman’s film features Ray Milland as a doctor experimenting with a new drug that allows him to see through matter, at first providing him with comic peeks at ladies’ underwear, but then diverting him down the soon-to-be-well-worn “bad trip” path as he loses control of the drug’s effect and starts seeing much more than he bargained for. Though the film co-stars AIP regulars like Barboura Morris, Dick Miller, and Jonathan Haze, this is much more than exploitation fare, with the meaning of life and the nature of reality brought into question by the time the film reaches its infamous climax. Corman went on to experiment with LSD before producing The Trip in 1967, and screenwriter Robert Dillon further explored the limits of perception in the equally compelling Waking the Dead (2000).
9:30pm Sundance
House of Fools (2002 RUS-FRA): Set in 1996 during the first Chechen War for Independence, House of Fools takes a familiar theme - the insane are actually saner than the nominally normal - and places it in a wartime setting reminiscent of Philippe de Broca’s cloying but effective King of Hearts (1966). Based on a true story, the film imagines what happens after the staff of an asylum abandons their posts when the front line draws near. Directed by Tarkovsky collaborator Andrei Konchalovsky, the film bears few if any similarities to the work of that enigmatic auteur, though the dreamlike presence of singer Bryan Adams (yes, THAT Bryan Adams) adds a surreal quality to the proceedings.
Friday 03/25/05
5pm Turner Classic Movies
Superman II (1980 GB): My personal favorite of the Christopher Reeve Superman series returns to TCM in wide-screen this evening. No longer burdened by the need to supply backstory most of us were already familiar with, Superman II is an action-filled camp classic that teams up three Krypton super-villains (Terence Stamp, Sarah Douglas, and Jack O’Halloran) with Earthbound baddie Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) in an effort to conquer the planet, defeat the Man of Steel, and disrupt Clark Kent’s marriage plans. The miscast Margot Kidder returns as Lois Lane, and the enormous cast also includes Susannah York, E. G. Marshall, Valerie Perrine, Ned Beatty, and Shane Rimmer.
Saturday 03/26/05
1am Showtime
Red Scorpion (1989 USA): Another bad action movie makes its wide-screen television debut this evening. This time it’s Joseph Zito’s ham-fisted Red Scorpion, one of dozens of anti-Communist screeds produced by “liberal Hollywood” back in the Reagan years. Star Dolph Lundgren basically plays his Rocky IV character again, only this time he’s a disillusioned Red who changes sides, joins forces with the “Mombaka Liberation Front”, and proceeds to deal death and destruction to the Cuban and Soviet troops trying to keep the hammer-and-sickle flying high. Shot in the deserts of Swaziland, this very violent flick also features Brion James and M. Emmet Walsh. Also airs at 4am.
9:05am Encore
You Only Live Twice (1967 GB): The second wide-screen instalment of Bond to arrive on premium cable, You Only Live Twice is one of my personal favorites in the series and features the third-best Bond theme ever. Let’s see: Shirley Bassey’s Goldfinger is number one, guilty pleasure The Spy Who Loved Me is number two; yep, Nancy Sinatra’s theme song IS number three (I can’t really rank them after that, but Madonna’s Die Another Day and that awful Christmas song from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service definitely bring up the rear. And yes, I know it technically isn’t a theme song, but when I think of the music from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, that’s what I think of). This time out, MI5 fake Bond’s death, allowing him free rein to investigate SPECTRE’s complicity in the mysterious disappearance of some Soviet and American spacecraft. He’s soon matching wits with baddie Ernst Blofeld (Donald Pleasence), grappling with a veritable army of henchmen, and bedding a bevy of Asian Bond girls, including Mie Hama as the redoubtable Kissy Suzuki. Also airs at 12:05pm.
Sunday 03/27/05
10:30pm Turner Classic Movies
Private Potter (1962 GB): This wartime fable of a soldier (an unbelievably young Tom Courtenay) who claims to have seen God fascinated me as a youngster. Now it comes across as a bit ham-fisted, but I can still recommend it for Courtenay’s earnest performance. Private Potter also highlights the first screen work of writer Ronald Harwood, winner of the Best Writing (Adaptation) Academy Award for 2002’s The Pianist.
Monday 03/28/05
3pm Turner Classic Movies
The Password is Courage (1963 GB): Dirk Bogarde stars as a British POW trying to escape from a German prison camp in this above-average action flick. Loosely based on a true story, The Password is Courage also provided the light-hearted template for the American television series Hogan’s Heroes, with Bogarde’s pesky British character replaced by that of wily Yank Bob Crane. Written and directed by American expatriate Andrew Stone, The Password is Courage won’t make you forget The Great Escape, but will suffice in a pinch as a reasonable substitute.
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