Turner Classic Movies, Director Debuts, Silent Movies & More November 7 & 8, 2009 Review

What's worth watching on Cable Channel TCM aka Turner Classic Movies this Saturday and Sunday?

Loaded question.  In my brief essays I can only cover part of what is offered.  You look over the day and you'll find minor gems and good movies showing up day and night.    Let me suggest some movies and programs to view  or DVR. 

On Saturday November  7, TCM has an interesting night of Director Debuts or the very first movies several well known directors delivered for our viewing pleasure.   Neat idea.

Sunday   TCM gives us a couple movies starring Robert Stack and then some silent movies shorts, cartoons and features  about the game of baseball.

Woody Allen's first movie is technically  What's Up Tiger Lilly, but 95 percent of that movie consists of a previously released Japanese James Bond spy thriller knock-off whose dialogue has been replaced by American Actors.   So....that means Woody's first live action original film is 1969's  Take the Money and Run.

I don't care if you think you hate Woody Allen movies, this one is still very, very funny.   It's a silly movie satirizing  documentaries and crime dramas, particularly the genre that uses voice over narration.   It plays like a predecessor of the Airplane movies.  Woody plays an utterly incompetent criminal named Virgil whose involved in a bank robbery, sent to prison and then finds himself escaping and on the run.   Clever and very fun sigh gags involving both visual and verbal puns are the highlight. If you've seen Defiant Ones or I am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang,  Cool Hand Luke, television's The Untouchables, the quiz show What's My Line,  you'll see hilarious references and satires of these shows and programs in Allen's film.   Remember:  "I've got a gub."

A couple of years before he made the smash hit Alien in 1979, director Ridley Scott made his film directing debut with 1977's The Duellists starring Harvey Keitel and Keith Caradine.  Scott had made about 2000 commercials, sometimes with his brother Tony before he made the Duellists.  

Set in 1800, the year Napoleon became ruler of France, Gabriel Feraud (Keitel) a French Military officer wins a duel against his opponent.   This time however, he's killed the nephew of a local mayor who now wants revenge on Feraud so a fellow officer  Armond D'Hubert (Keith Caradine) is ordered by his commanding office to get revenge on Feraud.     

The revenge seems to happen, but over the next 15 years, Feraud winds up tracking down D'Hubert.

It's based on a story by Joseph Conrad and because of the small budget was filmed entirely on location in France, England and the Scottish Highlands.     Scott was very innovative with a small budget creating what looks like a mini-epic.  There are pacing problems, and the casting of Keitel and Caradine will not sit well with purists, but it's an excellent film worth watching. 

In 1985 Stephen Frears had a commercial and critical hit with My Beautiful Laundrette which many wrote was Frears first major film.  It wasn't.   Back in 1971, Frears made a clever, qurky referential  gem called Gumshoe starring Albert Finney.  Finney is struggling comedian working in a seedy Liverpool nightclub who by day works as a Bingo host.  He imagines he's a private detective like Bogat, a 'gumshoe' and then he gets his first real case which turns into a strange convoluted escapade involving not just a young woman but heroin smuggling, and gun runners with connections to Africa.   If you're a fan of Bogarts Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep as well as The Thin Man series you'll really enjoy this private eye movie that seems to exist in both 1935 and 1970.  Unique, and recommended.

Walter Hill is best known for the blockbuster  48 Hrs, HBO's Deadwood and perhaps 1979's The Warriors.  His first film is a gem called  Hard Times, an excellent film starring  Charles Bronson (in perhaps his best role) and James Coburn. Released in 1975.  It's a period piece taking place in New Orleans during the depression as we follow promoter James Coburn and his star fighter a bare knuckle fighter played by Charles Bronson.  Also in the cast are Jill Ireland, Strother Martin, Robert Tessier and Bruce Glover.  A superb entertaining film that should have been a big box-office hit, but was not.   It airs at  10:30 p.m.   on the West Coast.

 Robert (Mash, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Gosford Park) Altman's very first film was actually a documentary about James Dean, but his first full length fiction film was 1957's The Delinquents a quickly made drive in exploitation move about hot rods, and bored wild teenagers in Kansas City.  Of course Altman's spontaneous free wheeling style is much in evidence in several scenes.  The Star of the movie was the then unknown Tom Laughlin (who would later become Billy Jack).  Altman and Laughlin did not get along.   It's an interesting better than average 50s drive-in movie but if you're an Altman fan, don't miss it.  It airs at 12:15 a.m.

John Frankenheimer, who directed superb movies like 1962's  The Manchurian Candidate and The Birdman of Alcatraz, first theatrical release was 1957's  The Young Stranger.  It was based on a television movie Frannkenheimer directed.  James MacArthur plays the 16 year old son of a famous movie producer.  He gets into a fight at the movie theater and winds up punching theater manager r. Grubbs (Whit Bissell) in the mouth .   Those who liked the film (I haven't seen it) think it's a well acted, understated film that avoids being overly melodramatic.      It airs at 1:30 a.m. on the West Coast.

Sunday Night, TCM  showcase two movies with Robert Stack.  At 5 p.m. PST,  Sam Fullers still effective House of Bamboo stars Robert Ryan and Robert Stack with Shirley Yamaguchi and Cameron Mitchell in a crime drama about an Army investigator who gets inside a Tokyo crime syndicate to find out who killed his colleague.   Then it's 1951's Bullfighter and the Lady with Robert Stack as the American who decides to fight bulls in order to impress women, but winds up realizing there's a lot more to the sport of bullfighting then he realized.  It's well directed by Budd Boetticher and airs at 10 pm. on the west coast.

This is followed by a program of shorts and a 55 minute  silent 'feature film" from 1919  called The Busher about baseball.   The program goes from 9:15 p.m. to 10:45 p.m.

Enjoy.