For your Easter viewing pleasure...

[onager]

Here's the Turner Classic Movies channel line-up starting early Sunday morning. Complete with my usual rude & unnecssary comments...

2:45-5:00 AM: "The Silver Chalice" (1954) - a young Paul Newman looks embarrassed in this yawner, as he damn well should. About the cup Alleged Jesus used at the last supper, and early Xians fighting Romans over it. If you happen to be up at 3:00 AM Easter morning with insomnia, this should fix it.

5:00-7:30 AM "Barabbas" (1962) - starring Hollywood's all-purpose ethnic, Anthony Quinn. He plays the criminal Pontius Pilate released in place of Alleged Jesus.

Funny thing about that story - it's even more made-up bullshit than most stuff in the Buy-bull. IIRC the Biblical acccount calls it a "custom among the Jews at the time," to release a prisoner during Passover etc. But there was no such custom mentioned by any Jews anytime. According to some experts, such a "custom" would have violated both Roman and Jewish law.

7:30-10:30 AM: "The Big Fisherman" (1859) - starring Howard Keel as Simon Peter, which is probably all I have to say. Maybe there's an unseen Director's Cut, with Jesus popping out of the tomb while Howard sings "Oh What A Beautiful Morning."

10:30AM -1:30 PM: "King of Kings" (1961) - Known in Hollywood as "I Was A Teenage Jesus," because star Jeffrey Hunter looked so young. (Though Hunter was actually in his early thirties at the time, about the same age as Alleged Jesus when he made it big.) Also known as "Beach Blanket Jesus" due to Hunter's blond hair and blue eyes, despite Alleged Jesus' swarthy Semitic genealogy. Mostly interesting because it was directed by maverick Nicholas Ray, and narrated by Orson Welles. "Rosebud! Er...I meant 'Jesus'..."

1:30-5:00 PM: "The Greatest Story Ever Told" (1965) - trust me, it's worth 3.5 hours just to hear Roman centurion John Wayne emote: "Tru....ly, this ma-an WUZ the son of GAWD!" Director George Stevens wanted to shoot this in the "Holy Land," but the studio took one look at the already exploding budget and killed that idea. So it was filmed in the Southern California desert and looks it. You almost expect the U.S. Calvary...er, Cavalry to show up and get JC off the cross at the last minute. Probably led by John Wayne. The shooting location also required the use of Rattlesnake Wranglers to chase those ornery critters off the set each morning. In line with the Biblical theme, maybe they should have hired snake-handling preachers for that chore.

This was one of the last big blockbusters of the dying Hollywood studio system, and any theological message quickly gets clobbered by Spot The Star syndrome. Every major and minor actor of the time pops up in this thing, most of them shamelessly mugging and hamming it up.

At least Charlton Heston plays second fiddle for once, as a very butch John The Baptist to Max von Sydow's giant Swedish Jesus. (Now that I think about it, "Giant Swedish Jesus" sounds like a pretty good band name.)

At this point TCM returns us to a string of musicals, starting with "You-Know-What Parade." And I will at this point return you to your Good Friday celebrations! Which I'm sure you are all celebrating with the full respect it deserves...

[Brainstormy]

1. Just remember

If you get a resurrection lasting more than four hours, you should see a doctor.

[NastyRiffraff]

2. the Biblical acccount calls it a "custom among the Jews at the time," to release a prisoner...

Yes, it's bullshit. Not only because there was no such custom at all, but even if there were, the rabble-rouser and domestic terrorist Barabbas would be the last person the Romans would offer up as a possible parolee.

Your movie list brings back memories. Bad ones. My mother never missed a biblical film, and I was dragged along to every one, in theatre or forced to watch on TV.

[onager]

6. Me too! The "Road Show Revivals..."

That's "revival" in the secular sense, as in these damn movies kept coming back and coming back, much like a certain Jewish preacher supposedly did after he had a run-in with the Romans...

I grew up in the rural South, so all the big-name Buybull moves played at the local theater every few years. And I got dragged to nearly every one of them, being too small to defend myself at the time.

The other flick that slimed into town every few years, since this was the South: "Gone With The Wind." Not religious, unless you live in the South. I was amazed to learn that the Georgia tourist bureau still gets many phone calls every year, from people demanding to know where Rhett and Scarlett are buried. When the bureau employee says they're fictional characters, a common response is: "Yeah, I know that. Now tell me where they're buried." The mind boggles. And I think there's a parallel there with Xian religious movies, but I'm too lazy to follow it.

But A-HA! The Buy-bull movies got a lot more fun when I became an Obnoxious Teenager. (And I really was. If I had a time machine, I would go back in time and kick my own butt, I was so obnoxious.)

