TiVoPlex
By John Seal
June 13, 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 06/14/05
3:30am Cinemax
Where Were You When the Lights Went Out? (1968 USA): After the Northeastern United States suffered through a widespread ten-hour blackout in the summer of 1965, Hollywood smelled story. The result was this weak sex farce about what folks in the Big Apple get up to when the TV stops working. Robert Morse, then a big Broadway name thanks to his performance in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, stars as Waldo, a would be corporate felon who accidentally falls asleep in the bed of actress Margaret Garrison (the rapidly-aging Doris Day) during the power outage. When Margaret’s husband Peter (James Coburn look-alike Patrick O’Neal) finds the two innocents slumbering peacefully together, predictable mayhem ensues. Unavailable on DVD, this very minor MGM production returns to premium cable this morning after a lengthy hiatus. The solid supporting cast includes Terry-Thomas, Jim Backus, and Steve Allen, and the icky sweet theme tune is performed by the relentlessly unhip Lettermen. Also airs at 6:30am.
11am Sundance
Playing For Change (2003 USA): Busking is one of the most reliable sources of income for the indigent, and this enjoyable-if-insubstantial documentary takes a look at American street musicians from Los Angeles, New York, and New Orleans. Of course, some folks choose it as an avocation: according to Big Easy busker Dick Grayson, “It’s a trade-off, freedom or money, freedom or money…I’ll take the freedom.” Whether your musical taste tends toward drums, didgeridoo, or dulcimer, or even an instrument as pedestrian as the guitar, you’ll find something to enjoy in this film. Also airs on 6/20 at noon.
Wednesday 06/15/05
7pm Fox Movie Channel
Project X (1987 USA): If you like movies with monkeys or apes - and who doesn’t? - you’ll love Project X, a Matthew Broderick vehicle about animal-experimentation. Broderick stars as a lowly enlisted man assigned to cage cleaning duties at a Florida Air Force base where chimpanzees are being trained in flight simulation. This being a Hollywood film, of course things are not as simple as they seem, and Broderick is soon learning that the program is not as benign as it appears on the surface. A thriller with heart (and, for the most part, a brain, thanks primarily to Stanley Weiser’s screenplay), Project X gets a wide-screen airing on Fox this evening. Helen Hunt co-stars as Virgil the Chimp’s original owner and there’s a small role for TiVoPlex favorite Dick Miller as one of Broderick’s co-workers.
Thursday 06/16/05
12:25am Flix
Monkey Shines (1988 USA): There’s more simian mayhem afoot in George Romero’s low-voltage thriller about our treacherous friends from the animal kingdom. Appearing this morning in wide-screen, Monkey Shines features Jason Beghe as Allan, a frustrated quadriplegic who gets a new lease on life thanks to an experimental program involving a Capuchin monkey caregiver named Ella. The idyllic cross-species relationship soon sours, however, when Allan discovers Ella has powers of parapsychology that allow him to channel his sublimated anger in dangerous ways. This is far from Romero’s best, playing like a distaff Stephen King adaptation, but the film is effective and disquieting at times, especially in the early going. Look for the Homo sapiens offspring of Romero and makeup genius Tom Savini in a playground sequence.
Noon HBO
When It Was a Game II (1992 USA): Baseball fans should definitely make time for this delightful-if-brief documentary consisting entirely of home movie footage shot by players and fans from the 1920s to the 1960s. Surprisingly, most of the rare and irreplaceable footage is in color, and we get glimpses of Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Enos Slaughter, and many more. Written and produced by frequent TiVoPlex whipping boy Steven Hilliard Stern, When It Was a Game II is ample penance for his frequent cinematic car wrecks...
