TCM Schedule for Thursday, July 14, 2022 -- What's On Tonight: Deep Sea Cinema

[Staph]

In the daylight hours, TCM continues Wednesday evening's theme of Black Independents in the morning, followed by an afternoon of films about musclemen and the women who love them and the monsters they conquer.

Then in prime time, it's the first of three weeks of Deep Sea Cinema. Today's subject is Sharks! Tell us more, Sean!

DEEP SEA CINEMA
By Sean Axmaker

The deep blue sea can be as terrifying as any movie monster on screen. Vast, fathomless and impenetrable to the human eye, it's not just the cold depths but the unseen creatures—real or imagined—laying just beyond the surface. Steven Spielberg figured that out when making Jaws (1975). It wasn't the sight of a toothy shark coming for us, it was the suggestion of it: the fin jutting out of the surf, making lazy circles until it suddenly turns and drives with purpose. Like an iceberg, the fin is just the tip of behemoth…until it drops out of sight, leaving us with nothing but our overworked imagination and worst fears to anticipate the ravenous creature.

Movies about the sea, and the creatures within, get a spotlight over three nights in July, and the shark is the first special guest of the series. The shark has become one of cinema's most terrifying menaces, a mix of prehistoric beast and single-minded predator, roused by the scent of blood or the splash of a potential victim, a chilling sight to behold as its razor teeth cut through the water toward its prey.

Howard Hawks' Tiger Shark (1932) stars Edward G. Robinson as a shy Portuguese fisherman in the tuna fishing culture of Monterey who loses his hand to a shark in the opening scene. The hook at the end of his arm and accompanying scar over his right eye become a constant reminder of the dangers of the fishing grounds. Hawks spent weeks with a production crew filming real life fishing crews in action off the Pacific Coast of Mexico before principle photography got underway, including the capture of sharks, which he used in the film's climactic shark attack. Hawks biographer Todd McCarthy makes the case that this early shark thriller "planted a seed that would be taken up in another, massively successful shark tale more than forty years later.

Sharks take a supporting role in The Sea Chase (1955), a rousing maritime cat-and-mouse thriller starring John Wayne as the Captain of a German tramp steamer in Australia at the outbreak of World War II. Sharks are just one of the obstacles facing his flight from the Australian Navy but the attack makes for a harrowing scene. In reality, the actors faced much more mundane trials while filming. Wayne suffered an ear infection and actors Paul Fix and Luis Van Rooten developed infections after skin diving.

The Sharkfighters (1956) takes on the real-life efforts of the U.S. Navy to develop an effective shark repellant for sailors and pilots in the Pacific theater of World War II. The film, starring Victor Mature as the former captain of a naval destroyer who helplessly watched his crew killed by sharks when his ship was torpedoed, is only loosely based on the facts but it features impressive scenes of sharks in waters off Cuba.

Wilde, the actor/filmmaker who created such lean, tough, at times brutal movies as The Naked Prey (1965), pit deep sea divers against the underwater predators in Shark's Treasure (1975) but, true to his own sensibility, he finds humanity far more dangerous than the natural world. Killer Shark (1950), meanwhile, pits young Roddy McDowall against the title creature as a kind of rite of passage as he learns the ropes of commercial fishing.

Of course, sharks are a staple of South Seas adventures, like Last of the Pagans (1935), an exotic melodrama of native lovers in French Polynesia, and Florida-based independent filmmaker William Grefé's Death Curse of Tartu (1966) helped him become something of a shark specialist. He went on to contribute the shark sequences to the James Bond film Live and Let Die (1973) and direct Mako: The Jaws of Death (1976), one of the many films knocked out to cash in on the success of Jaws.

Stay out of the water, and enjoy!


7:00 AM -- Solomon Northrup's Odyssey (1984)
2h | Drama | TV-PG
Based on his own writings, the drama follows the life of Solomon Northup, kidnapped into slavery for twelve years.
Director: Gordon Parks
Cast: Avery Brooks, John Saxon, Mason Adams

Based on Northrup's autobiography Twelve Years a Slave (also made into an Oscar-winning film in 2013, with Chiwetel Ejiofor in the lead role).


9:00 AM -- Gordon Parks: Moments Without Proper Names (1988)
1h | Documentary | TV-PG
A self-portrait of the life and career of photographer, writer, director and composer Gordon Parks.
Director: Gordon Parks
Cast: Roscoe Lee Browne, Gordon Parks, Joe Seneca

Gordon Parks was the pre-eminent American photojournalist of sub-Saharan descent. An acclaimed photographer for Life magazine from the late 40s through late 60s, he turned to directing films, his second of which, the blaxploitation movie Shaft (1971), achieved success at the box office. In 1989 his first film effort, The Learning Tree (1969), was selected among the first 25 films so honored, by the U.S. Library of Congress to be preserved in the National Film Registry for all time.


10:15 AM -- MGM Parade Show #28 (1955)
25m | Documentary | TV-G
Walter Pidgeon introduces Part 2 of Captains Courageous.


10:45 AM -- Athena (1954)
1h 36m | Musical | TV-G
A society lawyer falls in love with the daughter of a family of fitness fanatics.
Director: Richard Thorpe
Cast: Jane Powell, Debbie Reynolds, Virginia Gibson

Even as late as 1954, Hollywood actors - in their shirtless scenes - generally wore their pants or bathing suits or loincloths high enough to cover their navels. In the Mr. Universe contest toward the end of this movie, the contestants wear snug-fitting, low-rising bathing suits which reveal several inches of skin below the navel. At the time, this must have been considered something of a "breakthrough."


