TCM Schedule for Friday, October 9, 2020 -- What's On Tonight: Fright Favorites

[Staph]

During the daylight hours, TCM has a day full of murder. Then in prime time, TCM continues my least favorite theme of Fright Favorites. Enjoy, if you can!


7:00 AM -- Alice in Movieland (1940)
21m | Drama | TV-PG
When a beauty queen tries to make it in Hollywood, she learns stardom comes at a price.
Dir: Jean Negulesco
Cast: Joan Leslie, Nana Bryant, Jack Mower

Photos hanging on the wall of the studio include Bette Davis, Ida Lupino and Ann Sheridan.


7:45 AM -- Nora Prentiss (1947)
1h 51m | Drama | TV-PG
An ambitious singer ruins a doctor's life.
Dir: Vincent Sherman
Cast: Ann Sheridan, Kent Smith, Bruce Bennett

Sheilah Graham reported that Ann Sheridan had an infection in one ear during production, and during the final shots of the film, could only be photographed from one side.


9:45 AM -- Born to Kill (1947)
1h 32m | Drama | TV-PG
A murderer marries a young innocent then goes after her more experienced sister.
Dir: Robert Wise
Cast: Claire Trevor, Lawrence Tierney, Walter Slezak

Arnett quotes the Bible twice. "I find more bitter than death the woman ...", is from Ecclesiastes 7:26, though it is not an exact quote from the standard bibles, and "... the way of the transgressor is hard..." (sic) from Proverbs 13:15.


11:30 AM -- Dark Passage (1947)
1h 46m | Drama | TV-PG
A man falsely accused of his wife's murder escapes to search for the real killer.
Dir: Delmer Daves
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Bruce Bennett

The playing on the phonograph of "I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan" as Vincent is recuperating at Irene's apartment after his surgery may have been an arcane wink to the audience. It was used in the previous Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall movie The Big Sleep (1946), when Vivian Rutledge (Bacall) paid off Marlowe (Bogart) at the gambling joint-nightclub.


1:30 PM -- Out of the Past (1947)
1h 37m | Crime | TV-PG
A private eye becomes the dupe of a homicidal moll.
Dir: Jacques Tourneur
Cast: Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas

Robert Mitchum told Roger Ebert he smoked so much that when the camera was rolling and Kirk Douglas offered him a pack and asked, "Cigarette?" Mitchum, realizing he'd carried a cigarette into the scene, held up his fingers and replied, "Smoking." His improvisation saved the take and they kept it in the movie.


3:15 PM -- Race Street (1948)
1h 19m | Drama | TV-PG
A night-club owner takes on the crooks who killed his best friend.
Dir: Edwin L. Marin
Cast: George Raft, William Bendix, Marilyn Maxwell

The Golden Gate Theatre featured in the story was the RKO Radio flagship house, and Race Street opened there in October 1948. It was the last of the major downtown venues to still feature vaudeville along with top of the line first run film attractions. In more recent years, its interior has been magnificently restored and it now offers live shows, despite its unfortunate location on the edge of the seedy tenderloin.


4:45 PM -- Impact (1949)
1h 51m | Drama | TV-PG
After surviving a murder attempt, an auto magnate goes into hiding so his wife can pay for the crime.
Dir: Arthur Lubin
Cast: Brian Donlevy, Ella Raines, Charles Coburn

First film for Anna May Wong in seven years since Lady from Chungking (1942). She would not appear in another film until her final one, Portrait in Black (1960).


6:45 PM -- The Woman on Pier 13 (1950)
1h 13m | Drama | TV-PG
Communists blackmail a shipping executive into spying for them.
Dir: Robert Stevenson
Cast: Laraine Day, Robert Ryan, John Agar

According to Daniel Mainwaring, writer of Out of the Past (1947), RKO head Howard Hughes used this film to get rid of numerous writers, directors and actors. If they refused to work on this project, they were fired from the studio.



WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: FRIGHT FAVORITES - BACK FROM THE GRAVE



8:00 PM -- The Ghoul (1933)
1h 17m | Horror | TV-G
An ancient Egyptian returns to punish those who violated his tomb.
Dir: T. Hayes Hunter
Cast: Boris Karloff, Cedric Hardwicke, Ernest Thesiger

In the early 1980s, while men were clearing one of the soundstages at Shepperton Studios in England, of old sets and other waste and debris, they found a locked door blocked by stacked lumber. Behind the door was a disused and long forgotten film vault that had not been used since the mid 1930s. It was cleared, and among the many cans of old film, was the original nitrate camera negative of this movie in perfect condition. The British Film Institute had new prints made, and the complete version aired on Channel 4 in the U.K. in 1984. Bootleg videotapes of this broadcast were shared among collectors for years, but when an official VHS release arrived from MGM/UA Home Video, it proved to be the virtually unwatchable Czech subtitled and heavily cut version. Finally, in 2003, just as the title was being prepared for DVD, MGM/UA obtained the superior material from the British Film Institute for release. This restored copy has substantially raised critical appreciation of the movie in modern times, and has been re-issued in 2008 by Network for a bargain price.


9:30 PM -- The Black Sleep (1956)
1h 21m | Horror | TV-PG
A brain surgeon's experiments create a race of deadly freaks.
Dir: Reginald Leborg
Cast: Basil Rathbone, Akim Tamiroff, Lon Chaney [jr.]

Shot February 9-23 1956, and the last completed film project of actor Bela Lugosi.


11:00 PM -- Mark of the Vampire (1935)
1h 1m | Horror | TV-PG
Vampires seem to be connected to an unsolved murder.
Dir: Tod Browning
Cast: Lionel Barrymore, Elizabeth Allen, Lionel Atwill

Throughout the film, Count Mora (Bela Lugosi) has an unexplained bullet wound on his temple. In the original script Mora was supposed to have had an incestuous relationship with his daughter Luna, and to have committed suicide. After filming began, however, MGM deleted references to the crime (and any remaining references may have been deleted when 20 minutes of footage was removed after the film's preview). Because director Tod Browning's previous film, Freaks (1932), had been a box-office disaster, he was unable to object to any changes made by the studio.


12:15 AM -- Night of the Living Dead (1968)
1h 36m | Horror | TV-MA
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

When the zombies are eating the bodies in the burnt-out truck they were actually eating roast ham covered in chocolate sauce. The filmmakers joked that it was so nausea inducing that it was almost a waste of time putting the makeup on the zombies as they ended up looking pale and sick anyway.


2:00 AM -- White Lightning (1973)
1h 41m | Drama | TV-MA
A convicted moonshiner helps police track down the bayou villains who killed his brother.
Dir: Joseph Sargent
Cast: Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, Matt Clark

This was the first of the car stunt movies set in the American South that Burt Reynolds made during the 1970s and involved some kind of battle with a sheriff or official. This group of movies includes the Smokey and the Bandit films and this movie's sequel, Gator (1976).


3:45 AM -- Gator (1976)
1h 55m | Comedy | TV-MA
An ex-con joins forces with a federal agent to bring down a vice lord.
Dir: Burt Reynolds
Cast: Burt Reynolds, Jerry Reed, Lauren Hutton

Burt Reynolds asked Peter Bogdanovich, Robert Aldrich, and Mel Brooks for advice on how to direct a film.


5:45 AM -- The Corvair In Action! (1960)
6m | Documentary | TV-G
Technicians herald the arrival of a new car that delivers the goods as no other compact car can.