With TCM already filling every Friday night this month with Hammer horror, I wondered what they were going to save for Halloween itself, but I shouldn’t have worried. What they’ve got all weekend (Friday-Sunday) is a treasure trove of 1930s-1950s horror – everything from early Technicolor horror like Doctor X and The Mystery of the Wax Museum to Val Lewton to Hammer’s Frankenstein films on Friday to a whole raft of William Castle films throughout most of Saturday, another round of Lewton late Saturday early Sunday, then most of Sunday devoted to Roger Corman and Vincent Price. I didn’t single out all of these films, mostly only the ones I’ve – but suffice it to say that if you’re a fan of this style of horror, just keep your TV tuned to TCM all weekend and you’ll be more than happy.

Monday, October 25

6:30am – TCM – Black Orpheus
This reimagining of the Orpheus/Eurydice myth set amidst the Rio de Janeiro Carnival won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
1959 Brazil/France. Director: Marcel Camus. Starring: Breno Mello, Marpessa Dawn, Marcel Camus, Léa Garcia, Lourdes de Oliveira.

8:30am – TCM – Summertime
I haven’t seen this David Lean drama, but Kurt and rot were talking about it in some comments recently, and made me more interested in it than I ever have been before. So maybe I’ll check it out.
1955 USA/UK. Director: David Lean. Starring: Katharine Hepburn, Rosanno Brazzi.
Newly Featured!

12:45pm – IFC – Pan’s Labyrinth
One of my absolute favorite films of the past decade (or ever, really), an absolutely beautiful and terrifying fantasy that juxtaposes the gruesome horrors of the Spanish Civil War with an equally horrifying fantasy world that provides, if not escape, at least some measure of importance and control to the film’s young heroine. Guillermo Del Toro solidified my view of him as a visionary filmmaker with this film, and it still stands to me as a testament to what fantasy can and should do.
2006 Spain/Mexico. Director: Guillermo Del Toro. Starring: Ivana Baquero, Sergi López, Meribel Verdú, Doug Jones.
Must See

2:15pm – TCM – One Two Three
Billy Wilder directs James Cagney in fast-talking near mania as a Coca-Cola manager in Berlin tasked with keeping tabs on the boss’s daughter. This comedy moves at breakneck speed, showcasing Wilder and screenwriting partner I.A.L. Diamond’s genius for dialogue. Not as memorable as many of Wilder’s others, perhaps, but a hidden gem.
1961 USA. Director: Billy Wilder. Starring: James Cagney, Pamela Tiffin, Arlene Francis, Horst Buchholz.

4:15pm – TCM – Roman Holiday
Audrey Hepburn’s first lead role, and the one that immediately catapulted her into stardom. She’s a princess who runs away to try out being normal, and spends an adventurous day exploring Rome with incognito journalist Gregory Peck. Pretty much delightful right the way through.
1953 USA. Director: William Wyler. Starring: Gregory Peck, Audrey Hepburn, Eddie Albert.

11:30pm – TCM – Mickey One
This is not a particularly great film, but it is interesting as a pre-Bonnie and Clyde collaboration between Arthur Penn and Warren Beatty, where they’re trying to do some of the same things in terms of bringing European style to an American story. It’s not nearly as successful as Bonnie and Clyde, but it does have its moments.
1965 USA. Director: Arthur Penn. Starring: Warren Beatty, Alexandra Stewart, Hurd Hatfield, Franchot Tone.

3:15am (26th) – TCM – 42nd Street
By 1933 when 42nd Street came out, the Hollywood musical had already died. So excited by the musical possibilities that sound brought in 1927, Hollywood pumped out terrible musical after terrible musical until everyone was sick of them. 42nd Street almost single-handedly turned the tide and remains one of the all-time classic backstage musicals. It may look a little creaky by later standards, but there’s a vitality and freshness to it that can’t be beat.
1932 USA. Director: Lloyd Bacon. Starring: Warner Baxter, Ruby Keeler, George Brent, Bebe Daniels, Dick Powell, Ginger Rogers, Una Merkel.

Tuesday, October 26

Catch-up day!

