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Still Classic’ after all these years

Sure, TCM is adding horror to the late-night lineup, but you’ll still find obscure masterpieces — without commercials

BY DIANE WERTS | Newsday Staff Writer

October 22, 2006

The new late-night showcase, "TCM Underground," includes "Night of the Living Dead."

Tattooed rock musicians, exploitation flicks, '90s animation - what's next, commercials?

You'll have to forgive Turner Classic Movies junkies who fear for their beloved haven of uncut, uninterrupted, vintage Hollywood treasures. They saw what happened to AMC, cable's original home of classic movies. That onetime studio-era archive started getting hip, airing newer titles and finally adding commercials, transitioning to what many buffs dismissed as just another flick-showing channel.

TCM - which last month became widely available to Cablevision's Long Island subscribers - is 12 years old now. You'd expect it might be, um, "maturing," in the same scary ways other established channels have sought wider audiences by essentially deserting their initial devotees (MTV moving away from videos, The Nashville Network turning into Spike, etc).

And what should show up last weekend but "TCM Underground." Hosted by dreadlocked metal musician Rob Zombie - much-tattooed maker of such cinematic cut-'em-ups as "House of 1000 Corpses" - this 2 a.m. Saturday morning showcase debuted by screening notoriously awful director Ed Wood's 1950s cheapie "Plan 9 From Outer Space." The schedule for succeeding weeks listed the likes of Russ Meyer's 1960s sexploitationer "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" and George Romero's flesh-eating trendsetter "Night of the Living Dead."

No wonder TCM fans were ready to fear the worst. No more Glenn Ford tributes? No more days devoted to obscure directors like Richard Thorpe? And then - gasp! - commercial breaks?!

"We see it all the time," sighs TCM general manager Tom Karsch, who reads the message boards at his channel's Web site (tcm.com). "If we show a slightly newer movie, like 'Philadelphia' or 'Saving Private Ryan,' they think that we've gone the way of the devil, and the next thing that's going to happen is that we're going to add commercials."

Other networks sell the ads

No way, no how, insists Karsch, who was in New York last week from Turner's Atlanta headquarters to trumpet the channel's upcoming plans. "We've got a management that has been very supportive, and believes that we have other networks that sell advertising , and they believe as we do that the uniqueness of the network is in its commercial-free nature. The regimes have changed over the [dozen] years , but I've never been even asked to look at it with commercials. We don't edit, we show films letterboxed - we'd never change that policy. We always want to show the stuff the way it's meant to be seen."

As for freshening up the lineup, TCM on-air host/historian Robert Osborne noted during a lunch interview alongside Karsch that he'd just been watching the channel in his midtown apartment. "We had Rudy Vallee this morning in 'The Vagabond Lover,'" said the movie historian, referring to a 1929 "talkie" from the early sound-film era - hardly so modern. For that matter, a five-film Glenn Ford tribute was slated for this weekend, on Saturday night, with a day of Thorpe-directed films due Wednesday, spanning from 1938's Robert Taylor drama "The Crowd Roars" to Elvis Presley's 1957 "Jailhouse Rock."

The archives go deep

Depth and breadth are the thing at TCM, which launched in 1994 on the strength of the old studio-era film libraries that cable titan Ted Turner had the vision to purchase back in the 1980s, before the big explosions in both cable TV and home video. Owning thousands of Hollywood titles from the "Gone With the Wind" period, Turner tested the waters with movie-laden TNT before spinning off TCM as a movies-only, ad-free service - just the thing to entice cable-resistant older viewers to pay that monthly bill. Now TCM is out to capture the other end of the market - younger viewers who may not be acquainted with the joys of black-and-white movies, silent films and the other delights that thrust Hollywood to international eminence.

Touting some revered John Garfield movie probably won't do it. Who knows if younger viewers have even heard of the mid-century matinee idol? But they do tend to be into cult stuff that twists the conventions of the entertainment mainstream. Thus, TCM Underground presents a crazy slate of influential indie horror (Brian DePalma's "Sisters," Nov. 3), cheesy exploitation (Arch Hall's "The Sadist," Nov. 24), and even way-back pre-code grotesquerie (Tod Browning's long-banned 1932 "Freaks," Nov. 17), which helped inspire the industry's Production Code to keep content "clean" from the '30s to the '60s.

Many would consider those to be Hollywood's "golden" years, and they do make up the largest holdings in TCM's library. But that renowned era is only one part of motion picture history that now stretches back a century. TCM's mission is to honor it all. That's clear in this month's Halloween-themed screenings. A night of zombie films this Friday begins with the 1932 Bela Lugosi chiller "White Zombie" (8p.m.) - which, not incidentally, inspired the names of both TCM Underground's host and his White Zombie rock band. Then the night ranges into '50s sci-fi ("Creature With the Atom Brain," 11:45 p.m.) and '70s indie horror (Romero's 1973 "The Crazies," 3:45 a.m.). When a different theme next Sunday salutes films that inspired Broadway musicals, the night spans seven decades to include the 1975 Maysles Brothers documentary "Grey Gardens" (8p.m.), John Waters' wacky 1988 musical "Hairspray" (10 p.m.) and Lon Chaney's 1925 silent epic "The Phantom of the Opera" (midnight).

Putting films into context

TCM excels at putting its myriad titles - now 6,000, both owned and licensed from other studios - into historical and cultural context. They've got enough stuff to really illustrate how a career progresses, how a genre develops, how a trend takes hold. November's Star of the Month tribute to the film career of TV queen Lucille Ball includes 45 titles, made from 1935 to 1968. An animation showcase Nov. 12 spans practically movies' entire history, and geography, to present a triple feature of 1999's "The Iron Giant," the 1988 Japanese anime "Grave of the Fireflies," and 1927's German silent pioneer "The Adventures of Prince Achmed." If the lure of more recent films helps introduce a new generation to the joys of vintage cinema, well, that's precisely what TCM has in mind.

"We are trying to create entry points for some younger people to come visit the network," Karsch says. "We hope that they come in and watch 'Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!' but they may see a promo for a stunt we're doing during the week and come back."

Besides having Rob Zombie to stop channel-flippers in their tracks, TCM welcomes a variety of guest programmers to present films one night a month (and every night during a monthlong event planned for late 2007). Penn & Teller have chosen their favorites, as have Bill Cosby, Isaac Mizrahi and Mario Cantone. Vibrant Japanese anime has been popping up in late-night hours, while kitschy Saturday morning serials arrive this week with Kirk Alyn's 1948 "Superman" cliffhangers (Oct. 28 at 10 a.m.). TCM acquired talk show host Dick Cavett's renowned '70s one-on-one hours with Hollywood giants like Groucho Marx, Alfred Hitchcock and Katharine Hepburn (six of these repeat all day Monday). Then TCM commissioned a new Cavett chat with Mel Brooks (repeating Monday at 5:30 p.m.).

TCM's just-announced 2007 plans for original documentaries - another channel mainstay - include portraits of the flashy Cannes Film Festival, the feisty Marlon Brando and creepmeister Val Lewton. That last one is directed by Martin Scorsese. And Steven Spielberg is contributing a first-person look at his own career. They help TCM edge into the future while still honoring the glorious cinema history that made the channel such a treasure in the first place.

"Even though we're using Rob Zombie," Karsch says, "we've also just done documentaries on

Greta Garbo and Merian C. Cooper. While we're doing Jane Fonda , we also did child stars ."