TCM Schedule for Friday, October 30 -- TCM Primetime Feature -- Psychological Thrillers

[Staph]

On this eve of Halloween, we have a day of horror films starring that master of terror, Boris Karloff. And tonight, we continue the October theme of thrillers with Psychological Thrillers, including Gaslight (1944), Night Must Fall (1937, and Psycho (1960). Brrr! Enjoy!


5:39am -- Short Film: Roseland (1930)
A pretty dance hall girl is looking for the right guy.
Cast: Ruth Etting, Donald Cook
Dir: Roy Mack
BW-12 mins

Soundtrack includes "Let Me Sing and I'm Happy", "Dancing with Tears in My Eyes", "Telling It to the Daisies", and "Mysterious Mose".


6:00am -- Behind the Mask (1932)
A Federal Agent goes undercover in prison to break up a drug syndicate.
Cast: Jack Holt, Constance Cummings, Boris Karloff, Claude King
Dir: John Francis Dillon
BW-68 mins, TV-PG

Archive footage from The Criminal Code (1931) is used to enhance the prison scenes in the opening sequence.


7:15am -- The Mask Of Fu Manchu (1932)
A Chinese warlord threatens explorers in search of the key to global power.
Cast: Boris Karloff, Lewis Stone, Karen Morley, Charles Starrett
Dir: Charles Brabin
BW-68 mins, TV-PG

As originally scripted, during the torture sequence, it was planned to have Von Berg (Jean Hersholt) suspended over the crocodile pit and Neyland Smith (Lewis Stone) about to be impaled by the walls of spikes. This was reversed when, for reasons unknown, it was thought that a fat captive would make more sense being impaled than a thin one.


8:30am -- The Ghoul (1933)
An ancient Egyptian returns to punish those who violated his tomb.
Cast: Boris Karloff, Cedric Hardwicke, Ernest Thesiger, Dorothy Hyson
Dir: T. Hayes Hunter
BW-81 mins, TV-G

When Boris Karloff traveled to England to shoot The Ghoul (1933), it was the first time in nearly 25 years that he returned to his home country and reunited with the surviving members of his family.


10:00am -- The Black Room (1935)
An evil twin brother disposes of his enemies in a secret death chamber on his estate.
Cast: Boris Karloff, Marian Marsh, Robert Allen, Thurston Hall
Dir: R. William Neill
BW-68 mins, TV-G

Present extant version, as presented on Turner Classic Movies, bears title and end credits redesigned for the 1955 wide screen re-release.


11:15am -- The Walking Dead (1936)
A framed man comes back from the dead to seek revenge.
Cast: Boris Karloff, Ricardo Cortez, Edmund Gwenn, Marguerite Churchill
Dir: Michael Curtiz
BW-65 mins, TV-PG

Boris Karloff, born William Henry Pratt, was the great-nephew of Anna Leonowens, governess to the children of the King of Siam and subject of the novel/film Anna And The King and the film(s) The King And I.


12:30pm -- The Man They Could Not Hang (1939)
A mad scientist uses an artificial heart pump he invented to seek revenge after he is executed.
Cast: Boris Karloff, Lorna Gray, Robert Wilcox, Roger Pryor
Dir: Nick Grinde
BW-64 mins, TV-14

Quite the forward-thinking script, imagining heart transplants in 1939 -- "Think of it! The Edison or Pasteur of tomorrow need not die merely because his heart is worn out. We'll give him a new heart taken perhaps from the body of a young man who's been killed in a automobile accident. And our great genius is awakened to another sixty years of useful life! You ask me if that's a benefit to mankind? I answer it's the gift of eternal life! But whether man's wise enough or old enouh to receive such a gift, I don't know. I don't know!"


1:45pm -- The Man With Nine Lives (1940)
A doctor's attempts to cure cancer lead to a series of grisly murders.
Cast: Boris Karloff, Roger Pryor, Jo Ann Sayers, Stanley Brown
Dir: Nick Grinde
BW-74 mins, TV-PG

Plot holes: When Dr. Mason uses the "standard" method of reviving Dr. Kravaal, it doesn't appear to be anything more than placing him near a fire and putting blankets on him. He asks his nurse for "more coffee," but it's unclear what he's doing with the coffee which would help him resuscitate the doctor as Kravaal is unconscious and can't be drinking it.