12:30 PM -- Atlas (1961)
1h 19m | Adventure | TV-PG
Greek muscleman Atlas fights tyrant Praximedes for game Candia.
Director: Roger Corman
Cast: Michael Forest, Frank Wolff, Barboura Morris

Although it is usually assumed that the somewhat skimpy battle scenes were due to director Roger Corman's legendary cheapness, Corman had actually arranged for the services of 500 soldiers from the local Greek army garrison. On the morning of filming, however, only about 50 showed up, and as the day wore on (and the heat intensified), some of them drifted away. In order to make it look like there were more "soldiers" than there actually were, Corman had them march in formation past the camera, then when out of camera range run around behind the crew and equipment, and march past the camera again. That is also why the battle scenes are filmed in close-up combat between individual soldiers or small groups of soldiers rather than in long shots of masses of battling infantry, as Corman had originally planned.


2:00 PM -- The Slave (1962)
1h 32m | Adventure | TV-PG
Randus, the son of Spartacus, is the only man who can put an end to the tyrant Gora.
Director: Sergio Corbucci
Cast: Steve Reeves, Jacques Sernas, Gianna Maria Canale

This marked the final Italian sword and sandal/mythological muscleman movie to be made by Steve Reeves. He would make several "Sandokan" movies and a spaghetti western before retiring from the screen.


3:45 PM -- Clash of the Titans (1981)
1h 58m | Adventure | TV-14
A Greek hero fights a series of monsters, including the dreaded gorgon, to win the woman he loves.
Director: Desmond Davis
Cast: Harry Hamlin, Laurence Olivier, Claire Bloom

Before Harry Hamlin was considered for the role of Perseus, other runners-up were Malcolm McDowell, Michael York, and Richard Chamberlain. Arnold Schwarzenegger (who was fairly unknown at the time) was briefly considered, but producer Charles H. Schneer felt that, with the exception of Hercules, Greek heroes were athletic, but not overly muscular, relying more on cunning than strength. He also felt that casting a very muscular actor was a cliché, hearkening back to the Italian sword and sandal movies of the 1950s and 1960s.


6:00 PM -- Tarzan, The Ape Man (1981)
1h 52m | Action | TV-PG
Widower James Parker is in Africa looking for a mythical white ape with his daughter Jane.
Director: John Derek
Cast: Bo Derek, Miles O'Keeffe, John Phillip Law

Lee Canalito, originally cast as Tarzan, was replaced by Miles O'Keeffe at the last minute. Reportedly, this was because Bo Derek allegedly thought that Canalito was not in the right physical shape.



WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: PRIMETIME THEME -- DEEP SEA CINEMA: SEA MONSTERS, SHARKS, AND CREATURES FROM BELOW



8:00 PM -- Tiger Shark (1932)
1h 20m | Drama | TV-PG
A tuna fisherman marries a woman in love with another man.
Director: Howard Hawks
Cast: Edward G. Robinson, Richard Arlen, Zita Johann

According to Peter Bogdanovich, dialog was improvised by Howard Hawkes and Edward G Robinson.


9:30 PM -- The Sharkfighters (1956)
1h 13m | Adventure | TV-PG
Navy scientists race to develop a shark repellent that could save the lives of downed fliers
Director: Jerry Hopper
Cast: Victor Mature, Karen Steele, James Olson

Based on actual events in the development of a shark repellent by the U.S. Navy in World War 2. First used in 1943, it was granted a patent in 1949 and was used by the Navy until 1973. However its effectiveness is now judged dubious (as is the shark threat inspiring its development) by the Navy's Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. The actual scientific work consisted of observations of shark behavior in 1942 off Mayport, Florida; Woods Hole, Massachusetts; and the harbor of Guayaquil, Ecuador by civilian scientists of the Marine Studios oceanarium.


11:00 PM -- Killer Shark (1950)
1h 16m | Adventure | TV-PG
A fisherman's son tries to prove himself by hunting sharks.
Director: Oscar Boetticher
Cast: Roddy McDowall, Laurette Luez, Roland Winters

The first screenplay by actor Charles Lang, who also has a small part in this film.


12:30 AM -- Shark's Treasure (1975)
1h 35m | Adventure | TV-PG
Treasure hunters seek a lost shipment of gold in shark-infested waters.
Director: Cornel Wilde
Cast: Cornel Wilde, Yaphet Kotto, John Neilson

Cornel Wilde says he came up with the idea for the film in 1969 but could not raise the finance until after Jaws (1975) became a hit. "I would rather have had the field to ourselves, without Jaws," he said.


2:15 AM -- Last of the Pagans (1935)
1h 12m | Adventure | TV-G
Two South Sea islanders fight a series of natural disasters to be together.
Director: Richard Thorpe
Cast: Mala, Lotus Long, Telo A. Tematua

Based on Herman Melville's novel Typee.


3:30 AM -- Death Curse of Tartu (1966)
Horror/Science-Fiction | TV-14
After a group of archaeology students disturb the grave of a Seminole witch-doctor, they are haunted.
Director: William Grefé
Cast: Fred Pinero, Babette Sherrill, Mayra Cristine

All the animals in this movie are owned by Frank Weed. Frank Weed is actually a animal handler. The scenes showing the penned animals are actually filmed on Frank Weed's property in Florida.


5:00 AM -- The Sea Chase (1955)
1h 57m | War | TV-PG
A German freighter captain tries to elude the British in the early days of World War II.
Director: John Farrow
Cast: John Wayne, Lana Turner, David Farrar

Prior to the start of filming in Hawaii, John Wayne went scuba diving and developed an ear infection. As a result, he was in severe pain for much of the shooting. Many of his scenes could be shot only on his good side, since the infected ear was so swollen, and between takes he had to go lie down to rest from the pain.