By John Seal

September 30 - October 6, 2003

Tuesday 09/30/03

1:15am Turner Classic Movies
Man in the Net (1959 USA): Director Michael Curtiz (Casablanca, Captain Blood, Mildred Pierce) is justly considered one of the great filmmakers of the ‘30s and ‘40s. This forgotten thriller was one of his last films and stars Alan Ladd as an artist who runs afoul of the law when his alcoholic wife (Carolyn Jones of Addams Family fame) disappears. Solidly written by 12 Angry Men scribe Reginald Rose, Man in the Net deserves better than the obscurity in which it has sunk. Little Susan Gordon, the daughter of TiVoPlex fave Bert Gordon, makes a rare appearance here in one of only two films she made outside the aegis of her father’s production company.

9am Sundance
Missing Allen (2001 GER): The real-life mystery surrounding the disappearance of freelance cinematographer Allen Ross is the subject of this fascinating, if not entirely satisfying, documentary. Directed by German filmmaker Christian Bauer, who worked with Ross on numerous occasions, the film picks up in late 1995 when Ross initially dropped out of sight. At first his friends and family think he may be playing a game, but as the years pass, attention is drawn to the Samaritans, a religious cult founded by Ross’s wife Linda, and an organization with ties to David Koresh’s Branch Davidians. Bauer follows the leads across the country, ultimately ending up in a basement in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where the true story of his friend’s fate lies. Bauer’s bloodless narration is a frustration, as is the film’s tendency to shower Ross with flowery plaudits - the story is of sufficient interest that we don’t really need to know what a swell guy he was - but the film is never less than interesting and will keep your attention.

9pm More Max
Kandahar (2001 IRA-FRA): Iconoclastic Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbhaf’s story of an Afghan woman’s search for her sister in her war-torn homeland makes its American television premiere this evening. Shot in Iran to avoid Taliban interference, this is a deeply affecting and beautifully made film in the tradition of other Makhmalbhaf works like 1998’s stunning The Apple and 2000’s Blackboards. The film was awarded the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. How do they come up with these goofy award names? Also airs 10/03 at 3:30 am and 6:30 am.

Wednesday 10/01/03

7am Fox Movies
Daughter of the Mind (1969 USA): Regular readers already know I have a strange predilection for old made-for-TV movies, and here’s a particularly fine example of the genre that hasn’t been seen in many moons. It stars Ray Milland as a professor trying to summon the spirit of his dead daughter. Hey, why not? Americans were fascinated with UFOs, the afterlife, and all things occult in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, and this film presaged later efforts like the TV series The Sixth Sense (which, believe it or not, I watched on a regular basis). It’s silly, silly stuff, but you can’t help but enjoy it, especially considering the solid cast backing up Milland, including former screen idol Gene Tierney, the always-watchable George Macready, and Shakespearean character actor and workaholic John Carradine.

7:15am Flix
Black Girl (1972 USA): Black Girl, originally a play by Texas-born writer J. E. Franklin, was adapted for the screen by Franklin and directed by the great Ossie Davis. The result is a stagey but effective extended-family drama, with three sisters (Gloria Edwards, Loretta Greene, and Peggy Pettit) plotting against the successful adopted fourth daughter (Leslie Uggams). Brock Peters is top-billed as the father of the girls, but his performance is little more than a glorified cameo, and it's up to the women to carry the show. Most effective are Greene, as the pregnant middle daughter, Louise Stubbs as the mother, and Claudia McNeill as the grandmother and matriarch of the family, M’Dear. Less effective is Uggams, whose droopy-eyed look simply doesn't evince much sympathy, and Edwards, who is over-the-top at times as the eldest and meanest sibling. There's a brief non-speaking appearance by Mrs. Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and a sterling performance by an uncredited gentlemen who plays Mr. Herbert, a boarder who has shacked up with M’Dear. This film is all about the characters, and there are some meaty scenes, especially when Uggams returns home from college unannounced. Black Girl was clearly a labor of love, and all things considered, is a simple but solid effort, quite moving at times and generally effective.

