TCM Schedule for Friday, Sept. 13, 2024 - Producer Val Lewton / Political Films (Reds, The Battleship Potemkin, & More)

Last edited Mon Sep 9, 2024, 12:23 PM - Edit history (1)

Val who? You'll find out all about Val Lewton at 6:30 pm when Martin Scorsese hosts a look at his work and career.

If you can't wait that long, Lewton was a film producer and screenwriter best known for a string of low-budget horror films produced for RKO Pictures in the 1940s.

Lewton worked as a writer and publicist for MGM before being named head of RKO's horror unit in 1942. His first production, Cat People, became a top moneymaker for RKO that year. He gave first directing opportunities to Robert Wise and Mark Robson and worked with Boris Karloff, who credited Lewton with saving his career. Three Karloff films are featured today.

Full bio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val_Lewton



Boris Karloff in Isle of the Dead. Decent film, IMHO.


---- DAYTIME (EST) ----

6:45 AM | The Seventh Victim (1943)
A girl's search for her missing sister puts her in conflict with a band of satanists.
Dir: Mark Robson | Cast: Tom Conway, Jean Brooks, Isabel Jewell

8:00 AM | Cat People (1942)
A newlywed fears that an ancient curse will turn her into a bloodthirsty beast.
Dir: Jacques Tourneur | Cast: Simone Simon, Tom Conway, Jane Randolph

9:15 AM | The Curse of the Cat People (1944)
The young daughter befriends her father's dead first wife and an aging, reclusive actress.
Dir: Gunther V. Fritsch | Cast: Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Jane Randolph

10:30 AM | Bedlam (1946)
When an actress tries to reform an asylum, its corrupt keeper has her committed.
Dir: Mark Robson | Cast: Boris Karloff, Anna Lee, Billy House

12:00 PM | Isle of the Dead (1945)
The inhabitants of a Balkans island under quarantine fear that one of their number is a vampire.
Dir: Mark Robson | Cast: Boris Karloff, Ellen Drew, Marc Cramer

1:15 PM | The Ghost Ship (1943)
A young innocent signs on with a ship whose captain is going mad.
Dir: Mark Robson | Cast: Richard Dix, Russell Wade, Edith Barrett

2:30 PM | I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
A nurse in the Caribbean resorts to voodoo to cure her patient, even though she's in love with the woman's husband.
Dir: Jacques Tourneur | Cast: James Ellison, Frances Dee, Tom Conway

3:45 PM | The Leopard Man (1943)
When a leopard escapes during a publicity stunt, it triggers a series of murders.
Dir: Jacques Tourneur | Cast: Dennis O'Keefe, Margo, Jean Brooks

5:00 PM | The Body Snatcher (1945)
To continue his medical experiments, a doctor must buy corpses from a grave robber.
Dir: Robert Wise | Cast: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Henry Daniell

6:30 PM | Martin Scorsese Presents, Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows (2007)
Documentary of the producer who made a lasting body of beautiful and unsettling films on meager budgets.
Dir: Kent Jones | Cast: Val Lewton, Martin Scorsese, Elias Koteas

---- PRIME TIME & LATE NIGHT ----

8:00 PM | Reds (1981)
American journalist John Reed journeys to Russia to document the Boleshevik Revolution and returns a revolutionary.
Dir: Warren Beatty | Cast: Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Edward Herrmann

11:30 PM | The Parallax View (1974)
A reporter uncovers the deadly conspiracy behind a political assassination.
Dir: Alan J. Pakula | Cast: Warren Beatty, Hume Cronyn, Earl Hindman

1:30 AM | Germany Year Zero (1948)
A German family fights to survive in the ruins of Berlin after the end of World War II.
Dir: Roberto Rossellini | Cast: Edmund Moeschke, Ernst Pittschau, Ingetraud Hinze

3:00 AM | Gabriel Over the White House (1933)
A crooked president reforms mysteriously.
Dir: Gregory Lacava | Cast: Walter Huston, Karen Morley, Franchot Tone

4:30 AM | The Battleship Potemkin (1925)
A Russian mutiny triggers revolutionary sentiments around the nation.
Dir: Sergei M. Eisenstein | Cast: Aleksandr Antonov, Vladimir Barsky, Mikhail Gomorov