TCM Schedule for Friday, March 12 -- Mutants

[Staph]

This morning we've a couple of Cliff Robertson films, and in the afternoon, five Samantha Eggar films from the 1960s. Tonight's theme is Mutants! Enjoy!


6:00am -- Now Playing March (2010)

In Finnish, the month of March is called maaliskuu, which originates from maallinen kuu, meaning earthy month, because during maaliskuu, earth finally became visible under the snow. In Ukrainian, the month is called березень, meaning birch tree. Historical names for March include the Saxon Lentmonat, named after the equinox and gradual lengthening of days, and the eventual namesake of Lent. Saxons also called March Rhed-monat or Hreth-monath (deriving from their goddess Rhedam/Hreth), and Angles called it Hyld-monath. (This message has been brought to you by the Committee for the Promotion of Historical Linguistics.)


6:30am -- 633 Squadron (1964)
World War II flyers take on a suicide mission to bomb a Nazi rocket fuel factory.
Cast: Cliff Robertson, George Chakiris, Maria Perschy, Harry Andrews
Dir: Walter Grauman
C-95 mins, TV-14

Cliff Robertson, an accomplished pilot, wanted to buy one of the Mosquitoes after filming had finished, as he was so impressed with the type. He was not permitted to do this but he later bought a Spitfire Mk IX which he owned until the late 1990s.


8:15am -- Love Has Many Faces (1965)
An aging heiress struggles to hold on to the kept man she loves.
Cast: Lana Turner, Cliff Robertson, Hugh O'Brian, Ruth Roman
Dir: Alexander Singer
C-105 mins, TV-PG

Final American studio cinema film of Ruth Roman.


10:15am -- Psyche 59 (1964)
After being blinded in a mysterious fall, a woman fears her husband is involved with her younger sister.
Cast: Patricia Neal, Curt Jurgens, Samantha Eggar, Ian Bannen
Dir: Alexander Singer
BW-94 mins, TV-PG

Originally announced as Dana Wynter vehicle (Patricia Neal role).


12:00pm -- The Collector (1965)
A disturbed young man kidnaps a woman he's been stalking.
Cast: Terence Stamp, Samantha Eggar, Mona Washbourne, Maurice Dallimore
Dir: William Wyler
C-119 mins, TV-14

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Samantha Eggar, Best Director -- William Wyler, and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Stanley Mann and John Kohn

According to Terence Stamp, Wyler wouldn't let Samantha Eggar off the set during the day. He also wouldn't allow her to eat with anyone else during the lunch break. Stamp argues Wyler knew what he was doing, as the director whispered to him one day on set, "I know this looks cruel, but we're going to get a great performance out of her."


2:15pm -- Return From the Ashes (1965)
A gigolo marries a wealthy widow, seduces her stepdaughter and plots to kill them both.
Cast: Maximilian Schell, Samantha Eggar, Ingrid Thulin, Herbert Lom
Dir: J. Lee Thompson
BW-108 mins, TV-PG

She was born Victoria Louise Samantha Marie Elizabeth Therese Eggar.


4:15pm -- Walk, Don't Run (1966)
Set during the Tokyo Olympics, one of three unlikely housemates plays matchmaker with the other two.
Cast: Cary Grant, Samantha Eggar, Jim Hutton, John Standing
Dir: Charles Walters
C-114 mins, TV-G

Cary Grant retired from acting after this film because at 61 he had become too old to play the romantic lead, and he did not think his fans would want to see him playing supporting roles.


6:15pm -- The Walking Stick (1970)
A beautiful polio victim is seduced into helping with a robbery.
Cast: David Hemmings, Samantha Eggar, Emlyn Williams, Phyllis Calvert
Dir: Eric Till
C-101 mins, TV-14

The first film to feature Stanley Myers' "Cavatina" theme (later re-used to more famous advantage in 'The Deer Hunter').


What's On Tonight: TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: MUTANTS


8:00pm -- The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953)
Nuclear tests set a dormant prehistoric monster on a path of destruction.
Cast: Paul Christian, Paula Raymond, Cecil Kellaway, Kenneth Tobey
Dir: Eugene Lourié
BW-80 mins, TV-PG

Some film aficionados might recognize Alvin Greenman, the first character to speak after the narrator, and the first to notice the beast on on the radar. Six years earlier he played Alfred, the Macys Janitor in Miracle on 34th Street (1947). TV aficionados though might recognize the second character to speak. Playing the part of Charlie is actor James Best, best remembered for his role as Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane from "The Dukes of Hazzard" (1979).