Thursday 10/02/03

3am Showtime 3
Orson Welles: The One-Man Band (1995 GER-FRA-SUI): More sensibly known as Orson Welles: The Lost Films in the UK, this absolutely fascinating documentary-anthology features clips from numerous incomplete Welles projects. The big man was an obsessive artist who was understandably contempuous of the studio system that butchered his Magnificent Ambersons (1942 USA) and generally interfered as much as possible with his artistic vision. This film, which is getting a surprisingly generous run this month on Showtime, features screen tests, footage from the cutting-room floor, and rare glimpses of Welles at work, and is absolutely essential viewing for cinema buffs. Also airs at 3:15 pm.

8:05am Sundance
The Last Just Man (2002 CAN): It’s easy to get carried away with superlatives when writing film commentary, especially in a column like this one, where I’m trying to find things to recommend. So please consider that fact when you read the next sentence. The Last Just Man is, in my opinion, one of the greatest and most important documentaries ever made. General Romeo Dellaire was the Canadian commander of the UN peacekeeping forces in Rwanda in the early 1990s, and in a series of interviews, he details the bureaucratic inertia and political backbiting that hamstrung his efforts to forestall the genocide perpetrated by that country’s Hutu majority against the Tutsi minority, a slaughter that killed close to a million people in the breathtaking span of a hundred days. This film takes the viewer as deep into the heart of darkness as it is possible to go. This is a film that will bring tears to your eyes.

9am Encore Action
Charlie’s Angels (1976 USA): I simply couldn’t let this one pass without mentioning it. Here’s the pilot for the hugely successful television series of the same name that later spawned two films of awesome ineptitude. It’s not very good, but provides terrific camp value, and the cast isn’t bad once you get past Farrah Fawcett: I’m fairly certain this is the only film where you can see David Ogden Stiers, Tommy Lee Jones, and Bo Hopkins in one place. And let’s be honest: Bernie Mac is no John Forsythe. Also airs at 7 pm.

Friday 10/03/03

6pm Sundance
Tom Dowd and the Language of Music (2003 USA): Nominated for Best Documentary at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, this film details the life and times of engineer-producer Tom Dowd, a man whose behind-the-scenes career at Atlantic Records during its glory years was only overshadowed by that of Atlantic founder Ahmet Ertegun. Dowd’s first job for Ertegun was engineering Stick McGhee’s seminal R-and-B hit, Drinkin’ Wine Spo-dee-O-dee, and he never looked back, eventually working with an amazing array of musical talent, including John Coltrane, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, The Clovers, and Ornette Coleman. This loving tribute to a phenomenal talent, who died in late 2002 of emphysema, will be of tremendous interest to music fans.

9pm Fox Movies
The Mephisto Waltz (1971 USA): Alan Alda’s satanic cinema soiree gets a rare wide-screen airing tonight thanks to Fox. Alda stars as a failed concert pianist-turned-music journalist who gets mixed up with a music-loving devil worshiper desperate to get his figurative claws into Alan’s temptingly talented body. It’s a ridiculous premise, and the film can’t match the horrors of the truly disturbing Rosemary’s Baby, but The Mephisto Waltz has its moments and has a solid cast, including Curd Jürgens, Bradford Dillman, and Khigh Diegh. Add in a decent Jerry Goldsmith score, and you have the ultimate Quinn Martin production, the only one of his efforts to actually get a theatrical release!

11pm Turner Classic Movies
Ivan the Terrible Part 1 (1945 USSR): Let’s be blunt. No one watches the films of Sergei Eisenstein and expects to have a good time. There are certainly some visceral thrills to be had in Battleship Potemkin (1925 USSR) and Ten Days That Shook the World (1927 USSR), but his two-part film bio of Russia’s greatest tsar is set in an historical period that is virtually unknown and quite complex for a non-Russian audience. That warning aside, this is a tremendous film filled with powerful imagery and buoyed by a magnificent, brooding performance by Nikolai Cherkasov as Ivan. There’s also a superb original score by Sergei Prokofiev, overshadowed only by that composer’s masterful work in 1938’s Alexander Nevsky. Part Two of Eisenstein’s masterpiece, completed long after his death in 1948, airs next week in this slot.

Saturday 10/04/03

2:35am Showtime
Masters of Horror (2002 USA): This Showtime original features interviews with horror directors George Romero, Tobe Hooper, Wes Craven, and Dario Argento, but we all know who the real draw is: host Bruce Campbell, the star of the much-anticipated Elvis horror parody, Bubba-Ho-Tep. Other participants include the underrated Stuart Gordon and makup artist Tom Savini. It’s not as good as 2000’s American Nightmare, which put the horror explosion of the late ‘60s into its political and social context, but it is a heck of a lot of fun, and Campbell is the perfect man to serve as host.

