The Official Turner Classic Movies (aka TCM) Thread

My roommate back in the mid to late 80's was a Siouxsie and the Banshees fanatic. He saw her in concert multiple times and was always listening to her albums. I remember listening to a version of her song The Lords Prayer which went on for about 15 minutes. He said she basically just made it up as she went along. That may have been a concert bootleg.

 

Looking For Mr. Goodbar is on tonight at midnight. Never made it to DVD.

 

Interesting line-up tonight...

Fatso is on now, followed by The Honeymoon Killers and Precious.

Things get interesting at 1:45AM with a double feature of Fat Girl (if you haven't seen this, the ending is a shocker!) and Sweetie.

 

Their October schedule is up, most of the usual Universal and Hammer classics they always show (although I don't think they're showing the anthology film Dead of Night this year for some reason), but a few outliers like Deadly Friend, Scissors, and Hell Night.

 

Later today they'll be showing The Frozen Dead, a movie I've heard about but never seen. Seems to get rave reviews in my film guides, my DVR is set.

 

Unfortunately, The Frozen Dead is a letdown of a movie (although it being one I've seen hyped for years, that's bound to happen). Great twenty minute opening promising us a resurrection of the Third Reich with 1500 Nazi zombies, then an hour and 15 minutes of Head in a Metal Box.

 

Head in a Metal Box sounds like a cut scene from a Rinse Dream film. Frozen Dead is like Shock Waves and The Thing that wouldnt die had a baby. I groove on the warner bros 60 ness of it. And i always wonder, like... it was only 20 years after the war and just a few years after eichmann... making that flick on that side of the atlantic was a pretty ballsy affront to good taste. The ending scene still gives me chills too.

 

Spoiler

Scene from "Head in a Metal Box", a short film made by Catherine O'Hara when she was on Sprockets on SNL in the 90s

 

I caught the Frozen Head on the DVR the other day but haven't watched it yet. I was hoping it was something like Shock Waves but you guys are making it sound like I might be let down.

And speaking of being let down, I have a question about Guillermo del Toro's Cronos. I had never seen the movie and TCM aired it back on Dec 6th and I just got around to watching it last night. Alicia Malone's intro and outro were totally fine but the movie itself was completely out of sync. It was as if the audio had a 3 second delay from the action on the screen. With the action, the subtitles and the audio all over the place, it made for a very annoying viewing experience. Was this a TCM screw up or is this how Cronos actually plays? I think I would have enjoyed the movie much more if it had been in sync.

 

Didn't see Cronos, but some TCM airings are really bad. The version of Times Square they showed last year was just straight-up unwatchable, there was some kind of frame rate error.

 

Not a good night of TCM Underground on Friday.

Black Samson had the same frame rate problem that Times Square did; looked fine if it was a static scene but any camera movement and it stuttered all to hell. Watchable, just barely.

Then the airing of Melinda was shown pan-and-scan (or probably open matte) instead of the proper OAR.

 

Black Samson was just OK - they needed to use the lion more. The plot hardly existed but the last 15 minutes was fun. Also a great William Smith bad guy performance.
Melinda was better but the presentation was lacking.

Looking for Mr Goodbar was mentioned earlier. It's on again this Thursday night at midnight ET.

TCM Underground next week is Heavy Metal and American Pop.

 

Thanks for the heads up on Goodbar, I missed it last time. DVR is set for Thursday though.

Got around to watching Melinda in its entirety last night. Must have been open matte, 'cuz I used the zoom function on my TV and the framing was still correct, no heads cut off or anything. But damn, that's a good little movie! Slightly too long, but it hits the notes of the blaxploitation genre in a more serious tone. There's a great MacGuffin, a martial arts fight out of nowhere, and most importantly, a really engaging story. Would love to pick this up on Blu someday.

 

That was my first time seeing Looking for Mr. Goodbar. Really interesting depiction of the NYC "singles" scene in the 70s. I wonder how true to life it was. But hell, knowing the amount of "game" I had in my early 20s, I'd still be the one who managed to go home alone most nights anyway.

And when Goodbar ended and I went from my DVR to "Live TV", American Pop was just starting so I ended up watching that too, even though I've seen it a bunch of times. Never realized that the "punk band" in the studio at the end of the movie is Fear. But then I watched it again and kinda closed my eyes, and suddenly it sounded like The Decline of Western Civilization. "Just what does 'eat my fuck' mean?" "Really we just think you're a bunch of fucking queers and we don't give a fuck if you like us or not"