TCM Schedule for Friday, October 4, 2013 -- Friday Night Spooklight

[Staph]

It looks like the daytime theme is something to do with independent women (yah!), and the evening's theme is scary stuff. For Teabaggers -- the same thing. Enjoy!


7:00 AM -- The Long Night (1947)
A veteran tries to free his former love from a sadistic lover.
Dir: Anatole Litvak
Cast: Henry Fonda, Barbara Bel Geddes, Vincent Price
BW-97 mins, TV-G, CC,

In the scene where Maximillian joins Jo Ann on the bus, a poster advertising "Dr.Pearce's Baking Powder" - the first commercial cream of tartar baking powder - can be seen behind them. This product made Vincent Price's grandfather very wealthy as its inventor and marketer.


8:45 AM -- Female (1933)
A female CEO who's used to buying love meets her match in an independent young executive.
Dir: Michael Curtiz
Cast: Ruth Chatterton, George Brent, Lois Wilson
BW-60 mins, TV-G, CC,

The sign on a restaurant window advertises sandwiches "with beer" in large letters. The amendment ratifying the repeal of prohibition had been ratified just weeks prior to the film's release.


9:45 AM -- In The Good Old Summertime (1949)
In this musical remake of The Shop Around the Corner, feuding co-workers in a small music shop do not realize they are secret romantic pen pals.
Dir: Robert Z. Leonard
Cast: Judy Garland, Van Johnson, S. Z. "Cuddles" Sakall
C-103 mins, TV-PG, CC,

Buster Keaton was working as a gag writer at MGM when this movie was made. The filmmakers approached him to devise a way for a violin to get broken that would be both comic and plausible. Keaton came up with an appropriate fall, and the filmmakers then realized he was the only one who would be able to execute it properly, so they cast him in the film. Keaton also devised the sequence in which Van Johnson inadvertently wrecks Judy Garland's hat, and coached Johnson intensively in how to perform the scene. This was the first MGM film Keaton appeared in since being fired from the studio in 1933.


11:30 AM -- Pat And Mike (1952)
Romance blooms between a female athlete and her manager.
Dir: George Cukor
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Aldo Ray
BW-95 mins, TV-G, CC,

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay -- Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin

The writers, Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon, were close friends of Hepburn and Tracy, and wrote the film to showcase Hepburn's athletic abilities.


1:15 PM -- Billie (1965)
A high school girl's athletic prowess scandalizes a conservative small town.
Dir: Don Weis
Cast: Patty Duke, Jim Backus, Jane Greer
C-87 mins, TV-PG, CC, Letterbox Format

Film debut of Donna McKechnie, who is probably best known for her work on Broadway.


2:45 PM -- It Happened To Jane (1959)
A small-town businesswoman takes on a railroad magnate in court.
Dir: Richard Quine
Cast: Doris Day, Jack Lemmon, Ernie Kovacs
C-98 mins, TV-G, CC, Letterbox Format

Jack Lemmon wrote that he thought this was a good, funny movie that didn't do well because of its "terrible title". He thought he and Doris Day had very good chemistry together, and he regretted that they never did another film.


4:30 PM -- Don't Trust Your Husband (1948)
Doing business with an ex-flame drives an ad man's wife mad with jealousy.
Dir: Lloyd Bacon
Cast: Fred MacMurray, Madeleine Carroll, Chas. "Buddy" Rogers
BW-87 mins, TV-G, CC,

Original title -- An Innocent Affair. Also known as Under Suspicion.


5:57 PM -- I Love My Husband, But! (1946)
This short comedy attempts to point out the habits of husbands that drive their wives crazy.
Dir: David Barclay
Cast: Lila Leeds, Dorothy Short, Dave O'Brien
BW-10 mins,

Included as an extra on the Warner Brothers DVD of Without Reservations, starring Claudette Colbert and John Wayne.


