TCM Schedule for Friday, October 16, 2020 -- What's On Tonight: Fright Favorites

We're definitely getting closer to Halloween -- TCM is giving us a full day of Fright Favorites. Enjoy, if you can!


6:15 AM -- Trances (1981)
1h 32m | Documentary | TV-G
A documentary profile of the Moroccan acoustic supergroup Nass El Ghiwane.
Director: Ahmed El Maanouni
Cast: Nass El Ghiwane


8:00 AM -- The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)
1h 10m | Comedy | TV-PG
A nerdy floral shop assistant invents a carnivorous monster plant that feeds on human blood.
Director: Roger Corman
Cast: Jonathan Haze, Jackie Joseph, Mel Welles

Howard R. Cohen learned from Charles B. Griffith that when the film was being edited, "there was a point where two scenes would not cut together. It was just a visual jolt, and it didn't work. And they needed something to bridge that moment. They found in the editing room a nice shot of the moon, and they cut it in, and it worked. Twenty years go by. I'm at the studio one day. Chuck comes running up to me, says, 'You've got to see this!' It was a magazine article--eight pages on the symbolism of the moon in Little Shop of Horrors."


9:15 AM -- Village of the Damned (1960)
1h 17m | Horror | TV-14
After a mysterious blackout, the inhabitants of a British village give birth to emotionless, super-powered offspring.
Director: Wolf Rilla
Cast: George Sanders, Barbara Shelley, Martin Stephens

The eerie effect of the children's glowing eyes was created by matting a negative (reversed) image of their eyes over the pupils when they used their powers. The British print of the film contained no optical effects as the British Board of Film Classification considered them too frighting for an 'A' classification.


10:45 AM -- The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962)
1h 21m | Horror | TV-PG
A scientist keeps his wife's severed head alive until he can find a new body for her.
Director: Joseph Green
Cast: Virginia Leith, Herb Evers, Adele Lamont

This was the first Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1988) movie watched by Michael J. Nelson after Joel Hodgson left.


12:15 PM -- Carnival of Souls (1962)
1h 20m | Horror | TV-PG
A church organist battles demons and delusions after a deadly car accident.
Director: Herk Harvey
Cast: Candace Hilligoss, Herk Harvey, Frances Feist

Portions of the movie are tinted in a manner similar to silent films. Whenever Mary is in one of her altered mental states, the picture has a faint cyan tint, while all the "real" scenes are in pure black-and-white. Later in the film, the tinted segments also have distorted sound and picture.


1:45 PM -- Dementia 13 (1963)
1h 21m | Horror | TV-14
Members of an Irish family are being killed off by one of their own who wishes to inherit the family fortune.
Director: Francis Coppola
Cast: William Campbell, Luana Anders, Bart Patton

American International Pictures would frequently make use of frozen dollars and cheaper European facilities by sending composers Les Baxter and Ronald Stein to record their scores in London, Munich and Rome. In spite of The Terror (1963) having a very small budget, Stein was able to use the 90-piece Munich Symphony Orchestra to record the score for that movie. Furthermore, whilst in Munich, Stein cut costs even further by juggling the recording sessions to squeeze in the scoring of Dementia 13.


3:15 PM -- The Raven (1963)
1h 26m | Comedy | TV-PG
A widowed sorcerer discovers his late wife is alive and living with his mortal enemy.
Director: Roger Corman
Cast: Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff

Jack Nicholson always gave high praise to everyone he worked with on the set, except one - the Raven. He said the Raven pooped on everyone, but especially liked to poop on him. He later said: "I would look down when the Raven flew off my shoulder, and it would be covered in poop. I hated that bird."

4:45 PM -- Spider Baby (1964)
1h 20m | Comedy | TV-PG
Greedy relatives try to repossess the decaying mansion of an inbred Southern family.
Director: Jack Hill
Cast: Lon Chaney Jr., Carol Ohmart, Quinn Redeker

Sid Haig admitted to avoiding Lon Chaney Jr. for the first two days of filming, simply because he wasn't sure what to say to the veteran actor. One day Chaney was needed for and Haig was sent to Chaney's trailer to retrieve him. Haig nervously knocked on the door and said, "Excuse me, Mr. Chaney. You're needed on set." Chaney told Haig, without skipping a beat, "Stop that. I'm not Mr. Chaney. I'm Lon. You're Sid. Let's leave it at that." Haig later said that this interaction put him completely at ease.


