TCM Schedule for Friday, October 14, 2016 -- What's On Tonight - Terror Classic Movies - Horror Com

[Staph]

In most of the daylight hours, TCM is showing films about the world of racing - cars, planes, motorcycles, and even dirt bikes!. And in prime time, TCM is celebrating the month of October with classic terror. Tonight's films are comedies, including the original 1960 Roger Corman Little Shop of Horrors and another replay of the late Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein (1974). Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- SPEEDWAY (1929)
A brash young race-car driver zooms his way to the winner's circle.
Dir: Harry Beaumont
Cast: William Haines, Anita Page, Ernest Torrence
BW-76 mins,

According to contemporary newspaper reports, the cast and crew filmed scenes on location in Indianapolis for three weeks. The main cast did much of their own driving at the actual Indianapolis Motor Speedway.


7:17 AM -- CREW RACING (1935)
This short film focuses on the training process for the freshman squad of the University of California rowing team.
Dir: David Miller
BW-10 mins,


7:30 AM -- INDIANAPOLIS SPEEDWAY (1939)
A race-car driver tries to keep his kid brother from taking to the track.
Dir: Lloyd Bacon
Cast: Pat O'Brien, Ann Sheridan, John Payne
BW-82 mins,

Frank McHugh plays the same character in this film as he did in the original 1932 version titled The Crowd Roars (1932). The remake even uses footage of McHugh from the first film to save on production expenses.


9:00 AM -- RED HOT TIRES (1935)
A race-car driver wrongly convicted of murder escapes prison to prove his innocence.
Dir: D. Ross Lederman
Cast: Lyle Talbot, Mary Astor, Roscoe Karns
BW-61 mins,

Filmed at both the Legion Ascot Speedway in Los Angeles and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.


10:15 AM -- BURN 'EM UP O'CONNOR (1939)
A race car driver tries to solve a series of track-side murders before he's next.
Dir: Edward Sedgwick
Cast: Dennis O'Keefe, Cecilia Parker, Nat Pendleton
BW-70 mins,

Based on the novel Salute to the Gods by Sir Malcolm Campbell.


11:30 AM -- WOMEN IN THE WIND (1939)
Personal conflicts flare between competitors in a women's air race.
Dir: John Farrow
Cast: Kay Francis, William Gargan, Victor Jory
BW-63 mins, CC,

After being the highest paid star in Hollywood in the mid-30s for Warner Brothers, Kay Francis was displaced by Bette Davis as queen of the lot. In her last years at the studio she was given B-pictures like this one, and her contract was not renewed. After this picture, her last for Warners, the studio pointedly didn't host the usual wrap party for cast and crew.


12:34 PM -- DIRT TRACK RACING (1957)
A short film about Viennese dirt bike racing, following a young racer from technical training to learning how to ride to his first race in Vienna.
Dir: Heinz Scheiderbauer
BW-8 mins,


12:45 PM -- THE PACE THAT THRILLS (1952)
A reckless motorcycle racer and his designer vie for the same beautiful blonde.
Dir: Leon Barsha
Cast: Bill Williams, Carla Balenda, Robert Armstrong
BW-63 mins,

Chris Rhodes' room is the same set as occupied by Joseph Cotten in RKO's Walk Softly, Stranger (1950).


2:00 PM -- SPEED (1936)
A race-car driver fights to prove the worth of his new high-speed carburetor.
Dir: Edwin L. Marin
Cast: James Stewart, Wendy Barrie, Una Merkel
BW-70 mins, CC,

James Stewart's first starring role.


3:15 PM -- DAREDEVIL DRIVERS (1938)
Rival bus companies find an unusual go-between in a former auto racer.
Dir: B. Reeves Eason
Cast: Beverly Roberts, Dick Purcell, Gloria Blondell
BW-60 mins,

Based on an original story by Charles R. Condon.


4:19 PM -- GRANDAD OF RACES (1950)
This short film presents the annual horse race held in the Piazza del Campo in Siena. Vitaphone Release 1950A.
Dir: André De La Varre Jr.
C-10 mins,


4:30 PM -- THE BIG WHEEL (1949)
A mechanic alienates everyone who loves him when he becomes a champion race car driver.
Dir: Edward Ludwig
Cast: Mickey Rooney, Thomas Mitchell, Mary Hatcher
BW-91 mins,

Hattie McDaniel's last movie.


