Most of today on TCM is devoted to films about surviving a nuclear holocaust. The Last Man on Earth (1964) will be on at 10:30 am and stars Vincent Price in a movie about a strange disease that turns everyone on earth into blood-suckers. I am particularly looking forward to The Bed Sitting Room (1969) at 12:00 pm, a typically British comedy about the twenty remaining citizens of Great Britain after a nuclear war. It stars Rita Tushingham, Ralph Richardson, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Frank Thornton, and Spike Milligan, to name a few of the nut-cases in this “a la Monty Python” farce. It looks like a barrel of laughs, if you find that sort of thing funny (which, incidentally, I do).
Frank Thornton as The BBC in The Bed Sitting Room
Another film I hope to catch is The World, The Flesh, and the Devil (1959) at 6:00 pm. It stars Harry Belafonte as one of three humans left alive after a nuclear disaster. Ranald MacDougal’s post-apocalyptic film addresses very heavy sexual and racial issues. But before we get too serious, here’s a bit of a spoof Belafonte did with Julie Andrews on her TV show several years later.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1IiMg5RzeM
This evening will lighten things up a bit (if we are still around to enjoy it…) with three Ernst Lubitsch musicals, all three of which feature operatic sensation Jeanette MacDonald, and two of which also star French boulevardier Maurice Chevalier.
For a full schedule of TCM‘s line-up for today, be sure to check out their website. I can also recommend investing in a subscription to their “Now Playing” guide. In it you get all the showtimes, plus articles about the special features. But my favorite part is the crossword puzzle at the back! I look forward to hearing what you watched and what you loved today on TCM!
The Cinematic Katzenjammer 