10:30pm Flix
Rolling Vengeance (1987 CAN): ...which includes this astonishing piece of effluvia. YEE-HAW! Monster trucks in WIDE-SCREEN! Yessirree, there ain’t nuthin’ a good ol’ boy likes more than 90 minutes of VE-hicular mayhem, and that’s what you get in this wacky north-of-the-border indie from the Ontario-born Stern. Don Michael Paul stars as a trucker out for revenge against the inbred offspring of evil Ned Beatty (Deliverance); they’ve killed his family, raped his girl, and probably kicked his dog, too. Any film featuring characters named Hair Lip, Moon Man, and Finger has to be worth watching, and Rolling Vengeance is no exception.
Friday 06/17/05
12:45am The Movie Channel
Versus (2000 JAP) : This over-the-top action flick makes its wide-screen American television debut this morning. Directed by Ryuhei Kitamura (Godzilla: Final Wars), it’s a heady blend of horror and humor that avoids the somewhat portentous trappings of recent Japanese horrors such as Audition, Ringu, and Spiral. The completely nutty premise involves an escaped prisoner (Tak Sagakuchi) who ends up confronting a zombie army outside one of the doorways to Hell. And these zombies not only dislike yakuza, they also pack heat. This vastly entertaining gorefest also airs at 3:35am.
3:15am Turner Classic Movies
West of Broadway (1931 USA): Fading silent-screen idol John Gilbert stars in this MGM program about a drunken millionaire who gets married on a bender and wakes up regretting his decision. In one of his last roles, Gilbert plays the soused moneyman who heads west to his dude ranch in Arizona in hopes of ditching his gold-digging new wife (Lois Moran). There’s some unfunny and offensive ethnic comedy relief courtesy El Brendel and Willie Fung, but the main reason to watch this rare feature is, of course, Gilbert, whose career crashed and burned after he feuded with studio chief Louis Mayer, leading to his untimely death at the age of 36. West of Broadway is nothing special, but is worth a look for fans of Golden Age Hollywood.
7:15am Showtime
Enter the Ninja (1982 USA): Martial arts fans offended by the genre-bending gymnastics of Versus may feel more comfortable watching this slightly less anarchic chop-socky epic from Cannon Films head honcho Menahem Golan. It’s a shot-in-the-Philippines thriller about Army veteran Cole (Franco Nero) battling evil landowner Venarius (Christopher George), jealous rival Hasegawa (Sho Kosugi), and a loony guy with a hook for a hand (Zachi Noy). Susan George, a talented actress who consistently made bad career decisions, co-stars as the wife of Nero’s friend Frank (Alex Courtney), whose land Venarius lusts after. Inspired by Eric Lustbader’s novel The Ninja, which dominated fiction best-seller lists in 1980, Enter the Ninja raked in millions at the box office and single-handedly kicked off a movie craze for masked assassins, nunchakus, and throwing stars. It’s pretty poor (though certainly better than the hundreds of films it spawned) but hasn’t been on premium cable in years. Also airs at 10:15am.
5pm Showtime
Cypher (2002 CAN-GB): Released amidst a glut of Philip K. Dick screen adaptations, Cypher sank without a trace at the box office but really deserved a better fate. The second feature film from director Vincenzo Natale - whose previous thriller Cube showed filmmakers what one could accomplish with a good cast and no budget - Cypher stars Jeremy Northam as a corporate spy unknowingly being used against his will by his employers. When an agent (Lucy Liu) representing a corporate competitor tries to help him, Northam isn’t sure what to believe, and soon descends into complete paranoia. Whilst imperfect and occasionally displaying some loose ends that a bigger budget might have helped tie up, Cypher is an intelligent thriller that would make a worthy double-feature partner with Spielberg’s Minority Report. Also airs at 8pm.