Wednesday, October 27

6:00pm – TCM – Mildred Pierce
In quite probably Joan Crawford’s best role (only perhaps excepting her catty “other woman” in The Women), she plays a woman trying to work her way up in the world from lowly waitress to entrepreneur, all the while dealing with her shrew of a daughter. Melodrama isn’t a particularly prized genre these days, but films like Mildred Pierce show how good melodramas can be with the right confluence of studio style, director, and star.
1945 USA. Director: Michael Curtiz. Starring: Joan Crawford, Zachary Scott, Ann Blyth, Eve Arden.
Must See

8:00pm – TCM – The Lady Eve
Barbara Stanwyck and her father Charles Coburn are cardplayers, cheating cruise ship denizens of their wealth. Millionaire (and snake afficianado) Henry Fonda is a good mark, especially since he’s a bit dense and spacey. Stanwyck’s plot is hugely elaborate, only a little muddled by her falling in love with Fonda as well, and she’s a delight from start to finish. As she usually is.
1941 USA. Director: Preston Sturges. Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Charles Coburn, William Demarest, Eugene Pallette.
Must See

8:15pm – IFC – Blow Out
Sound man John Travolta is recording sound samples one night, and may have accidentally recorded a murder occurring. As he tries to investigate, he’s drawn into a dangerous conspiracy. Inspired to some degree by Antonioni’s photography-based Blow-Up, but this is definitely DePalma’s film all the way.
1981 USA. Director: Brian DePalma. Starring: John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow, Dennis Franz.
(repeats at 2:05am on the 28th)

10:00pm – TCM – Sweet Smell of Success
One of the most acidically witty films of the 1950s, Sweet Smell of Success turns its gaze on Broadway gossip columnist Burt Lancaster, who connives with press agent Tony Curtis to break up his sister’s romance – a searing indictment of unscrupulous newspaper men, yes, and a bitingly funny one to boot.
1957 USA. Director: Alexander Mackendrick. Starring: Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison, Martin Milner, Sam Levene.

10:00pm – Sundance – Marie Antoinette
Though Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette is unconventional, it is a solid and riveting re-interpretation of the giddy but not untroubled courts of Louis XVI and Louis XVII. The use of actors like Kirsten Dunst and Jason Schwartzman, who are not known as period actors, as well as anachronistic music, sounds like an ill-conceived attempt to make the story feel contemporary, but it actually works. Coppola took some serious risks with this film, but they paid off beyond all expectation.
2006 USA. Director: Sofia Coppola. Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Jason Schwartzman, Judy Davis, Rip Torn, Rose Byrne.
(repeats at 3:55am on the 27th)

1:15am (28th) – TCM – Gold Diggers of 1933
The story’s nothing to get excited about (and in fact, the subplot that takes over the main plot wears out its welcome fairly quickly), but the strong Depression-era songs, kaleidoscopic choreography from Busby Berkeley, and spunky supporting work from Ginger Rogers pretty much make up for it.
1933 USA. Director: Mervyn LeRoy. Starring: Joan Blondell, Warren William, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell, Aline MacMahon, Ginger Rogers, Guy Kibbee.

3:00am (28th) – TCM – Gold Diggers of 1935
This movie is not even as good as Gold Diggers of 1933 (to which it is unrelated in plot), but it does have one thing that makes it eminently worth watching – the epic “Lullaby of Broadway” number that closes the show, with a full story-within-a-dance playing out through three verses of the song. It is possibly the most definitive number of 1930s backstage musicals.
1935 USA. Director: Busby Berkeley. Starring: Dick Powell, Joan Blondell, Gloria Stuart, Alice Brady.

3:50am (28th) – IFC – Hard Candy
Ellen Page burst onto the scene as a teenage girl getting involved with an older guy she met on the internet – initially looks like a cautionary tale about internet chat relationships, but goes into even more twisted realms than that, with Ellen owning the screen every second.
2005 USA. Director: David Slade. Starring: Ellen Page, Patrick Wilson, Sandra Oh.

Thursday, October 28

6:00am – IFC – Before Sunrise
Before Sunrise may be little more than an extended conversation between two people (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) who meet on a train in Europe and decide to spend all night talking and walking the streets of Vienna, I fell in love with it at first sight. Linklater has a way of making movies where nothing happens seem vibrant and fascinating, and call me a romantic if you wish, but this is my favorite of everything he’s done.
1995 USA. Director: Richard Linklater. Starring: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy.
Must See
(repeats at 11:15am)