3:00pm -- Before I Hang (1940)
A mad scientist experiments with a serum tainted with a psychopath's blood.
Cast: Boris Karloff, Evelyn Keyes, Bruce Bennett, Edward Van Sloan
Dir: Nick Grinde
BW-62 mins, TV-PG

This film was shot in the house later used in the 1945 title The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) staring Hurd Hatfield.


4:15pm -- The Ape (1940)
A mad doctor dresses as an ape to kill victims for their spinal fluid.
Cast: Boris Karloff, Maris Wrixon, Gertrude W. Hoffman, Henry Hall
Dir: William Nigh
BW-62 mins, TV-PG

Previously made as House of Mystery (1934), starring Ed Lowry and Verna Hillie.


5:30pm -- The Devil Commands (1941)
A scientist kills innocent victims in his efforts to communicate with his late wife.
Cast: Boris Karloff, Richard Fiske, Amanda Duff, Anne Revere
Dir: Edward Dmytryk
BW-64 mins, TV-14

When Boris Karloff died, the New York Times obituary featured a picture of Frankenstein's monster. Unfortunately, the image was actually Glenn Strange in full makeup, not Karloff.


6:45pm -- Isle Of The Dead (1945)
The inhabitants of a Balkans island under quarantine fear that one of their number is a vampire.
Cast: Boris Karloff, Ellen Drew, Marc Cramer, Katherine Emery
Dir: Mark Robson
BW-72 mins, TV-PG

Filming began in July 1944, but was suspended when Boris Karloff required back surgery. It was completed in December 1944. After Karloff had recovered from surgery, but before the cast of Isle of the Dead could be reassembled, Val Lewton and Karloff made The Body Snatcher (1945), which was released first.


What's On Tonight: TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLERS


8:00pm -- Gaslight (1944)
A newlywed fears she's going mad when strange things start happening at the family mansion.
Cast: Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten, Dame May Whitty
Dir: George Cukor
BW-114 mins, TV-PG

Won Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Ingrid Bergman, and Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White -- Cedric Gibbons, William Ferrari, Edwin B. Willis and Paul Huldschinsky

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Charles Boyer, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Angela Lansbury, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Joseph Ruttenberg, Best Writing, Screenplay -- John L. Balderston, Walter Reisch and John Van Druten, and Best Picture

The aria that Ingrid Bergman is singing when we see her in the first scene of her in the present day is from the Gaetano Donizetti opera "Lucia Di Lammermoor". The opera is famous for its so-called "mad scene", in which the eponymous Lucia goes insane.


10:00pm -- Night Must Fall (1937)
A charming young man worms his way into a wealthy woman's household, then reveals a deadly secret.
Cast: Merle Tottenham, Kathleen Harrison, Dame May Whitty, Rosalind Russell
Dir: Richard Thorpe
BW-116 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Robert Montgomery, and Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Dame May Whitty

Remade in 1964 with Albert Finney, Susan Hampshire and Mona Washbourne, made for Broadway Television Theatre in 1952 (Anthony Kemble-Cooper, Bethel Leslie and Ruth Gates), and made for UK television in 1957 (Ronald Lewis, Gwen Watford, and Betty Hardy).


12:00am -- Psycho (1960)
A woman on the run gets mixed up with a repressed young man and his violent mother.
Cast: Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
BW-109 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Janet Leigh, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White -- Joseph Hurley, Robert Clatworthy and George Milo, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- John L. Russell, and Best Director -- Alfred Hitchcock

In the opening scene, Marion Crane is wearing a white bra because Alfred Hitchcock wanted to show her as being "angelic". After she has taken the money, the following scene has her in a black bra because now she has done something wrong and evil. Similarly, before she steals the money, she has a white purse; after she's stolen the money, her purse is black.


2:00am -- Zaat (1972)
A mad scientist transforms himself into an aquatic killer.
Cast: Marshall Grauer, Wade Popwell, Paul Galloway.
Dir: Arnold Stevens
C-99 mins, TV-14

On IMDB, this movie is ranked as the seventh worst film of all time!