6:15 PM -- SPEEDWAY (1968)
A race car driver tries to outrun the beautiful tax auditor out to settle his account.
Dir: Norman Taurog
Cast: Elvis Presley, Nancy Sinatra, Bill Bixby
C-94 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

This was the last of three Elvis Presley films in which his character is a race car driver. The first time was in 1964's Viva Las Vegas and the second was in 1966's Spinout.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: TERROR CLASSIC MOVIES: HORROR COMEDIES



8:00 PM -- THE CAT AND THE CANARY (1939)
An attorney tries to protect the sole heir to a millionaire's creepy estate.
Dir: Elliott Nugent
Cast: Bob Hope, Paulette Goddard, John Beal
BW-74 mins,

Paulette Goddard did not actually come on board this project until more than three months after Paramount had announced their intention to remake the 1927 film. Successively preceding Goddard as the film's prospective leading lady had been two of Bob Hope's recent co-stars, Martha Raye and Shirley Ross, respectively. Though the reasoning behind Raye's replacement by Ross was never made public, the rationale for Paramount's final choice is no great mystery. A bigger star than either Ross or Raye, Goddard was snapped up by Paramount once she became available, owing to preproduction snafus with Charles Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940).


9:30 PM -- THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS (1966)
A bumbling professor tracks vampires in the wilds of Eastern Europe.
Dir: Roman Polanski
Cast: Jack MacGowran, Roman Polanski, Alfie Bass
C-107 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

For the ballroom scene (when the music stops and only three people are visible in a huge mirror despite of a few dozen vampires in the room) Roman Polanski had the room completely copied behind a fake mirror with three doubles acting as the human protagonists.


11:30 PM -- LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1960)
A clumsy young man nurtures a bloodthirsty plant that forces him to kill to feed it.
Dir: Roger Corman
Cast: Jonathan Haze, Jackie Joseph, Mel Welles
BW-72 mins, CC,

When asked where Seymour got the plant, he replies that the seeds were obtained by a Japanese gardener who found the bulb in a "plantation next to a cranberry farm." This joke is lost on modern audiences. In 1959, it was announced that cranberry crops were tainted with traces of the herbicide aminotriazole, and as a result, cranberry sales plummeted.


12:49 AM -- H.M.S. BOUNTY SAILS AGAIN! (1962)
A promotional short following the world tour of the "HMS Bounty", built specially by MGM for their 1962 remake "Mutiny on the Bounty."
BW-8 mins,


1:00 AM -- YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974)
A descendant of Dr. Frankenstein sets out to make a man.
Dir: Mel Brooks
Cast: Terry Garr, Cloris Leachman, Gene Wilder
BW-106 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Nominated for Oscars for Best Writing, Screenplay Adapted From Other Material -- Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks, and Best Sound -- Richard Portman and Gene S. Cantamessa

When Mel Brooks was preparing this film, he found that Ken Strickfaden, who had made the elaborate electrical machinery for the lab sequences in the Universal Frankenstein films, was still alive and in the Los Angeles area. Brooks visited Strickfaden and found that he had saved all the equipment and stored it in his garage. Brooks made a deal to rent the equipment for his film and gave Strickfaden the screen credit he'd deserved, but hadn't gotten, for the original films.


3:00 AM -- HILLBILLYS IN A HAUNTED HOUSE (1967)
Country singers take on ghosts and international spies when their car breaks down near a haunted house.
Dir: Jean Yarbrough
Cast: Ferlin Husky, Joi Lansing, Don Bowman
C-86 mins, CC,

The last of many films that Lon Chaney Jr and John Carradine appeared in together.


4:30 AM -- SPOOKS RUN WILD (1941)
A group of delinquents on their way to summer camp get stuck in a haunted house.
Dir: Phil Rosen
Cast: Bela Lugosi, Leo Gorcey, Bobby Jordan
BW-63 mins,

Filmed June-July 1941.The second of Bela Lugosi's 9 Monogram features, and the first of two with the East Side Kids.


5:45 AM -- GHOSTS ON THE LOOSE (1943)
A gang of street toughs take on Nazi spies.
Dir: William Beaudine
Cast: Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan
BW-64 mins,

Ava Gardner's first credited film role. Some enterprising exhibitors billed the recently married Ava Gardner as "Mrs. Mickey Rooney" on the marquee.