6:15 PM -- The Nanny (1965)
1h 33m | Drama | TV-14
A disturbed young man tries to prove his nanny is out to kill him.
Director: Seth Holt
Cast: Bette Davis, Wendy Craig, Jill Bennett

Bette Davis's daughter Barbara Merrill felt that there was more to her mother's production delaying 'flu. Costume designer Rosemary Burrows had proposed lightweight, cotton dresses as worn by modern nannies, whereas Davis wanted a traditional, old-fashioned wool uniform with white collar which were by then very difficult to find. Davis was able to leave her hotel room once one was located, just as her daughter predicted.



WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: FRIGHT FAVORITES - HORROR ANTHOLOGIES



8:00 PM -- Dead of Night (1945)
1h 44m | Horror | TV-14
Guests at a country estate share stories of the supernatural.
Director: [alberto] Cavalcanti
Cast: Mervyn Johns, Roland Culver, Michael Redgrave

Cosmologists Fred Hoyle, Thomas Gold, and Hermann Bondi developed the Steady State theory of the universe, an alternative to the Big Bang, after seeing this movie. They said that the circular nature of the plot inspired the theory.


10:00 PM -- Twice Told Tales (1963)
1h 59m | Horror | TV-14
A poisonous young beauty, the secrets of eternal life and a haunted house chill this collection of Nathaniel Hawthorne stories.
Director: Sidney Salkow
Cast: Vincent Price, Sebastian Cabot, Mari Blanchard

Beverly Garland claimed that she saw Vincent Price--who was a connoisseur of fine art, sculpture and furniture, among other things--eying some of the prop furniture on the set of the film. When the shooting ended, those pieces of furniture "mysteriously" vanished.


12:15 AM -- Black Sabbath (1963)
1h 40m | Horror | TV-14
Boris Karloff introduces tales of a haunted nurse, a stalked call girl and a vampire.
Director: Mario Bava
Cast: Michèle Mercier, Lidia Alfonsi, Boris Karloff

This film served as inspiration for the naming of the heavy metal band Black Sabbath. In 1968, the band (then called Earth) was playing a small club in Birmingham, England. Across the street was a movie theater showing the film Black Sabbath. The band noticed that more people were in line to see the movie than were to see the band. Realizing that "horror sells tickets" they decided to change the band's name to Black Sabbath.


2:00 AM -- Enter the Ninja (1981)
1h 39m | Action | TV-14
Cole is a former American military operative who's just finished his training in ninjutsu.
Director: Emmett Alston
Cast: Franco Nero, Susan George, Christopher George

Menahem Golan said of this movie after being asked about this film kick-starting a ninja craze: "It started when Chinese karate films became popular. I looked for something new in Asian martial arts and found information about the Ninja culture in an encyclopedia. The Ninja were middle-class people in Japan--lawyers, government clerks, etc. It was a secret organization that helped the feudal government. It actually preceded the Chinese karate battles. They used very special methods, developing their sixth sense. That fascinated me and I said I could write story ideas out of it, so we made "Enter the Ninja" and American Ninja (1985) later on. Many imitations followed".


3:45 AM -- Revenge Of The Ninja (1983)
1h 28m | Action | TV-MA
A Japanese gallery owner denies his violent ninja heritage until American drug traffickers kidnap his young son.
Director: Sam Firstenberg
Cast: Sho Kosugi, Keith Vitali, Virgil Frye

Despite being the second entry in the Ninja trilogy, this film has nothing to do with neither the film that preceded it (Enter the Ninja (1981)) nor the one that followed it (Ninja III: The Domination (1984)), other than the fact that they starred Shô Kosugi (but playing a different character).


5:30 AM -- Shake Hands With Danger (1970)
23m | Documentary | TV-PG
Short safety film about the dangers associated with earthmoving equipment operations, showing many simulated accidents on construction sites.
Director: Herk Harvey
Cast: Charles Oldfather, John Clifford, Herk Harvey

The theme song is Shake Hands With Danger, the Story of Three-Finger Joe.