|
Post by james on Mar 29, 2010 9:14:42 GMT -5
TCM's sense of time can get a little wonky. When I set the timer on my DVD-R to record something on TCM, I give the disc two or three minutes before and after the scheduled start and end times, to make sure I get the whole film. Even then, I've come close to not getting the entire film (I recorded The Shout and even with two extra minutes after the scheduled end, the film finished just before the recording stopped).
Yep, I recorded Study in Terror, and the silent 1920 Sherlock Holmes with John Barrymore. On one of the Encore networks (probably the mystery channel), I picked up They Might Be Giants (the one with George S. Scott as a mental patient who thinks he is Sherlock Holmes, and Joanne Wodward as his doctor, named Watson).
|
|
|
Post by Derrick on Mar 29, 2010 10:59:14 GMT -5
TCM's sense of time can get a little wonky. When I set the timer on my DVD-R to record something on TCM, I give the disc two or three minutes before and after the scheduled start and end times, to make sure I get the whole film. Even then, I've come close to not getting the entire film (I recorded The Shout and even with two extra minutes after the scheduled end, the film finished just before the recording stopped). Yep, I recorded Study in Terror, and the silent 1920 Sherlock Holmes with John Barrymore. On one of the Encore networks (probably the mystery channel), I picked up They Might Be Giants (the one with George S. Scott as a mental patient who thinks he is Sherlock Holmes, and Joanne Wodward as his doctor, named Watson). Yeah, I hear you. When I record a movie to my DVR from TCM I always set it to start five minutes ahead and end five minutes after those scheduled times. And you saw THE SHOUT! Wasn't that one wonderfully freaked out movie? Thanks to TCM Tom and I may have to start doing more Obscure Movie Episodes.
|
|
|
Post by james on Mar 29, 2010 11:30:17 GMT -5
And you saw THE SHOUT! Wasn't that one wonderfully freaked out movie? Thanks to TCM Tom and I may have to start doing more Obscure Movie Episodes. Yes it is. I reread Stephen King's (non-fiction) book Danse Macabre recently. In the back he has a list of horror films he considers essential. The Shout is one of them (although King wrote the book around the time the film was released, so it probably wasn't obscure at the time) King's list is very interesting, and worth using as a guide for watching horror films you haven't seen yet. He mostly avoids the Universal classics, the Hammer films and even the Val Lewton RKO films; he does include some more personal choices instead (plenty of Roger Corman, George Romero and William Castle films, and a couple of Bavas and Argentos. Also, two Bergman films!). Other interesting films on his list: Let's Scare Jessica to Death (I love this movie myself), Rituals, and The Conqueror Worm. For a guy who describes his fiction as the literary equivalent of a Bic Mac and fries, his film list is pretty gourmet.
|
|
|
Post by Eddie Love on Mar 29, 2010 19:02:20 GMT -5
Yep, I recorded Study in Terror, and the silent 1920 Sherlock Holmes with John Barrymore. For my money A STUDY IN TERROR is the best Sherlock Holmes movie ever made. (And one of the best Hammer movies, not made by Hammer.) Alas, TCM showed this in a full screen version. Never released on DVD. Criminally underated. Was it done in by the insane ad campaign:
|
|
|
Post by morbiousfod on Apr 6, 2010 17:51:43 GMT -5
I'm sure it's too late; however, I have been waiting on a DVD version of Frank Zappa's 200 Motels. This is the only VHS that I still own.
|
|
|
Post by Eddie Love on Apr 7, 2010 18:51:41 GMT -5
How could I forget CUBAN REBEL GIRLS, the legendary, virtually unseen pro-Castro, pseudo-documentary that was final Errol Flynn's final film where he co-stars with his child bride.
|
|
|
Post by Eddie Love on Apr 15, 2010 20:06:11 GMT -5
Okay, just a couple more. Two of Montgomery Clift's last films (if not the two last) were John Huston's never shown biopic of Freud and a spy thriller called The Defector.
But maybe most of all, is a very curious picture I wonder if anyone else has ever seen let alone heard of. I use to stay up very late to watch the over-night late movie as a kid to see stuff like the Universal Sherlock Holmes movies or The Falcon or The Saint pictures with George Sanders. (There were no VCRs / TCM or any cable back in the day -- as Tom and Derrick can attest.) A film I think I saw all, or at least parts, of a couple times during this period was a star-studded, big budget, B&W, WWW II movie called The Victors. I have never seen or heard of this being shown since then and it's never been on VHS or DVD or aired on TCM or anywhere else.
