Classic Movies Best Movies TCM Vintage Movies Hitchcock, Westerns, Cult and Cummings Review

Turner Classic Movies gives us 3 more Grace Kelly movies on Thursday November 12th. Then, on Friday the 13th the primetime focus is on Westerns with manly men going for the gold followed by a rare cult type movie that's probably worth checking out for baaad movie lovers.  Saturday the 14th TCM gives us several movies starring 'Love that' Bob 'Dobie Gillis' Cummings.

On Thursday November 12  the spotlight is again on movies starring Grace Kelly,

We get three gems. First is the 1954 Hitchcock thriller that was originally in 3D starring Ray Milland, Grace Kelly and Robert Cummings  Dial M For Murder.  It's a decent tale about a cheating husband who had a plan to frame his wife for murder.   It's been re-made a couple of times and isn't considered Hitch's best but it's one you don't want to miss.  

This is followed by one of the best Hitchcock movies ever made; 1954's Rear Window with James Stewart and Grace Kelly.  I've told you to make sure and watch this several times in the past... watch it again....it's just as good the second or third time.    It airs at 7 p.m. and is followed by 1954's romantic drama  Country Girl starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly and William Holden. It airs at 9 p.m.   

At 11 p.m. Laurence Olivier plays the pathetic third rate vaudevillian who uses liquor and young women to pretend he's still famous and talented in 1960's The Entertainer directed by Tony Richardson.

At 1:00 a.m. one of John Huston's best under the radar gems  1972's Fat City airs.  Stacy Keach is the washed up boxer trying to show young Jeff Bridges the game. It features Susan Tyrell and Candy Clark.  DVR it for a lesser known 70s era gem that holds up very well.

On Friday the 13th TCM is declaring Friday primetime 'good as gold' meaning three movies about men going after or holding onto gold. 

This includes the superb early Sam Peckinpah film;  Ride the High Country from 1962 starring Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea playing two aging gunfighters who agree to transport gold from a remote mining town to the city.   It airs at 5 p.m. and is followed by the rousing  1954 Western Vera Cruz directed by Robert Aldrich and starring Gary Cooper, Burt Lancaster and Cesar Romero.  It airs at 7 p.m.PST.   at 10 p.m. p.s.t. is the spaghetti western Adios Sabata starring Yul Brynner that some consider the best in the Sabata series.   

 The cult movie Friday night airing at 11 p.m. is the rarely screened  1975 hicksploitation feature Poor Pretty Eddie which is billed as a horror movie starring Leslie Uggams, Shelly Winters, Michael Christian and Ted Cassidy and is described as a movie about a black jazz singer held hostage by a deranged Elvis impersonator. Ted Cassidy who played Lurch on t.v.'s Adam's Family runs the motel with Shelly Winters called Bertha's Oasis.  Uggams is raped by the Elvis imitator and in the clip I saw of the movie tries to tell Sheriff Slim Pickens about what happened to her but doesn't get the kind of concern she would like from him.  It looks like a low budget offensively baaad movie that might offer some twisted laughs to baaad movie and hick/red neck movie lovers.  It was also known by the titles:  Redneck County Rape and Heartbreak Motel. 

Love that Bob as in Dobie Gillis' Bob Cummings is the star that's spotlighted on Saturday night November 14th. 

You might take note that airing on noon at Saturday is the 1955 filmed adaptation of the hit Broadway musical Oklahoma!   This is followed by the 1939 classic adventure comedy-drama Gunga Din with Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and that scene stealing horn blower Sam Jaffe which airs at 1:30 in the afternoon and is followed by the 2009 documentary 1939: Hollywood's Greatest Year hosted by Kenneth Branagh. 

Saturday night Robert Cummings is in the spotlight. 

At  5 p.m. on the West coast it's the excellent Hitchcock thriller Saboteur which eventually leads to the still break taking climax at the Statue of Liberty.   At 7 p.m. it's the western fantasy film Heaven Only Knows from 1947 a corny and dated by very entertaining film about an angel who lands in the wild wild west to save a gamblers soul with Brian Donlevy and Marjorie Reynolds.  1963's Beach Party was an embarrassment upon its initial release in 1963 and quickly achieved cult status.  An anthropologist studies the dating habits of teenagers who hang out at the beach.  It made stars of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello spawning several terrible sequels and wannabes.  It airs at 9 p.m. and is a lot of fun.  Then two easy to like old 1940's comedies  1949's Tell it to the Judge with Rosalind Russell, and Gig Young  and the excellent 1941 Devil and Miss Jones about a department store owner who goes undercover as an employee to stop a union activist. The case is superb  Jean Arthur, Charles Coburn, Edmund Gwen and Robert Cummings.  It airs at 12:30 a.m. on the West Coast.

Enjoy.