9:15am – IFC – Look at Me
This unassuming little French film was one of my favorites the year it came out, largely because of its unsentimental but moving look at a young woman’s struggle to overcome the self-doubt and self-loathing she experiences because of her weight and being overshadowed by her father, a famous writer, despite her own very real singing talent. Marilou Berry turns in a fantastic performance, carefully walking the line between wanting to get away from her father’s influence and also desperately needing his approval, not to mention her constant fear that everyone only pretends to like her in order to get close to him. It’s a great film that ought to be better-known than it is.
2004 France. Director: Agnès Jaoui. Starring: Marilou Berry, Jean-Pierre Bacri, Agnès Jaoui, Laurent Grévill, Keine Bouhiza.
(repeats at 2:30pm)

10:30am – Sundance – Encounters at the End of the World
Werner Herzog has made the savage beauty of nature one of his themes throughout most of his fiction films, so perhaps it’s only natural that he has moved onto explicitly non-fiction explorations of some of nature’s most remote locales, in this case, Antarctica.
2007 USA. Director: Werner Herzog.
(repeats at 4:45pm)

2:45pm – TCM – Gypsy
One of the best shows ever written about stage mothers turns into a pretty decent film – it purports to be the story of vaudeville/burlesque performer Gypsy Rose Lee, but ends up being much more about her mother Mama Rose. It’s a good showcase for any actress, and Rosalind Russell, though not quite the singer that the role pulls on Broadway, does a fine job. Plus, it’s chock-full of showstopping tunes.
1962 USA. Director: Meryvn LeRoy. Starring: Rosalind Russell, Natalie Wood, Karl Malden.
Newly Featured!

8:00pm – TCM – Dead of Night
An omnibus horror film from 1945, set at a country house where each guest tells his or her horror story. In the frame story, a man is drawn to the house, where he seems to know everything that will happen before it does, though he can’t figure out how; the other stories are pretty varied, a couple of them even comedic. But Michael Redgrave’s evil ventriloquist dummy story is one to watch. It’s quiet horror, but that makes it all the better for me.
1945 United Kingdom. Director: Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Chrichton, Basil Dearden, Robert Hamer. Starring: Mervyn Johns, Roland Culver, Mary Merrall, Googie Withers, Frederick Valk, Anthony Baird, Sally Ann Howes, Michael Redgrave.

8:00pm – IFC – The Crying Game
British soldier Forest Whitaker is captured by an IRA cell, and one of the IRA members (Stephen Rea), against his better judgement, befriends him. Later, Rea leaves the cell and makes his way to London to find Whitaker’s lover and ends up getting involved with her under an assumed identity. There’s an additional twist that you likely know if you play any film trivia at all, but the rest of the film is a solid exploration of terrorist guilt with director Neil Jordan’s characteristic angst.
1992 UK. Director: Neil Jordan. Starring: Stephen Rea, Forest Whitaker, Miranda Richardson, Jaye Davidson.
(repeats at 12:30am on the 29th)

10:00pm – TCM – Rebecca
Hitchcock’s first American film, based on Daphne du Maurier’s romantic novel. Rebecca is actually the previous wife of our mousy narrator’s new husband – her greatest fear is that he still loves Rebecca too much to care for her, but the truth may be more sinister than that. A lot of people really love this film, but I personally dislike the Hollywoodized ending enough that I’m not a huge fan.
1940 USA. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Starring: Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, Judith Anderson, George Sanders.

Friday, October 29

7:30am – TCM – The Mystery of the Wax Museum
This early-thirties version of the story better known from Vincent Price’s 1953 House of Wax is awesome for three reasons: 1) the moody two-tone Technicolor, 2) Glenda Farrell’s spunky reporter, and 3) Fay Wray proving again why she’s the scream queen of the 1930s.
1932 USA. Director: Michael Curtiz. Starring: Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Glenda Farrell.
Newly Featured!

11:30am – TCM – Isle of the Dead
In this Val Lewton-produced film, Boris Karloff is a Greek general who, along with a few others, is quarantined on an island when a strange sickness threatens them. Could it be the work of a vorvoloka, a vampire-like creature from Greek folklore? The film itself is uneven and poorly paced, but the last forty minutes or so are extremely effective. Well worth watching if you like Lewton’s stuff.
1945 USA. Director: Mark Robson. Starring: Boris Karloff, Ellen Drew, Marc Cramer, Katherine Emery, Helen Thimig.

3:30pm – TCM – White Zombie
One of the first, if not the first, zombie movies ever has a spurned lover convince a voodoo practitioner to lure the girl he loves away from her fiance, but it doesn’t all work out like he wants. There’s some creakiness here, but I’ve got to say I’m somewhat fascinated by the original, voodoo-style zombies even over post-Romero zombies at times.
1932 USA. Director: Victor Halperin. Starring: Bela Lugosi, Robert Frazer, Madge Bellamy, John Harron, Joseph Cawthorn.
Newly Featured!

