This month on Turner Classic Movies a number of unheralded and lesser known films that deserve some attention are being aired along with a few personal favorites that I never get tired of watching again like GIRL CRAZY (1943) starring Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. The date to mention though is Tuesday, June 8^th, in which all of the previous evening programming – a line-up of detective movies in The Saint series – has been cancelled in order to honor the late Dennis Hopper.  

While he is only a supporting player in the first three scheduled films – The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), True Grit (1969) and Rebel Without a Cause (1955) – he is the director and co-star of the fourth feature, Easy Rider (1969), which is a pop-culture landmark of its era. But it’s the last film in the program – NIGHT TIDE (1961, airing at 4:15 am ET) that I want to recommend to those who want to see Hopper in the early leading man phase of his career. Long before he became as eccentric and extreme in his acting choices as Christopher Walken, Hopper was an Actors Studio graduate, intent on following in the footsteps of James Dean. His performance in NIGHT TIDE is a fine showcase for Hopper’s sensitive, introspective side but it’s also a moody, atmospheric B movie that walks a fine line between fantasy and melodrama. The movie, which marked the debut feature of Curtis Harrington, an avant-garde filmmaker who had established himself with two critically acclaimed shorts, Fragment of Seeking (1946) and Picnic (1948), is heavily influenced by the work of Val Lewton (Cat People) and Jean Cocteau (The Blood of a Poet) and it shows….which is a good thing.

Hopper plays Johnny Drake, a sailor on shore leave who becomes infatuated with Mora (Linda Lawson), a mysterious girl who works on the Santa Monica pier; she poses as a mermaid in an sideshow. As Johnny gets to know Mora better, he realizes that she really believes she is descended from a race of mermaids and that she brings doom to any mortal man who desires her – her two previously boyfriends both died under unusual circumstances. The film’s flirtation with the supernatural is quite effective and for a modest, low-budget first effort, NIGHT TIDE maintains a poetic, dreamlike quality for much of its running time. The denouement is less impressive but some of the imagery is bound to haunt you and linger in the memory.

GIRL CRAZY (Thursday, June 10^th, 9:15 am ET)

I don’t worship at the temple of Judy Garland but I can understand some movie fans’ obsession with her whenever I watch this 1943 musical-romance which pairs her with Mickey Rooney and, in my opinion, is the best of their teamings. For one thing, the score by George & Ira Gershwin showcases some of their finest songs and the imaginative choreography ranges from the cowpoke charm of “Bidin’ My Time” to the sweeping romanticism of “Embraceable You” to the over-the-top spectacle of the closing number, “I Got Rhythm” (the only one staged by Busby Berkeley, who was replaced by director Norman Taurog after shooting began).  The chemistry between Judy and Mickey is electric and even the supporting players get their moment to shine such as Rags Ragland, Nancy Walker, Judy Allyson and even bandleader Tommy Dorsey who performs a duet with Mickey on “Fascinating Rhythm.” If the fanaticism of the Judy cult has negatively colored your assessment of her talents or you’ve never seen a Garland-Rooney musical, try this one.

TERM OF TRIAL (Thursday, June 10^th, Midnight ET)

Who could resist a cast like this? Laurence Olivier, Simone Signoret, Terence Stamp, Sarah Miles and Hugh Griffith. Filmed toward the end of the British New Wave movement with its emphasis on realistic working class characters and class structure, this downbeat drama might not be worthy of the talents involved but they make it a compelling experience regardless, even if you reject the bitterly ironic finale that ends in a courtroom case and is meant to provide positive closure for all that went before. In essence, the film is about an alcoholic schoolteacher (Olivier) living a life of quiet failure. When a promising young student (Miles) rekindles his love of teaching, their mentor-pupil relationship gets complicated and ends in false accusations of rape. Meanwhile, Olivier’s nagging, unhappy wife (Signoret) and a surly, rebellious punk (Stamp) compound the teacher’s misery. Miles is at the height of her sexy little minx stage (she made The Servant the following year – 1963), Stamp exudes bad boy hipness (exactly the opposite of his angelic Billy Budd of the same year) and Olivier completely disappears into his role, creating a memorable portrait of middle-aged angst.

10 RILLINGTON PLACE (Wednesday, June 16^th, 10:30 pm ET)

Directed by Richard Fleischer who has been down the “true crime” road before in The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955), Compulsion (1959) and The Boston Strangler (1968), this 1971 dramatization of serial killer John Christie’s exploits in post-war England between the years 1943-1953 is grimly fascinating. Front and center is a chilling performance by Richard Attenborough as the soft-spoken murderer whose chief prosecution testimony in the trial of another man – Timothy John Evans (John Hurt) – helped send the latter to the hangman, before Christie himself became the suspect. While the film was not well received by critics or the public upon its original release, its reputation has grown considerably since and it’s a first rate criminal procedural. J. Hoberman of The Village Voice wrote, “It was as a tract against the death penalty that 10 Rillington Place was initially understood in the U.S., although there’s another charged social issue that figures nearly as powerfully in the movie. Opening 18 months before the Supreme Court would rule on Roe v. Wade, 10 Rillington Place not only features some relatively frank discussion of abortion, but is openly sympathetic to a woman’s reasons for wanting one. Small wonder, then, that the movie’s equivalent of a PG rating caused the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures to angrily withdraw its support for Hollywood‘s then-new voluntary film-rating system.”    

PICTURE SNATCHER (Thursday, June 17^th, 11:30 pm ET)

James Cagney once again proves he’s an irrepressible, high energy dynamo in this 1933 Pre-Code programmer that mixes melodrama, gallows humor and urban grit and comes up a winner with a compact 77 minute entertainment. Cagney plays a pushy reporter/photographer for a struggling tabloid newspaper who becomes top dog and then gets distracted by his pursuit of journalism student Patricia Ellis, whose policeman father had sent Cagney to prison a few years earlier. The major inspiration for Picture Snatcher was the shocking image of convicted murderess Ruth Snyder being executed at Sing Sing on January 12th, 1928; The New York Daily News immortalized Tom Howard’s photograph the following day. In the film’s major set piece, Cagney smuggles his camera into prison, hidden in his pant’s leg at the ankle, and snaps the floor level shot at the moment the switch is thrown. While this scene is a close imitation of the actual execution (you can see the original photograph in New York Noir: Crime Photos from the Daily News Archive (Rizzoli) by William Hannigan), no reference is made to Ruth Snyder or the actual case in the film.