6:15 PM -- His Girl Friday (1940)
An unscrupulous editor plots to keep his star reporter-and ex-wife-from re-marrying.
Dir: Howard Hawks
Cast: Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy
BW-92 mins, TV-G, CC,

One of the first, if not the first, films to have characters talk over the lines of other characters, for a more realistic sound. Prior to this, movie characters completed their lines before the next lines were started.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: FRIDAY NIGHT SPOOKLIGHT



8:00 PM -- Carnival of Souls (1962)
After surviving a car crash, a church organist is haunted by the undead.
Dir: Herk Harvey
Cast: Candace Hilligoss, Herk Harvey, Frances Feist
BW-83 mins, TV-PG, CC,

Upon release in 1962 the film was a failure in the box office, but its subsequent airings on late night television helped to gain it a strong cult following. Today it is regarded as a landmark in psychological horror.


9:30 PM -- Night of the Living Dead (1968)
A space probe unleashes microbes that turn the dead into flesh-eating zombies.
Dir: George A. Romero
Cast: Judith O'Dea, Russell Streiner, Duane Jones
BW-96 mins, TV-MA, CC,

Bill 'Chilly Billy' Cardille, who played the television reporter, was indeed a local Pittsburgh TV celebrity. He hosted a horror movie program on Channel 11 and occasionally reported the news. I have fond memories of his show Chiller Theater.


11:15 PM -- Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (1933)
A crime wave grips the city and all clues seem to lead to the nefarious Dr. Mabuse.
Dir: Fritz Lang
Cast: Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Gustav Diesel, Otto Wernicke
BW-121 mins, TV-PG, Letterbox Format

In his autobiography "Timebends," Arthur Miller speculates that his unconscious mind picked the name "Loman" for Willy Loman, the protagonist of his greatest play, "Death of a Salesman" (1947), from the name of Kriminalkomissar Lohmann in "Das Testament das Dr. Mabuse."


1:30 AM -- Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
To save his wife, Baron Frankenstein must build a mate for his monster.
Dir: James Whale
Cast: Karloff, Colin Clive, Valerie Hobson
BW-75 mins, TV-PG, CC,

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Sound, Recording -- Gilbert Kurland (sound director - Universal SSD).

Elsa Lanchester said that her spitting, hissing performance was inspired by the swans in Regent's Park, London. "They're really very nasty creatures," she said.


3:00 AM -- Frankenstein Created Woman (1967)
Baron Frankenstein puts a wrongly executed man's brain into a beautiful woman's body.
Dir: Terence Fisher
Cast: Peter Cushing, Susan Denberg, Thorley Walters
C-92 mins, TV-14, Letterbox Format

We are never told in which Country the film is set, however the Coat of Arms on the coach is that of the Canton of Berne in Switzerland.


4:45 AM -- The Wasp Woman (1959)
A cosmetics executive's search for eternal beauty turn her into a monster.
Dir: Roger Corman
Cast: Susan Cabot, Fred Eisley, Barboura Morris
BW-61 mins, TV-PG

The last film of Susan Cabot. In 1964, she gave birth to her son, Timothy, who suffered from dwarfism. In 1986, he bludgeoned her to death with a weight-lifting bar while she slept in the bedroom of her Encino home. He was charged with involuntary manslaughter but cited years of mental and physical abuse by her as his defense. He received a three-year suspended sentence and was placed on probation for the crime.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

1. Stage actress Candace Hilligoss was an absolutely stunning beauty

and had talent besides. It was a real find when they got her to star in her first movie role in Carnival Of Souls, made for the astronomical sum of $33,000 back in 1962. I wonder if she even got paid in such a low-budget project. It's a great little film that has inspired dozens of horror movies ever since. In 1963 I was inspired to write a short movie script based on it when I was in Junior High, about a school girl who got run over by a car on her way to school by a lady who looks like a witch and has a pendant around her neck of a large spider. The girl only thinks she escaped injury from the car and continues her way to school that morning but keeps having black outs where she wakes up in an empty classroom in the dead of night and hears a scuttling sound out in the hallway that eventually turns out to be a large spider. The girl doesn't realize she's dead and we see her dead body under the car at the end with the smiling old lady who looks like a witch. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough money to finish the short film back in 1963 when I was a kid.