TCM Look-Ahead (Feb. 6)
It's a huge week on TCM, including Pre-Code Lubitsch, Michael Schultz and Chuck Heston in a Safari jacket and Ford Galaxie!
Friday, 02/06/26
08:30 p.m. PST Man in the Wilderness, directed by Richard C. Sarafian
If, like me, you enjoy movies about survival against all odds and nature, this is one of the best. This came on the heels of Richard Harris vehicle A Man Called Horse, a box office hit in 1970. While it lacks the iconic torture scenes from the predecessor (who can ever forget Harris hanging on pins in the Vow to the Sun ceremony?) it trucks in the same territory, a white aristocrat trying to survive in Sioux country.
Saturday, 02/07/26
01:45 p.m. PST Seance on a Wet Afternoon, directed by Bryan Forbes
If you like your horror films subtle and quietly unnerving, Seance is for you. A great performance by the underrated Kim Stanley.
10:00 p.m. PST Pennies from Heaven, directed by Herbert Ross
A bomb at its release despite the presence of the red-hot Steve Martin, this film's reputation has undergone some degree of rehabilitation. Martin, to be honest, struggles to find his footing as a guileful traveling sheet music salesman who sings (lip-synchs, actually, to classic songs from the 1930s) and dances his way towards tragedy. If you are one of those people that bristle at people breaking into songs in musicals, you are unlikely to find this tolerable, particularly with the added strangeness of the lip synching. But it's a one-of-a-kind piece of work. Based on the BBC television program written by the great Dennis Potter (The Singing Detective). This was likely the greatest disappointment of Martin's career. With Bernadette Peters offering touching relief.
Sunday, 02/08/26
03:45 a.m. PST The Omega Man, directed by Boris
The oft-filmed but never topped version of Richard Mathewson's I Am Legend, features Chuck Heston as the last man on earth, bombing around in a bitching 1970 Ford Galaxie Rag Top brandishing a machine gun as he fends off mutants. A 70s time capsule, the perfect 3:45 a.m. watch.
06:00 a.m. PST The Honeymoon Killers, directed by Leonard Kastle
The cult classic about a pair of co-dependent serial killers preying on widows. Weirdly moving an genuinely odd, like nothing before or since. A great performance by Shirley Stoler as a character based on real-life killer Martha Beck.
08:00 p.m. PST Which Way is Up? directed by Michael Schultz
Hilariously biting satire on race and class, Richard Pryor stars in multiple roles in what is probably his most quintessential film. Based on the Italian film The Seduction of Mimi.
10:00 p.m. PST Krush Groove, directed by Michael Schultz
A Michael Shultz double bill! This 80s artifact is an amazing collection of rap artists as the genre was having its ascendance. The Fat Boys, Run DMC, Sheila E., LL Cool J., Kurtis Blow, etc. make appearances. The music more than makes up for a rather contrived plot about a striving record producer looking for cred.
Monday, 02/09/26
08:00 p.m. PST The Smiling Lieutenant, directed by Ernst Lubitsch
The Lubitsch touch is on full display in a quintuple-bill Monday night and Tuesday morning. Maurice Chevalier is the titular lead, but it is the overt sexual chemistry (Pre-Code. There's Pre Code, then there is Pre Code Lubitsch!) between Claudette Colbert and Miriam Hopkins that steals the attention.
09:45 p.m. PST Broken Lullaby, directed by Ernst Lubitsch
Lubitsch in unaccustomed dramatic territory, which put some people off, but I find it one of the more effective anti-war treatments of the time. A tortured violinist seeks out the family of a soldier he killed on the battlefield, and ends up finding love and forgiveness. Quite moving.
11:15 p.m. PST One Hour With You, directed by Ernst Lubitsch and George Cukor
A color tint restoration, courtesy of UCLA. Chevalier, Jeannette MacDonald and the rest of an attractive cast try to keep their hands off each other in another naught Pre-Code sex comedy.
Tuesday, 02/10/26
12:45 a.m. PST Trouble in Paradise, directed by Ernst Lubitsch
If one is looking for the apex of the Lubitsch touch, this is probably where to start. Two jewel romantically paired jewel thieves (Herbert Marshall, Miriam Hopkins) target their rich employer (Kay Francis) as their next victim until love intervenes. Pre-Code.
02:15 a.m. PST The Shop Around the Corner, directed by Ernst Lubitsch
Arguably Lubitsch's greatest film. James Stewart and Margaret Sullivan are shop workers who dislike each other but are also amorous secret pen pals.
06:15 p.m. PST Fury, directed by Fritz Lang
The first film Fritz Lang directed in Hollywood after fleeing Hitler's Germany. It is hard not to see the anti-fascist parallels in the story of an gas station owner (Spencer Tracy) unjustly arrested as a kidnapper. Sylvia Sydney, and her eyes, offer, as always, heartbreaking support. This film has proven to be somewhat hard to find these days, so this is a must watch/record.
Wednesday, 02/11/26
03:30 a.m. PST The Haunting, directed by Robert Wise
The best of all the versions of Shirley Hill's The Haunting of Hill House. Genuinely unsettling.
08:00 p.m. PST Lonely are the Brave, directed by David Miller
Interesting Modern Western that actually manages to work as a meditation on What Has Been Lost. Kirk Douglas' favorite of all his films.
10:00 p.m. PST Charley Varrick, directed by Don Siegel
Who else but Walter Matthau could make this irredeemable crook almost lovable?
Thursday, 02/12/26
07:30 a.m. PST Blithe Spirit, directed by David Lean
Lean shows his lighter touch with the delightful Noel Coward adaptation about a pesky ex-wife-ghost making matters rather difficult for her widowed husband (Rex Harrison).
