TCM Schedule for Saturday, October 31, 2020 -- The Essentials

[Staph]

TCM is overloading on horror, even for the Essentials. Though I must admit, their first choice for tonight is a classic -- Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (1964). Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- Freaks (1932)
1h 30m | Horror | TV-PG
A lady trapeze artist violates the code of the side show when she plots to murder her midget husband.
Dir: Tod Browning
Cast: Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova

One concession Irving Thalberg had to make to keep the film in production was over eating arrangements. Led by Harry Rapf, studio executives had complained about having to look at the performers during lunch breaks, so a special tent was set up for their meals to keep them out of the MGM Commissary. Only the little people and Daisy and Violet Hilton were allowed to eat in public.


7:15 AM -- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932)
1h 30m | Horror | TV-PG
Robert Louis Stevenson's classic tale of a scientist who unleashes the beast within.
Dir: Rouben Mamoulian
Cast: Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins, Rose Hobart

Winner of an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Fredric March (Tied with Wallace Beery for The Champ (1931).)

Nominee for Oscars for Best Writing, Adaptation -- Percy Heath and Samuel Hoffenstein, and Best Cinematography -- Karl Struss

The remarkable Jekyll-to-Hyde transition scenes in this film were accomplished by manipulating a series of variously colored filters in front of the camera lens. Fredric March's Hyde makeup was in various colors, and the way his appearance registered on the film depended on which color filter was being shot through. Only in the late 1960's did Mamoulian reveal how this was done.


9:00 AM -- House of Wax (1953)
1h 28m | Horror | TV-PG
A scarred sculptor re-populates his ravaged wax museum with human corpses.
Dir: Andre Detoth
Cast: Vincent Price, Frank Lovejoy, Phyllis Kirk

It must have been easy for Vincent Price to act alarmed in the sequence in which his museum burns down. Right before the shoot, André De Toth's crew set three "spot fires" in strategic locations. Then the cameras started rolling and everything went downhill. The team quickly lost control of their fires, which merged into a massive inferno that put a hole in the sound stage roof and singed Price's eyebrows. But because the rapidly melting wax mannequins would've been very hard to replace, de Toth kept on filming-even as firemen arrived to help extinguish the flames.


10:45 AM -- Children of the Damned (1964)
1h 30m | Horror | TV-14
Space invaders impregnate six women with super-powered offspring.
Dir: Anton M. Leader
Cast: Ian Hendry, Alan Badel, Barbara Ferris

Clive Powell is the only actor who appears in this film and its predecessor Village of the Damned (1960). In both films, he portrays the leader of the alien children (albeit only briefly in the first one).


12:30 PM -- The Bad Seed (1956)
2h 9m | Drama | TV-PG
A woman suspects that her perfect little girl is a ruthless killer.
Dir: Mervyn Leroy
Cast: Gage Clarke, Jesse White, Joan Croyden

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Nancy Kelly, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Eileen Heckart, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Patty McCormack, and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Harold Rosson

Final film of Nancy Kelly. Despite earning an Oscar nomination for this film, she never made another theatrical movie, only focusing on TV projects.


2:45 PM -- The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)
1h 50m | Drama | TV-G
A man remains young and handsome while his portrait shows the ravages of age and sin.
Dir: Albert Lewin
Cast: George Sanders, Hurd Hatfield, Donna Reed

Winner of an Oscar for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Harry Stradling Sr.

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Angela Lansbury, and Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White -- Cedric Gibbons, Hans Peters, Edwin B. Willis, John Bonar and Hugh Hunt

Several years after this movie premiered, a friend of Hurd Hatfield's bought the Henrique Medina painting of young Dorian Gray that was used in this movie at an MGM auction, and gave it to Hatfield. On March 21, 2015, the portrait was put up for auction at Christie's in New York City (from the Collection of Robert Hatfield Ellsworth) with a pre-auction estimate of between five thousand and eight thousand dollars. It sold for one hundred forty-nine thousand dollars.


4:45 PM -- The Wolf Man (1941)
1h 11m | Horror | TV-PG
A British nobleman undergoes a startling transformation when he's bitten by a gypsy werewolf.
Dir: George Waggner
Cast: Claude Rains, Warren William, Ralph Bellamy

Although Silver Bullets are mentioned several times throughout the film, only the silver-headed cane is actually used to dispatch the werewolves. Silver bullets won't be used until House of Frankenstein (1944).