Then my friends and I would go to the movie, make sure we sat behind a Sunday School class attending en masse (easy to spot), and make the rudest MST3K-style comments we could think up about Moses, Jesus, or whoever was playing.

That worked especially well on "The Ten Commandments." Where Anne Baxter practically has multiple organisms every time Heston comes on-screen - "Moses...MOSES...MOSES!!!"

Thanks for the memories!

[Vashta Nerada]

3. If I wanted to watch a shitty movie, I'd put in Independence Day.

These movies you posted are so much worse.

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. Re: Silver Chalice

Paul Newman was apparently not proud of his performance. When the film was broadcast on television in 1966, he took out an advertisement in a Hollywood trade paper apologizing for his performance, and requesting people not to watch the film. This backfired, and the broadcast received unusually high ratings.
The film is sometimes referred to as Paul Newman and the Holy Grail.
Newman called the film "the worst motion picture produced during the 1950s".
He once screened it for guests at his home, handing out pots, wooden spoons, and whistles and encouraging the audience to offer noisy critiques.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silver_Chalice_%28film%29

I saw it in 1954, Saturday mantinee thing.
As cute as Newman was, he was wooden as hell in it, even my kiddy eyes could see that.

[frogmarch]

5. Ben Hur is also playing

on at least one channel.

I remember how surprised I was when I learned a few years ago that the movie was based on the novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of Christ by Lew Wallace, who was once governor of the New Mexico Territory.

Wiki snip:

Lewis "Lew" Wallace (April 10, 1827 – February 15, 1905) was an American lawyer, Union general in the American Civil War, territorial governor and statesman, politician, and author. Wallace served as governor of the New Mexico Territory at the time of the Lincoln County War and worked to bring an end to the fighting.

Of his novels and biographies, he is best known for his historical novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1880), a bestselling book since its publication, and called "the most influential Christian book of the nineteenth century."[1] It has been adapted four times for films.

I am going to try to miss all the Jesus flicks you mentioned, onager, and also Ben Hur. Oh, did you mention The Robe? Surely that one will be shown too. In it, Richard Burton is a Roman soldier who plays a gambling game at the foot of The Cross and wins Jesus's robe, and then later becomes a Believer. He and his lover Jean Simmons (no, not the one from Kiss) are fed to the lions, although it doesn't show it, and they just walk together into the clouds and up into Heaven.

My fundie mother-in-law wanted to see The Robe since she never had, so a few years ago when it was on HBO she watched it at our house. After it was over she said, "I don't get it. What was all that nonsense at the end? What happened to Richard and Jean?"

[Curmudgeoness]

7. They missed my favorite, "Jesus Christ, Superstar".

I really love that one....maybe it's the music, maybe it is the memories from that time in my life.

But I have to say that I always liked "Barabbas". I always thought that it would really suck to have been him, in the situation that he was supposed to be in. I never thought that they knew the name of the prisoner who was released in place of Jesus, but that story felt like what it might have been like for him. I don't think it sucks.

[onager]

10. That's OK.

I haven't seen "Barabbas" in many years, so many it doesn't suck as much as I remember.

Another...uh...interesting Anthony Quinn flick is "Mohammed, Messenger of God" (1976). Equal time!

Quinn couldn't play Mohammed, obviously - it's a crime in Islam to depict Mohammed in any way. So Quinn plays his uncle. When the movie needs to show Mohammed, it usually shifts to a close-up of his camel stick.

Financing was provided by 2 shining beacons of free speech, democracy and quality enterainment: the govt. of Saudi Arabia and the happily late Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi.

The gala premiere of the movie was interrupted by threats to blow up the theater. Some excitable Muslims thought Quinn was playing Mohammed and naturally didn't bother to check the facts.

There are still rumors that the whole thing was a scam, and a con artist walked off with most of the money.

[Curmudgeoness]

11. Well, there was one down side to Barabbas.

In the end, he converted to being a Jesus follower. But isn't that to have been expected?

[Lordquinton]

8. Which channel is showing Night of the Lepus?

The only classic Easter movie worth watching.

[defacto7]

9. The thing that gets me about these old jesus flicks is

every time jesus shows up or there's a miracle or someone's face sees some holy shit of some kind, the music suddenly changes to major triads rising and lowering in whole steps. Any of you musicians notice those triad things? Now every time I hear major triads going up and down the scale in whole steps I feel like a jesus is going to look at me with those holy bedroom eyes and heal me of something. It's holy jesus music. Try it on a piano sometime and you'll hear it... I swear it's been planted deep in our psyche now.

Come to think of it, I think I heard it in The Ten Commandments too so it must be kosher.

Oh.. but if you have a Hammond B3 with tremulant to play it on, you'll start to rapture.

[Curmudgeoness]

12. Oh, God, don't start a rapture!

No Hammond B3 for you!