TCM Schedule for Friday, September 10, 2021 -- Movie Cults

In the daylight hours, TCM is all about the disaster film, long before Michael Bay got out of the music video business and starting making big money spectacles like The Rock (1996) and Armageddon (1998). Then in prime time, we get inside the film version of cults. Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- Transatlantic Tunnel (1935)
1h 34m | Horror/Science-Fiction | TV-G
Scientists and engineers join forces to build a tunnel beneath the Atlantic Ocean.
Director: Maurice Elvey
Cast: Richard Dix, Leslie Banks, Madge Evans

One of the plot elements that crops up in the movie is a volcanic area that the tunnelers run into about halfway across the Atlantic. This makes sense, as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a very active area. The neat part in relation to the movie is that while the existence of a "Ridge" on the seafloor was known at the time, it was not known that it was so active. It wasn't until the Heezen/Ewing/Tharp mapping of the ocean floor in the 1950s that people discovered that Seismic activity and "Seafloor Spreading" due to magma seepage were going on. That was about 20 years after the makers of the film surmised Magma pockets near the Mid-Atlantic.


7:45 AM -- A Night to Remember (1958)
2h 3m | Drama | TV-PG
Based on Walter Lord's popular book, A Night to Remember recounts the sailing of the Titanic.
Director: Roy Ward Baker
Cast: Anthony Bushell, Kenneth More, Honor Blackman

No tank at Pinewood Studios was big enough to film the survivors struggling in the water to climb into lifeboats. The scene was shot at 2:00 AM on a cold November morning in the outdoor swimming pool at Ruislip Lido in London. Kenneth More recalled that when the extras refused to jump into the water, he realized he would have to set an example. "I leaped. Never have I experienced such cold in all my life. It was like jumping into a deep freeze just like the people did on the actual Titanic. The shock of the cold water forced the breath out of my lungs. My heart seemed to stop beating. I felt crushed, unable to think. I had rigor mortis, without the mortis. And then I surfaced, spat out the dirty water and, gasping for breath, found my voice. 'Stop!' I shouted. 'Don't listen to me! It's bloody awful! Stay where you are!' But it was too late, as the extras followed suit."


10:00 AM -- San Francisco (1936)
1h 55m | Epic | TV-G
A beautiful singer and a battling priest try to reform a Barbary Coast saloon owner in the days before the big earthquake.
Director: W. S. Van Dyke
Cast: Clark Gable, Jeanette Macdonald, Spencer Tracy

Winner of an Oscar for Best Sound, Recording -- Douglas Shearer (M-G-M SSD)

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Spencer Tracy, Best Director -- W.S. Van Dyke, Best Writing, Original Story -- Robert E. Hopkins, Best Assistant Director -- Joseph M. Newman, and Best Picture

Despite its realistic portrayal of the San Francisco earthquake, the movie San Francisco did not win the Academy Award for Best Special Effects, because the award did not exist at the time. To rectify this gap, the award was inaugurated in 1938.


12:00 PM -- The Crowded Sky (1960)
1h 45m | Adventure | TV-PG
A passenger jet and a private plane head for a collision.
Director: Joseph Pevney
Cast: Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, Efrem Zimbalist Jr.

Dana Andrews had starred in the airline disaster cult classic Zero Hour! (1957) which was remade into Airplane! (1980). Airplane was also a parody of the Airport films, especially Airport 1975 (1974), which also featured Andrews. And although this movie isn't regarded as having also influenced Airplane, much of that film is also made up of the passengers having flashbacks of their lives.


2:00 PM -- The Last Voyage (1960)
1h 31m | Epic | TV-PG
Passengers and crew fight to escape a sinking ocean liner.
Director: Andrew L. Stone
Cast: Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, George Sanders

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Effects, Special Effects -- Augie Lohman

The ship used by the filmmakers was the SS Ile de France, the famous French liner that cruised the Atlantic from 1926-59. She was leased for $4,000 a day. After shooting completed, she was re-floated (having been partially sunk for the film) and towed to the scrap yard. She has a more heroic place in history, however. It was she that played a major role in the rescue of the passengers from the Italian liner Andrea Doria in 1956, after the latter ship collided with the Swedish ship Stockholm and sank off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts. She was the first ship to arrive at the scene of the collision and immediately began taking aboard the Andrea Doria's passengers.