4:45pm – TCM – I Walked With a Zombie
Or, Jane Eyre in the West Indies. In Val Lewton’s moody little fantastic horror flick, mousy nurse Betsy goes to the Caribbean to care for afflicted Jessica, the wife of an important plantation owner. Turns out her affliction is due to zombification, a curse of the voodoo-practicing natives. Certainly the acting and script are nothing special here, but the noirish cinematography and direction by Jacques Tourneur as well as producer Lewton’s peculiarly literary sensibility certainly are.
1943 USA. Director: Jacques Tourneur. Starring: Frances Dee, James Ellison, Tom Conway, Edith Barrett, Christine Gordon, Darby Jones.

8:00pm – TCM – Hammer Frankenstein films
TCM’s final Hammer night is devoted to Frankenstein films, starting with The Curse of Frankenstein, then moving on to The Revenge of Frankenstein, Frankenstein Created Woman, and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed! I’ve only seen Revenge of these, and quite enjoyed it for what it was.
UK. Director: Terence Fisher. Starring: Peter Cushing.
Newly Featured!

Saturday, October 30

7:45am – IFC – Breakfast on Pluto
Patrick is a young Irish boy who before very long becomes Patricia. His story is about more than just his attempts to get people to accept him as a her; his quest for identity and his lost family is played out against the backdrop of the early years of the Troubles, as his friends get more and more involved in IRA factions while he does his best to keep from getting involved in things that are too “serious.” There’s a tough-to-find sweet spot between hilarity and tragedy, and hilarity that masks tragedy, and director Neil Jordan and actor Cillian Murphy found it with this film.
2005 Ireland. Director: Neil Jordan. Starring: Cillian Murphy, Eva Birthistle, Liam Neeson.

11:45am – TCM – The Old Dark House
Hammer and William Castle teamed up for this remake of one of the original haunted house stories, with added Technicolor! I haven’t seen it, but I did see the original a few days ago and enjoyed it. I imagine this one would be good fun if you like this style film.
1963 USA/UK. Director: William Castle. Starring: Tom Poston, Robert Morley, Janette Scott, Mervyn Johns.
Newly Featured!

1:30pm – TCM – 13 Ghosts
A struggling family think their money troubles are over when they inherit a mansion from a relative, but little do they know the house comes with existing residents – a bunch of ghosts the crazy old guy was studying. A silly film in many ways, and better if you can take advantage of the blue/red ghost viewers that sadly won’t be included in a TV viewing.
1960 USA. Director: William Castle. Starring: Donald Woods, Rosemary DeCamp, Charles Herbert, Jo Morrow, Martin Millner.
Newly Featured!

3:00pm – TCM – Homicidal
In William Castle’s answer to Psycho, a mysterious woman hires a man to marry her, then kills the judge performing the ceremony and escapes. More mayhem ensues from there, with some pretty great twists.
1961 USA. Director: William Castle. Starring: Glenn Corbett, Patricia Breslin, Jean Arliss.
Newly Featured!

4:30pm – TCM – Mr. Sardonicus
A rare period film for William Castle has a Dracula-type setup with a doctor called to a made-up Eastern European country at the behest of a mysterious Baron with a mysterious secret. More compelling than you might immediately expect.
1961 USA. Director: William Castle. Starring; Ronald Lewis, Audrey Dalton, Guy Rolfe, Oskar Homolka.
Newly Featured!

6:15pm – TCM – Strait-Jacket
Joan Crawford takes the screen in William Castle’s tale of madness and murder as a psychotic woman just let out of the mental institution twenty years after committing an axe murder – but is she ready to return to society?
1964 USA. Director: William Castle. Starring: Joan Crawford, Diane Baker, John Anthony Hayes, George Kennedy.
Newly Featured!

8:00pm – TCM – The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
Charles Laughton plays the put-upon hunchback Quasimodo, a young Maureen O’Hara the lovely Esmerelda in one of the best film versions of Victor Hugo’s classic of gothic romanticism.
1939 USA. Director: William Dieterle. Starring: Charles Laughton, Maureen O’Hara, Cedric Hardwicke, Thomas Mitchell, Edmond O’Brien.