9am Flix
The Entertainer (1960 GB): This one’s included for two reasons: it’s a great film, and the last time I recommended it, my addled brain thought that it was Joan Plowright playing Laurence Olivier’s wife. Of course, Plowright and Olivier WERE about to be married in real life, but in cinema life, Plowright was playing Lord Larry’s daughter in this elegiac adaptation of John Osborne’s stage play. Olivier plays the eternally optimistic vaudevillian Archie Rice, who hasn’t quite come to terms with the death of his art form in a nation newly enamoured with television and other distractions. His wife is, in reality, played by the simpering and fragile Brenda de Banzie, whilst Plowright and a young Alan Bates are Archie’s adult children. There’s also an unforgettable performance by Roger Livesey as the family patriarch, a vaudevillian from an earlier era who attempts to save his son’s career with tragic results. A very satisfying film, beautifully shot on location in the seaside town of Morecambe in Lancashire, The Entertainer deservedly earned Olivier an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Also airs 10/05 at 2:15 am.

5:30pm Fox Movies
The Ox-Bow Incident (1943 USA): I’ve only ever read two Western novels in my life; this one, by Walter van Tilburg Clark, and the decidedly pulpier Destry Rides Again by Max Brand. Their cinematic adaptations match the aspirations of their print precursors, with Destry being a solid, big-budget piece of entertainment, and Ox-Bow Incident being a bleak, existential look at justice - and the lack thereof - in the Old West. Henry Fonda and Harry (Henry) Morgan star as a pair of cowhands caught up in a fever of lynch mob justice when a local farmer is murdered. Dana Andrews, Anthony Quinn, and William Eythe are the threesome accused by vigilantes of the crime, and Fonda fills his regular role as the conscience of the crowd, but this relentlessly downbeat and realistic film doesn’t provide any catharsis for its audience. Directed by the great William Wellman, and co-starring Jane Darwell and Marc Lawrence, this is one of the finest American films of the 1940s, and an artistic triumph all the more surprising considering it was produced during wartime.

Sunday 10/05/03

5am Sundance
Paradox Lake (2001 USA): This unusual and occasionally disturbing look at the treatment of autistic children and teenagers will raise far more questions than it answers for most viewers. The film, whilst wholly fictional, stars a cast of autistic children and real-life counselors and is set at a summer camp where simple day-to-day tasks assume an almost overpowering level of complexity. Polish director Przemyslaw Reut coaxed good performances from his “star”, Matt Wolf, a USC film grad, but the heavy lifting is done by the autistic children, especially Jessica Fuchs as the young woman who develops a mysterious relationship with Wolf via her collection of toy animals. The film, regardless of its very low budget, is quite ambitious, and ends on an ambiguous, though hopeful, note.

11am Fox Movies
Willie and Phil (1980 USA): This is a purely speculative pick based on the track record of director-writer Paul Mazursky (Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, Harry and Tonto). It’s a relationship film about three friends (Michael Ontkean, Margot Kidder, and Ray Sharkey) who fall in and out of love with each other whilst navigating the shallow but treacherous cultural waters of the 1970s. The supporting cast is an extremely interesting one, and includes a teenaged Laurence Fishburne, model Jerry Hall, future director Robert Townsend, Edy Williams, and Natalie Wood (as herself). Also airs 10/6 at 1 am.

Monday 10/06/03

9:35am Showtime Extreme
Five Guns West (1955 USA): It’s not very extreme, and it doesn’t qualify as a particularly good Western either, but Five Guns West is notable for one thing: it was the first film directed by Roger Corman, soon to be a giant of independent filmmaking and still a producer to this day. This low-budget sagebrush saga follows the exploits of a group of feudin’ fools on the trail of Confederate gold, and stars Touch Connors (soon to be Mike Connors of Mannix fame), Little Shop of Horrors star Jonathan Haze, and a slumming Dorothy Malone. You won’t feel a thing while you watch this formulaic oater, but you won’t suffer any unpleasant side-effects either.