9:30pm -- It Came From Beneath the Sea (1955)
A giant octopus attacks San Francisco.
Cast: Kenneth Tobey, Faith Domergue, Donald Curtis, Ian Keith
Dir: Robert Gordon
BW-79 mins, TV-PG

This is the film that brought together producer Charles H. Schneer and special effects legend Ray Harryhausen. Their professional relationship would last until Clash of the Titans (1981), the final feature for both men.


11:00pm -- The Monster that Challenged the World (1957)
An earthquake unleashes a horde of giant prehistoric monsters.
Cast: Tim Holt, Audrey Dalton, Hans Conried, Barbara Darrow
Dir: Arnold Laven
BW-84 mins, TV-PG

In the laboratory, above the filing cabinets on the right was a aerial picture of the K-25 Plant, it was the largest building in the Manhattan Project and was authorized in late 1942, it was 11 miles from the WWII Secret City of Oak Ridge, Tenn. The plant was intended to produce enriched uranium.


12:30am -- Them! (1954)
Federal agents fight to destroy a colony of mutated giant ants.
Cast: James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, Joan Weldon, James Arness
Dir: Gordon Douglas
BW-93 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Effects, Special Effects

It was also supposed to be in 3-D. Some elements of the 3-D effects, such as the ants having extreme close-ups and the flame throwers shooting straight into the camera, were used in the film.


2:30am -- Shanks (1974)
A mute puppeteer discovers how to manipulate dead bodies.
Cast: Marcel Marceau, Tsilla Chelton, Philippe Clay, Cindy Eilbacher
Dir: William Castle
C-93 mins

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Original Dramatic Score -- Alex North

William Castle's final film as a director.


4:15am -- Mr. Sardonicus (1961)
A man whose face is frozen in a horrible smile forces a doctor to treat him.
Cast: Ronald Lewis, Audrey Dalton, Guy Rolfe, Oscar Homolka
Dir: William Castle
BW-90 mins, TV-PG

Unlike Castle's other films, the punishment poll gimmick came as an afterthought. When the film was first shown to the execs at Columbia Pictures, they demanded that Castle shot an alternate happy ending to the film. Castle agreed, and soon decided to use this situation as a springboard for a gimmick. After shooting the happy ending, he shot a brief segment to be inserted before the ending. The audience would be given cards with a thumbs up and thumbs down. Before the ending, Castle appeared on the screen and explained the poll. He then "counted" the votes. If mercy won, then the happy ending would be shown. If no mercy won, the original ending would be shown. It is doubtful, though, that any audience voted mercy.

[Staph]

1. Them! (1954)

In one of the most intriguing openings in science fiction cinema, a little girl, wandering across the desert in a state of deep shock, is spotted by two New Mexico highway troopers who take her to safety. Nearby, they discover a trailer home that has been partially demolished by some unknown force and inside there is evidence of a bloody struggle. Later, when one of the police officers is gathering evidence at another site of destruction (a ransacked country store), he hears a strange, high pitched sound coming closer and closer until he's confronted with the horrifying source - the last thing he will ever see. Meanwhile, doctors try to jolt the little girl out of her catatonic state, finally succeeding with a formic acid sample, similar to traces found at the crime scene. The child becomes wildly agitated upon smelling the odor, screaming, "THEM! - THEM!", hence the title of the film which means GIANT ANTS!

A precursor to all the giant insect movies of the fifties, Them! (1954) was also one of the first science fiction thrillers to issue a warning about the dangers of nuclear testing and radioactivity in the aftermath of the atomic bomb's creation. The film is truly unique in its conception - the first half is constructed like a detective thriller, the second half works as a fantasy adventure with the army and FBI agents invading the storm drains beneath Los Angeles where they hope to locate and destroy the queen ant's nest. Them! also has a welcome sense of humor that sometimes emerges during unexpected but appropriate moments, such as the sequence with the airline pilot (Fess Parker) who is being held for observation at a Brownsville, Texas, mental institution (No one believes his eyewitness account of the mutant ants). These comic touches are not surprising in light of director Gordon Douglas' earlier career: he got his start working for producer Hal Roach, directing Our Gang comedy shorts and Laurel and Hardy features like Saps at Sea (1940). And when Douglas first read the script for Them!, he thought it would make an ideal vehicle for Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin! Luckily, Douglas didn't treat the film as a farce once production began and directed the film in the same terse, fast-paced style of Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950) and I Was a Communist for the FBI (1951), two first-rate crime thrillers he previously directed for Warner Brothers.

