TCM Schedule for Saturday, October 27, 2018 -- What's On Tonight: Ghostly Encounters

[Staph]

Tonight's non-Essentials Essentials features a whole lot of ectoplasm. Enjoy!



6:00 AM -- 7 FACES OF DR. LAO (1964)
A Chinese showman uses his magical powers to save a Western town from itself.
Dir: George Pal
Cast: Tony Randall, Barbara Eden, Arthur O'Connell
BW-100 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Winner of an Oscar Honorary Award for William Tuttle for his outstanding make-up achievement for 7 Faces of Dr. Lao

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Effects, Special Visual Effects -- Jim Danforth

The beginning and ending shots of the movie perfectly exemplify the "shooting-out-of-sequence" practice in film-making. You'll notice that the same exact camera setup is used for both shots, with Tony wearing the exact same costume. He simply rides toward the camera for the beginning of the story, and away from the camera for the end. Even the shadows from the sun are in the same alignment.


8:00 AM -- MGM CARTOONS: WHO KILLED WHO? (1943)
A man is murdered, and the detective tries to find out whodunit. But the house he's investigating is decidedly haunted.
Dir: Tex Avery
Cast: Tex Avery, Sara Berner, Billy Bletcher
BW-8 mins, CC,

The detective is modeled on veteran character actor Fred Kelsey, who specialized in playing dumb or naive but persistent detectives, and who almost always wore a derby.


8:08 AM -- THIRD DIMENSIONAL MURDER (1941)
This short film, made in 3-D, features a character facing various monsters in a creepy old house.
Dir: George Sidney
Cast: Ed Payson,
C-7 mins,

The third and last in Pete Smith's "Audioscopiks" 3-D series of shorts. With the success of the first two shorts, Pete Smith consulted J.M. Nikolaus in the camera department at MGM. Nikolaus went to studio manager E.J. Mannix who gave Nikolaus a budget of "about $3,000" to create a stereoscopic camera rig. After trial and error, Nickolaus created a system using two Bell & Howell 35mm cameras with specially matched lenses made by Bauch and Lomb. As with the two previous "Audioscopiks" shorts, the prints were in red-green anaglyph by Technicolor.


8:17 AM -- NOSTRADAMUS AND THE QUEEN (1953)
In this short film, an elderly Catherine de Medici reflects back on how the prophecies of Nostradamus accurately predicted her fate.
Cast: Grandon Rhodes, Mitchell Lewis, Maria Palmer
BW-11 mins,


8:29 AM -- GUN LAW JUSTICE (1949)
Jimmy Wakely befriends Hank Cardigan, a former outlaw who has served his sentence and wants to go straight.
Dir: Lambert Hillyer
Cast: Jimmy Wakely, "Cannonball" Taylor, Jane Adams
BW-54 mins, CC,


9:30 AM -- MANDRAKE, THE MAGICIAN: SECRET PASSAGE (1939)
A 12-episode serial, with Mandrake the Magician taking on the masked crime lord known as the Wasp.
Dir: Norman Deming, Sam Nelson
Cast: Warren Hull, Doris Weston, Al Kikume
BW-17 mins,


10:00 AM -- POPEYE: VIM, VIGOR & VITALIKY (1936)
Popeye is running a women's gymnasium next door to Bluto's cabaret.
Dir: Dave Fleischer
Cast: Jack Mercer, Mae Questel, Gus Wickie
BW-7 mins, CC,

One of a number of Popeye shorts which were sent off to Asia in the 80's to undergo the infamous redraw and colorization process.


10:08 AM -- THE SAINT TAKES OVER (1940)
Reformed jewel thief Simon Templar tries to help a police inspector who's been framed on bribery charges.
Dir: Jack Hively
Cast: George Sanders, Wendy Barrie, Jonathan Hale
BW-70 mins, CC,

This is the first Saint movie to use the ubiquitous Saint caricature during the main titles, and the first movie in "The Saint" series not based on a story by Leslie Charteris.


11:30 AM -- THE TELL-TALE HEART (1941)
In this short film, a man commits a murder and is tormented by the victim's beating heart.
Dir: Jules Dassin
Cast: Joseph Schildkraut, Roman Bohnen, Oscar O'Shea
BW-20 mins,

Directorial debut of Jules Dassin, who had worked under Alfred Hitchcock and Garson Kanin. He would go on to receive two Oscar nominations for Never on Sunday (1960).