3:45 PM -- The Swarm (1978)
1h 56m | Horror/Science-Fiction | TV-14
Killer bees that attack without reason descend on Texas.
Director: Irwin Allen
Cast: Michael Caine, Katharine Ross, Richard Widmark

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Costume Design -- Paul Zastupnevich

This was the first of three big-budget/all-star Irwin Allen movies that bombed so badly at the box-office, they were blamed for "killing off" the disaster movie genre. The other two were Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979), and When Time Ran Out... (1980).


6:00 PM -- Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979)
2h 2m | Adventure | TV-PG
Rival salvage parties enter an upside down ocean liner in search of treasure.
Director: Irwin Allen
Cast: Veronica Hamel, Mark Harmon, Angela Cartwright

Based on the ending of the movie The Poseidon Adventure (1972), in which the overturned ship still remains afloat. The original script called for it to sink after the survivors take off in a helicopter, but when it did not turn out right, it was decided to keep the ship afloat.



WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: PRIMETIME THEME -- MOVIE CULTS



8:00 PM -- The Seventh Victim (1943)
1h 11m | Horror/Science-Fiction | TV-PG
A girl's search for her missing sister puts her in conflict with a band of satanists.
Director: Mark Robson
Cast: Tom Conway, Jean Brooks, Kim Hunter

Notable cast members include Hugh Beaumont (Gregory Ward), who played the father, Ward Cleaver in the TV series Leave It to Beaver (1957); Barbara Hale (uncredited subway passenger), who played secretary Della Street in Perry Mason (1957) and the movies of the 1980's and 1990's, pioneering celebrity chef Joseph Chef Milani, who ran the famous Hollywood Canteen during WWII, and character actor Feodor Chaliapin Jr. (cult henchman), whose best-known roles were as the mad monk Jorge De Burgos in The Name of the Rose (1986) and as the Old Man (the grandfather) in Moonstruck (1987).


9:30 PM -- Curse of the Demon (1957)
1h 35m | Horror/Science-Fiction | TV-PG
An anthropologist investigates a devil worshipper who commands a deadly demon.
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Cast: Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins, Niall Macginnis

This film was mentioned in the opening song from The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) (Science Fiction Double Feature): "Dana Andrews said prunes gave him the runes, but passing them used lots of skills".


11:00 PM -- Cult of the Cobra (1955)
1h 22m | Horror
While stationed in Asia, six American G.I.'s witness the secret ritual of Lamians (worshipers of women who can change into serpents).
Director: Francis D. Lyon
Cast: Faith Domergue, Richard Long, Marshall Thompson

All five of this movie's leading men later starred in at least one successful TV series: Richard Long (The Big Valley), Marshall Thompson (Daktari), William Reynolds (The F.B.I.), Jack Kelly (Maverick), and David Janssen (The Fugitive).


12:30 AM -- The Crimson Cult (1970)
1h 27m | Horror
When his brother disappears, Robert Manning pays a visit to the remote country house he was last heard from.
Director: Vernon Sewell
Cast: Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee, Mark Eden

Boris Karloff became sick with pneumonia while shooting this project in the freezing rain. It was his last British movie. Filming began on January 22, 1968. Karloff had just finished "Targets (1968)," and would recover enough to shoot four Mexican features in May 1968, his final screen work.


2:00 AM -- Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995)
1h 27m | Comedy
An awkward seventh-grader struggles to cope with inattentive parents, snobbish class-mates, a smart older brother, an attractive younger sister and her own insecurities in suburban New Jersey.
Director: Todd Solondz
Cast: Heather Matarazzo, Victoria Davis, Christina Brucato

Heather Matarazzo later said that this movie, and especially the scene where her classmates call her character a "lesbo", made her aware of her own homosexuality. She stated that at the time, she didn't even know what lesbo meant, but after doing some research, she realized: "Oh my God! That's what I am, a lesbian!" However, due to her Catholic upbringing, she later felt "apologetic, ashamed, secretive", and it took her nine more years before she was comfortable enough to officially come out.


3:45 AM -- Drug Stories (2019)
Short | TV-14
A compilation of classroom scare films about the dangers of using drugs.

The films include LSD-25 (1967), LSD: Insight or Insanity? (1967), The Bottle and the Throttle (1968),
The Trip Back (1970), and Users are Losers (1971).


5:15 AM -- Booked for Safekeeping (1960)
31m | Short | TV-14
In this short documentary, police officers are trained in the assistance and management of mentally ill and confused persons.
Director: George C Stoney
Cast: James Daly