But if anyone deserves credit for the film's success, it's Ted Sherdeman, a former staff producer at Warner Bros. who was instrumental in developing the project. First, he commissioned the original story from George Worthing Yates, which appeared as a diary account about giant ants nesting in the New York subway. Sherdeman later told Steve Rubin of Cinefantastique magazine that "the idea appealed to me very much because, aside from man, ants are the only creatures in the world who plan and wage war, and nobody trusted the atomic bomb at that time." Yates was also hired to write the screenplay but his version proved to be cost prohibitive since it would have required far too many special effects sequences. Russell Hughes, a contract writer for Warners, was brought in for a rewrite and it was he who fashioned the narrative as a detective story that transitions into a chase thriller in the second half, culminating in a climax at the Santa Monica pier. Unfortunately, Hughes died prematurely from a heart attack, completing only 20 pages of the script, but Sherdeman, undaunted, completed the screenplay himself, though he was forced to change the ending. The cost of renting the Santa Monica pier for one day was too expensive so the storm drains below Los Angeles became the setting for the film's finale. This was actually a much better choice since the dank tunnels provided a much more eerie and claustrophobic atmosphere.

Sherdeman's next hurdle after the scripting was convincing his superiors to produce the movie. He tried to generate interest with drawings and a beautifully shot 16mm film about ants made by two UCLA entomologists (their footage would later be developed into a film for Walt Disney - The Living Desert, 1953). He even went to the trouble of having art designer Larry Meiggs create a three-foot ant head with movable antennae and mandibles which convinced WB executive Steve Trilling to shoot a film test. When studio mogul Jack L. Warner, who wasn't interested in making giant ant movies, saw the test footage, he knew he could sell the idea to a rival studio and offered it to 20th-Century-Fox.

Sherdeman's cherished project almost ended there and would have if he hadn't convinced WB producer Walter McCuhan that the studio was making a big mistake. When McCuhan found out how much Fox was willing to pay for the story, he suddenly realized the commercial potential of Them! and finally got Warner Brothers to back the project. The studio left the casting up to Sherdeman though they initially opposed his choice of Edmund Gwenn for the role of Dr. Harold Medford (they thought he was too old for the part!). But Sherdeman held firm and cast the film with a wonderful group of character actors including James Whitmore as the ill-fated Sgt. Peterson, James Arness as FBI agent Robert Graham, singer Joan Weldon as Dr. Patricia Medford and, in minor roles, Onslow Stevens, Leonard Nimoy, Dub Taylor, William Schallert, Olin Howlin as a wino (he later played the first victim of The Blob, 1958), and most memorably, Fess Parker.

As for the actual filming of Them!, Cinefantastique correspondent Steve Rubin wrote that "Two main ants were constructed, one fully, the other minus the hindquarters and mounted on a boom for mobility. Behind this, a whole crew, mounted on a dolly, manipulated the various knobs and levers that made the mechanical model come alive. Douglas laughed: "You would have a shot where an ant comes into the picture and if you glanced back behind the creature you would see about 20 guys, all sweating like hell!" A number of "extra" ants were also constructed for scenes where large numbers of the creatures appeared, but where mobility was not essential. These ant models were equipped only with heads and antenna that would be activated by the force from the wind-machines used to whip up the sand storms required on the desert locations."

Them! had originally been conceived as a 3-D feature in color and the giant ants were given a purplish shade of green; their eyes were a soapy looking mixture of reds and blues that changed shades constantly and made them appear to be alive. Unfortunately, these effects were lost when Warner Brothers decided to release the film in black and white without the 3-D effect to save costs. Nevertheless, the film still proved to be enormously successful when released, becoming one of the studio's top grossing films of the year and even receiving favorable reviews from critics who usually dismissed horror and sci-fi films. The New York Times review proclaimed Them! "one ominous view of a terrifyingly new world" and that "it is definitely a chiller....fascinating to watch." Jack Warner remained unconvinced, however, and told his staff after a screening, "Anyone who wants to make any more ant pictures will go to Republic!" Obviously, the studio mogul was a poor judge of science fiction films for Them! is among the best, a cautionary tale about the dangers of the atom bomb and a frightening view of nature run amok.

Producer: David Weisbart
Director: Gordon M. Douglas
Screenplay: Russell S. Hughes, Ted Sherdeman, George Worthing Yates (story)
Art Direction: Stanley Fleischer
Cinematography: Sidney Hickox
Costume Design: Edith Head, Moss Mabry
Film Editing: Thomas Reilly
Original Music: Bronislau Kaper
Visual Effects: Dick Smith
Cast: James Whitmore (Sgt. Ben Peterson), Edmund Gwenn (Dr. Harold Medford), Joan Weldon (Dr. Patricia Medford), James Arness (Robert Graham), Onslow Stevens (Brigadier General Robert O'Brien), Sean McClory (Major Kibbee), Fess Parker (Alan Crotty), Sandy Drescher (the Ellinson Girl), Olin Howlin (Jensen).
BW-94m.

By Jeff Stafford