6:00 PM -- The Haunting (1963)
1h 52m | Drama | TV-PG
A team of psychic investigators moves into a haunted house that destroys all who live there.
Dir: Robert Wise
Cast: Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson

Director Robert Wise read a review of Shirley Jackson's novel "The Haunting of Hill House" in Time Magazine and decided to get the rights to the novel. He later met the writer herself to talk about ideas for the film. He asked her if she had thought of other titles for the novel, because the title would not work for the film. She told him that the only other title she had considered was simply "The Haunting," so Wise decided to use it for the film.


8:00 PM -- Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
1h 33m | Comedy | TV-PG
A mad United States General orders an air strike against Russia.
Dir: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Peter Sellers, George C Scott, Sterling Hayden

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Peter Sellers, Best Director -- Stanley Kubrick, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Stanley Kubrick, Peter George and Terry Southern, and Best Picture

Several members of the cast and crew were actual military veterans; most of whom served during World War II. Writer Terry Southern served in the United States Army as a demolitions technician, while writer and author Peter George was an officer and navigator flying night fighter missions over Malta and Italy in the Royal Air Force (RAF). In fact, George wrote the novel "Red Alert" during his service as an RAF officer, drawing from personal experience. Cinematographer Gilbert Taylor and production designer Ken Adam were also in the RAF; Taylor spent the War photographing nighttime bombing raids over Germany, while Ken Adam was a fighter pilot, flying the Hawker Typhoon in support of long-range bombing missions over Europe. Actor Peter Sellers also served in the Royal Air Force while Peter Bull was an officer in the Royal Navy. George C. Scott served in the United States Marine Corps while Slim Pickens and Jack Creley were enlisted in the Army. Sterling Hayden was in both the Army and the Marine Corps, serving as an officer in the latter; Hayden was also a secret agent during the War, serving in the OSS which was the predecessor to the CIA. James Earl Jones was the only non-WWII cast member, serving in the Army during the Korean War.


10:00 PM -- Them! (1954)
1h 34m | Horror | TV-PG
Federal agents fight to destroy a colony of mutated giant ants.
Dir: Gordon Douglas
Cast: James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, Joan Weldon

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Effects, Special Effects

Walt Disney screened the movie because he was interested in casting James Arness as Davy Crockett. However, he was so impressed by Fess Parker as the "Crazy Texan Pilot" that he chose him for the part.


12:00 AM -- The Seventh Victim (1943)
1h 11m | Drama | TV-PG
A girl's search for her missing sister puts her in conflict with a band of satanists.
Dir: Mark Robson
Cast: Tom Conway, Jean Brooks, Isabel Jewell

Notable cast members include Hugh Beaumont (Gregory Ward), who played the father, Ward Cleaver in the TV series Leave It to Beaver (1957); Barbara Hale (uncredited subway passenger), who played secretary Della Street in Perry Mason (1957) and the movies of the 1980's and 1990's, pioneering celebrity chef Joseph Chef Milani, who ran the famous Hollywood Canteen during WWII, and character actor Feodor Chaliapin Jr. (cult henchman), whose best-known roles were as the mad monk Jorge De Burgos in The Name of the Rose (1986) and the Old Man in Moonstruck (1987).


1:30 AM -- I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
1h 9m | Horror | TV-PG
A nurse in the Caribbean resorts to voodoo to cure her patient, even though she's in love with the woman's husband.
Dir: Jacques Tourneur
Cast: James Ellison, Frances Dee, Tom Conway

Val Lewton did not like the article "I Walked With A Zombie" by Inez Wallace that had been optioned, so he adapted the story to fit the novel "Jane Eyre" because he felt the article's plot was too clichéd.


3:00 AM -- The Body Snatcher (1945)
1h 17m | Horror | TV-PG
To continue his medical experiments, a doctor must buy corpses from a grave robber.
Dir: Robert Wise
Cast: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Henry Daniell

This film featured the 8th and last on-screen teaming of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Filming took place October 25-November 17 1944, delaying the completion of Karloff's Isle of the Dead (1945).


4:30 AM -- The Leopard Man (1943)
1h 6m | Horror | TV-PG
When a leopard escapes during a publicity stunt, it triggers a series of murders.
Dir: Jacques Tourneur
Cast: Dennis O'keefe, Margo, Jean Brooks

Lewton was a master of invoking terror without actually showing anything truly horrifying or graphic, and "that's something that we as filmmakers have lost. We now feel we have to show everything. Every plunge of the knife, every moment of pain and agony that the victims have to go through, that's what you see in horror films today. People cut up by hacksaws, people ripped apart at the hands of alien creatures." Director William Friedkin says the things we don't see live longer in our nightmares.

[elleng]

1. YAY! Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

[BBG]

2. Prime time too, 8:00pm!

Tuning the recording machine right now.