I always think when a film seems to vanish for no reason -- there's a reason. And in this case I think it's that long before Saving Pvt. Ryan this was a brutally unsparing portrait of "the good war." It's unsentimental and I recall scenes where "the greatest generation" are shown in a somewhat unflattering light. I remember it being very episodic, and the kicker may have been one scene towards the end where George Peppard goes to visit his buddy -- I think Eli Wallach -- in an army hospital in England. We cut to "Eli" in his bed, and while you hear his voice, the person we see sitting there is an actual patient who's had his face blown off. My memory is vivid of this -- I don't think it was any kind of make-up effect. It was soooo startling and creeped me out for the longest time. Otherwise the movie has many ironic or touching vignettes. But it ends with a scene of two drunken soldiers -- a Russian and an American -- fighting to death on a street in Berlin. Heavy-handed, perhaps, but the overall film was pretty powerful. Written and directed by exiled blacklistee Carl Foreman. I think this was ahead of it's time as most other films of the era glorified the war, until you got to stuff like The Dirty Dozen and Play Dirty. (The Americanization of Emily a similarly anti-jingoistic picture also did a vanishing act until recently.)
It had an amazing cast -- Peppard, Albert Finney, very young Peter Fonda.
|
|
|
Post by morbiousfod on Apr 26, 2010 19:39:22 GMT -5
I'm sure it's too late; however, I have been waiting on a DVD version of Frank Zappa's 200 Motels. This is the only VHS that I still own. Funny while listening to this very show, and Derrick made the comment to check Amazon, I did. Amazingly enough this was finally released on DVD on February 5 2010. LOL! Let the freakiness begin. I guess I had given up on this one and hadn't even looked for it for a few months. It creeped up on me.
|
|
|
Post by tombitd on Apr 26, 2010 20:24:39 GMT -5
Funny while listening to this very show, and Derrick made the comment to check Amazon, I did. Amazingly enough this was finally released on DVD on February 5 2010. LOL! Let the freakiness begin. I guess I had given up on this one and hadn't even looked for it for a few months. It creeped up on me. I think if we decide to do a second episode on this subject--and I hope we do, because I think it's obvious in the way it turned out that we had loads of fun--we're going to use the DVD Detectives handle to reflect the fact that we may very well find the DVDs that are reported as out of print!
|
|
|
Post by grubl on Apr 26, 2010 22:13:02 GMT -5
Thanks for covering the Billy Jack films. After I posted that request I did go look it up on Amazon and got the box set. I just hadn't looked for those (or CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE) in over a decade, when neither one was on DVD. Sorry about the confusion. I teach high school art and for over a decade Thursday has been classic film clip day... See More: so this past week I showed BILLY JACK, the ice cream parlor scene straight through to the fight in the park. I explained that, unlike most of the films I talk about, it is not very good, but when I was 11 years old I thought that it was the greatest piece of art in the history of man, it meant so much to me. They really had a blast with it.
|
|
|
Post by Eddie Love on Apr 27, 2010 6:26:25 GMT -5
... when I was 11 years old I thought that it was the greatest piece of art in the history of man... Oh yes, I reflected on the very same thing when the guys were talking about this. In the white suburbs in the 70s, where I grew up and where a lot of the older kids were post-hippie freaks, Billy Jack was a huge deal. At the time it was one of the highest grossing films of all time, and everyone had seen it. (I also remember the hysteria that swept the 'burbs when The Master Gunfighter was coming out -- and quickly faded.) And yes, not only did we think it was ass-kicking, but we thought the film (and "gulp" the song "One Tin Soldier") were terribly profound. It may make me cringe to think about it today, but it's also quaint to think that a movie tapped into young people's consciousness on a level that wasn't just fantasy, but dealt with some aspects of real world social justice.
|
|
|
Post by Derrick on Apr 27, 2010 8:28:09 GMT -5
BILLY JACK was one of those movies that came along at just the right time. And people went back to see the damn thing multiple times. I believe I saw it myself two or three times.
|
|
|
Post by grubl on Apr 27, 2010 10:16:33 GMT -5
Oh yeah. My friends and I would pay 50 cents for a matinee (upstate prices!)and stay in the theater all day watching it again and again and so on. Not just BILLY JACK, we did that with everything. For R rated films, like THE EXORCIST and CUCKOO'S NEST, we'd learn the ushers' cigarette break patterns and sneak in.
|
|
|
Post by Eddie Love on Apr 27, 2010 18:18:13 GMT -5
My friends and I would pay 50 cents for a matinee (upstate prices!)and stay in the theater all day watching it again and again and so on. . I believe my record at this was watching The Great Waldo Pepper three times in a row.
|
|
|
Post by grubl on Apr 27, 2010 20:11:33 GMT -5
I liked Waldo Pepper at the time. I think the most consecutive shows I sat through was CARRIE, after the first time I knew when to cover my eyes.
|
|