Saturday 06/18/05
12:30am Turner Classic Movies
The Easiest Way (1931 USA): Constance Bennett stars as a poor girl whose life as the kept woman of a rich man leads to sorrow in this interesting pre-Code feature from MGM. So spicy the Hays Office interceded before its release, The Easiest Way explores a Depression-era escape route that leads Bennett from tenement poverty to the bedroom of an ad agency bigwig (Adolphe Menjou). She doesn’t share his feelings but is willing to go along for the ride, until family loyalty reasserts itself and true love, in the form of reporter Robert Montgomery, rears its handsome head. Tragically, Montgomery is then posted to Argentina, Bennett descends back into poverty, and her former benefactor won’t take her back. Look for a young Clark Gable, here playing a laundry worker wooing Bennett’s sister (TiVoPlex obsession Anita Page).
7:15pm Turner Classic Movies
Arachnophobia (1991 USA): It’s probably been aired on the Sci Fi channel numerous times in wide-screen, but here’s a chance to see this fun, tongue-in-cheek thriller uninterrupted by commercials and fully uncut, as well. A worthy successor to the creepy crawly thrillers of the 1950s (The Spider, Tarantula, etc.), Arachnophobia features Jeff Daniels as the heroic, jut-jawed doctor who must save the day when a deadly South American spider finds its way to a small California town. The terrific supporting cast includes John Goodman, Henry Jones, and Julian Sands, and the Don Jakoby/Wesley Strick screenplay is a witty homage to its predecessors.
Sunday 06/19/05
1:45pm Encore Westerns
The Parson and the Outlaw (1957 USA): Anthony Dexter plays a back-from-the-grave Billy the Kid in this odd Western about a greedy landowner (slick Robert Lowery) and his right-hand man (Sunny Tufts, bravely trying to disguise his New England accent) trying to maintain control over their fiefdom by denying the locals the chance to be annexed by Texas. Billy has had good buddy Pat Garrett pretend to kill him, and has hung up his guns to retire to his old homestead, which - you guessed it - is stuck plumb in the middle of this land war. The meek local folks are represented by crusading newspaperman Matt McCloud (Ed Wood regular Kenne Duncan), his beautiful daughter (Madalyn Trahey, who clearly belongs in the “where are they now?” category), and preacher-man Jericho Jones (the appropriately-cast Buddy Rogers, who also produced the film). When McCloud is murdered, the townsfolk need a hero to save them...and guess who's available? The Parson and the Outlaw was shot in rich colors which look great, especially when contrasted with the stock footage of wild animals, wagon trains, and fires shoehorned into the feature, and the film also features a very strange soundtrack by Joe Sodja, a Cleveland-born banjo player whose score seems to be played on either a zither or a slack-key guitar. It's odd to say the least.
7:30pm Turner Classic Movies
I Never Sang For My Father (1970 USA): I have a long standing soft spot for this rather soppy drama - it was one of the first “serious” films I encountered as a child, and its story of a troubled father/son relationship (though bearing no similarities to my own - hi, Dad!) - pulled hard at my ten-year-old heartstrings. It features Gene Hackman as a middle-aged professor who can’t pull himself away from the orbit of his demanding dad, played to perfection by Melvyn Douglas, who (in addition to Hackman and screenwriter Robert Anderson) netted an Academy Award nomination for his work here. This high-quality drama from director (and current Oscar night producer) Gil Cates hasn’t had a digital upgrade yet, and makes a rare wide-screen appearance on TCM this evening.
Monday 06/20/05
7am Showtime
Wild Thing (1987 USA): This week’s “Movie Least Likely to Appear on TV in Its Correct Aspect Ratio But Getting Aired Letterboxed By Showtime Anyway” award goes to Wild Thing, an absurd action flick about an urban superhero raised Tarzan-style by a bag lady. Now an adult, the feral fellow is determined to wreak vengeance on the thugs (the aptly-named Chopper and Trash, played with gusto by Robert Davi and Maury Chaykin) responsible for his parents’ deaths. This silliness was scripted by - wait for it - John Sayles, who must have been really desperate for some quick cash at the time. Long unavailable on home video, I think I love Wild Thing, but I wanna know for sure, so I’ll be tuning in to catch this very odd feature.
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