8:00pm – IFC – Alien
Often considered one of the best sci-fi/horror creature features of all time (or just behind its sequel Aliens). Sigourney Weaver gets an iconic role as ass-kicking astronaut Ripley.
1979 USA. Director: Ridley Scott. Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, Ian Holm, John Hurt.
(repeats at 1:30am on the 31st)

10:15pm – TCM – Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
Aging stars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford play an aging child star and her sister in Robert Aldrich’s cult favorite. Hard to think of better casting for a story like this.
1962 USA. Director: Robert Aldrich. Starring: Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Victor Buono, Wesley Addy, Maidie Norman.
Newly Featured!

2:00am (31st) – TCM – Cat People
Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur team up for this suggestive horror film, tapping into Eastern European legends of women who turn into cats to protect themselves against oppressive male attention. Highly creepy while showing almost nothing – and I happen to quite like that in a film.
1942 USA. Director: Jacques Tourneur. Starring: Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Tom Conway, Jane Randolph.

3:30am (31st) – TCM – Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows
A Martin Scorsese-presented documentary on Val Lewton, the producer responsible for a string of highly effective moody B-movie horror films in the 1940s. He’s a fascinating guy, often putting a surprisingly literary air into the lurid titles given him by the studio, and this doc is worth a watch.
2007 USA. Director: Kent Jones. Starring: Martin Scorsese.
Newly Featured!

Sunday, October 31

5:00am – TCM – The Leopard Man
Not one of my favorite Lewton films, but worth a watch anyway. A publicity stunt gone awry results in an escaped leopard – but is he really responsible for the rash of killings that follow?
1943 USA. Director: Jacques Tourneur. Starring: Dennis O’Keefe, Margo, Jean Brooks, Isabel Jewell.
Newly Featured!

6:15am – TCM – Freaks
Or, Tod Browing’s circsploitation film, featuring many actual sideshow performers, which has been banned here and there, on and off, since its initial release in 1932. I actually haven’t seen it myself, though it’s been on my list for some time.
1932 USA. Director: Tod Browning. Starring: Olga Baclanova, Harry Earles, Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams.

6:40am – Sundance – Ran
Akira Kurosawa’s inspired transposition of King Lear into medieval Japan, mixing Shakespeare and Japanese Noh theatre tradition like nobody’s business.
1985 Japan. Director: Akira Kurosawa. Starring: Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, Daisuke Ryu.
Must See
(repeats at 5:15pm)

7:00am – IFC – Paranoid Park
I go back and forth on whether I think Gus Van Sant is brilliant or a pretentious bore – maybe some of both. But I really quite liked the slow, oblique approach in this film about a wanna-be skateboarder kid who relishes hanging out with the bigger skateboarders at the titular skate park – but there’s a death not far from there, and it takes the rest of the movie to slowly reveal what exactly happened that one night near Paranoid Park. Gets by on mood and cinematography.
2007 USA Director: Gus Van Sant. Starring: Gabe Nevins, Daniel Lu, Jake Miller, Taylor Momsen, Lauren McKinney.
(repeats at 4:30pm)

6:15pm – TCM – House of Wax (1953)
The Vincent Price version of the story of a sculptor whose wax figures are almost too real for comfort. Despite the glossy Technicolor and, well, Vincent Price, I still kind of prefer the 1932 version (which was on TCM on Friday).
1953 USA. Director: Andre de Toth. Starring: Vincent Price, Phyllis Kirk, Carolyn Jones, Frank Lovejoy.
Newly Featured!

8:00pm – TCM – House on Haunted Hill
After catching a bunch of William Castle films this year, I can’t imagine anything much better than putting him together with Vincent Price, and that’s exactly what House on Haunted Hill does, as eccentric millionaire Price offers a group of people a million dollars to anyone who can stay overnight in his haunted house.
1959 USA. Director: William Castle. Starring: Vincent Price, Richard Long, Carol Ohmart, Elisha Cook Jr.
Newly Featured!

9:30pm – TCM – The Haunting
No worries, this is the good, 1963 version of The Haunting, not the overblown 1999 remake. The story’s the same, but Robert Wise’s original is creepy, disturbing, and, like, good.
1963 USA. Director: Robert Wise. Starring: Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, Russ Tamblyn.

1:30am (1st) – TCM – Phantom of the Opera (1925)
Celebrated silent horror star Lon Chaney plays the titular phantom in this possibly best version of the oft-filmed story.
1924 USA. Director: Rupert Julian. Starring: Lon Chaney, Mary Philbin, Norman Kerry.
Newly Featured!