3:45am -- Swamp Thing (1982)
After a violent incident with a special chemical, a research scientist is turned into a swamp plant monster.
Cast: Louis Jourdan, Adrienne Barbeau, Ray Wise, David Hess
Dir: Wes Craven
C-91 mins, TV-MA

Based on the comic book by Len Wein, co-creator of Wolverine.

[Staph]

1. Gaslight (1944)

At the 1945 Academy Awards® ceremony, when Ingrid Bergman accepted her first Oscar® for Gaslight, Bing Crosby and Leo McCarey had just won awards as, respectively, Best Actor and Director for Going My Way (1944). "Tomorrow I go to work in a picture with Bing and Mr. McCarey," said Bergman, referring to the upcoming The Bells of St. Mary's (1945). "And I'm afraid that, if I didn't have an Oscar® too, they wouldn't speak to me." Bergman's Best Actress Oscar® was presented by best friend and fellow David O. Selznick contractee Jennifer Jones, who had emerged the winner the year before when both actresses were nominated - Bergman for For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) and Jones for The Song of Bernadette (1943).

"Your artistry has won our vote and your graciousness has won our hearts," Jones said as she handed the statuette to Bergman. An even more generous compliment came from fellow nominee Barbara Stanwyck, who many felt should have won the Best Actress Oscar® that year for Double Indemnity (1944). Declaring herself "a member of the Ingrid Bergman Fan Club," Stanwyck told the press, "I don't feel at all bad about the Award because my favorite actress won it and has earned it by all her performances."

Bergman, who had long coveted the role of the tormented wife being driven insane by her husband in Gaslight, went after the role at MGM after resident star Hedy Lamarr turned it down. Bergman almost missed her chance when Selznick initially refused to loan her to MGM unless she was given first billing over costar Charles Boyer. When Boyer refused to budge on the matter, Bergman went to Selznick in tears begging him to reconsider - which he finally did. Because the statuesque Bergman was taller than her co-star, Boyer stood on a box during certain scenes - a ploy that would be repeated when the two stars worked together again in Arch of Triumph (1948). Boyer reportedly was distracted throughout the filming of Gaslight because the production coincided with the birth of his son, Michael. When the blessed event occurred, the proud papa treated the cast and crew to champagne.

Gaslight also won an Oscar® for Best Interior Decoration and was nominated in the categories of Best Picture, Actor (Boyer), Supporting Actress (Angela Lansbury), Screenplay and Black and White Cinematography. The film marked the movie and acting debut of Lansbury, who had been working in a Los Angeles department store before being cast as Nancy, the maid. Director George Cukor was instantly impressed by the fledgling actress' talent and professionalism, and prevailed when the studio resisted hiring her because she wasn't "sexy enough." Lansbury turned 18 on the set - and had to wait for that day to legally light a cigarette, a defiant gesture made by her saucy character. She, too, had to contend with Bergman's height, wearing high platform shoes to give the impression that Nancy towered over her timid mistress.

Director: George Cukor
Producer: Arthur Hornblow, Jr.
Screenwriter: John L. Balderston, Walter Reisch, John van Druten
Cinematographer: Joseph Ruttenberg
Composer: Bronislau Kaper
Editor: Arthur Williams, Ralph Winters
Art Director: William Ferrari, Cedric Gibbons
Costume Designer: Marion Herwood Keyes, Irene Sharaff
Cast: Charles Boyer (Gregory Anton), Ingrid Bergman (Paula Alquist), Joseph Cotton (Brian Cameron), Dame May Whitty (Miss Thwaites), Angela Lansbury (Nancy Oliver)
BW-114m. Closed captioning. Descriptive video.

by Roger Fristoe

[lavenderdiva]

2. Night Must Fall

OOOh. One of the dramatic performances by Rosalind Russell that I love. And yes, it also stars our patron saint, Robert Montgomery. Even though this isn't Hitchcock, it certainly is creepy and suspenseful enough to rate as good as any of his films, IMHO.

Dame May Whitty steals numerous scenes, and is wonderful!