12:00 PM -- CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS (1937)
A spoiled rich boy is lost at sea and rescued by a fishing boat, where hard work and responsibility help him become a man.
Dir: Victor Fleming
Cast: Freddie Bartholomew, Spencer Tracy, Lionel Barrymore
BW-117 mins, CC,

Winner of an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Spencer Tracy

Nominee for Oscars for Best Writing, Screenplay -- Marc Connelly, John Lee Mahin and Dale Van Every, Best Film Editing -- Elmo Veron, and Best Picture

When production finally wrapped in late February 1937, Spencer Tracy was relieved. "Well, I got away with it," he said later. "Want to know why? Because of Freddie, because of that kid's performance, because he sold it 98 per cent. The kid had to believe in Manuel, or Manuel wasn't worth a quarter. The way he would look at me, believe every word I said, made me believe in it myself. I've never said this before, and I'll never say it again. Freddie Bartholomew's acting is so fine and so simple and so true that it's way over people's heads. It'll only be by thinking back two or three years from now that they'll realize how great it was."


2:15 PM -- DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1941)
A scientist's investigations into the nature of good and evil turn him into a murderous monster.
Dir: Victor Fleming
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman, Lana Turner
BW-113 mins, CC,

Nominee for Oscars for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Joseph Ruttenberg, Best Film Editing -- Harold F. Kress, and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic Picture -- Franz Waxman

The concept of the two female loves of Jekyll/Hyde's life, aristocratic Beatrix Emery and barmaid Ivy Petersen, actually originated in the original stage version of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", as adapted by T.R. Sullivan for the great 19th century stage actor Richard Mansfield. The Stevenson novella mentions no female love interest of any sort for either Jekyll or Hyde.


4:15 PM -- THE NAKED SPUR (1953)
A captive outlaw uses psychological tactics to prey on a bounty hunter.
Dir: Anthony Mann
Cast: James Stewart, Janet Leigh, Robert Ryan
C-92 mins, CC,

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay -- Sam Rolfe and Harold Jack Bloom

When this film was released in Spain, its title was changed to "Colorado Jim" and the name of James Stewart's character was also changed from "Howard Kemp" to "Colorado Jim", for unknown reasons.


6:00 PM -- THE POWER (1968)
A scientist tries to unmask a murderous genius with psychic powers.
Dir: Byron Haskin
Cast: George Hamilton, Suzanne Pleshette, Richard Carlson
C-108 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

After moving to San Francisco in the 1970s, Frank M. Robinson (author of thenovel The Power), who was gay, was a speechwriter for gay politician Harvey Milk; he had a small role in the film Milk. After Milk's assassination, Robinson was co-executor, with Scott Smith, of Milk's last will and testament.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: GHOSTLY ENCOUNTERS



8:00 PM -- THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR (1947)
A spirited widow rents a haunted cottage and builds an emotional bond with the resident ghost.
Dir: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Cast: Gene Tierney, Rex Harrison, George Sanders
BW-104 mins, CC,

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Charles Lang

Gene Tierney's first approach to the character of Lucy Muir was playful, almost screwball. After a conference between Darryl F. Zanuck and director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, the first two days shooting were redone so that Tierney could give the character more depth. The change resulted in huge critical acclaim for the actress.


10:00 PM -- THE GHOST AND MR. CHICKEN (1966)
To win a reporting job, a young man must spend the night in a haunted house.
Dir: Alan Rafkin
Cast: Don Knotts, Joan Staley, Liam Redmond
C-90 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Besides Don Knotts, there are a number of actors from the Andy Griffith Show in this movie, some playing characters very similar to the characters they did in the Andy Griffith Show. For example, Hal Smith plays the town drunk in both productions, and Dorthy Neumann plays Smith's wife in both productions. Also, "Griffith" show veterans, such as Burt Mustin and Hope Summers are featured in this movie. This was Knott's first film after leaving the Andy Griffith Show.


12:00 AM -- FOLLOW ME QUIETLY (1949)
Police track a mysterious killer nicknamed "The Judge."
Dir: Richard O. Fleischer
Cast: William Lundigan, Dorothy Patrick, Jeff Corey
BW-60 mins, CC,

Based on a story by Francis Rosenwald and Anthony Mann.


1:30 AM -- HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS (1970)
A vampire seeks a cure so he can wed the reincarnation of his lost love.
Dir: Dan Curtis
Cast: Jonathan Frid, Joan Bennett, Grayson Hall
C-97 mins, CC,

This film was shot concurrently with the original Dark Shadows (1966) series. During the time of filming, the television program was in the middle of its 1970 parallel time story-arc. Major characters appearing in the film were written out of the TV series so that they would be available to shoot the movie.


3:30 AM -- NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS (1971)
Newlyweds try to survive life at a haunted family estate.
Dir: Dan Curtis
Cast: David Selby, Grayson Hall, Kate Jackson
C-94 mins, CC,

It is reported that MGM forced Dan Curtis to cut over 35 minutes from the completed film, and gave him only 24 hours to do the job. So the film, which was meant to be approximately 129 minutes, was shortened about to 94 minutes, which according to some caused the film to lose its coherence. Much of the excised footage was recovered in 1999, but unfortunately, without sound.


5:30 AM -- BLACK CATS AND BROOMSTICKS (1955)
In this short film, superstitions are examined in the context of mid-20th century America.
Dir: Larry O'Reilly
BW-8 mins,