THE HORROR FILMS OF MICHAEL CURTIZ
TCM CHANNEL
THURSDAY, MAY 6th at 1:30AM ET
DOCTOR X
DIRECTED BY: MICHAEL CURTIZ
STARRING: FAY WRAY, LIONEL ATWILL, LEE TRACY
BASED ON THE 1931 PLAY "THE TERROR."
TO BE FOLLOWED BY A NEW SHORT DOCUMENTARY WITH ALAN. K. RODE ON THE HORROR FILMS OF MICHAEL CURTIZ.
1932-1hour 16 minutes TV-PG
TCM premiere of recently restored version. The new two-color Technicolor master was restored by UCLA Film and Television Archive and The Film Foundation in association with Warner Bros. Entertainment.
New York City reporter Lee Taylor (Lee Tracy) is doing a piece on a series of grisly, cannibalistic murders that have all been committed under a full moon. Police soon begin to suspect that the murderer works at the lab of Dr. Jerry Xavier (Lionel Atwill), a mysterious Long Island researcher who is doing an investigation of his own. Antsy for an inside story, Taylor breaks into the lab, where he meets and falls in love with Dr. Xavier's daughter Joan (Fay Wray).
Academy Award—winning director Michael Curtiz (1886—1962) — whose best-known films include Casablanca (1942), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), Mildred Pierce (1945) and White Christmas (1954) — was in many ways the anti-auteur. During his unprecedented twenty-seven year tenure at Warner Bros., he directed swashbuckling adventures, westerns, musicals, war epics, romances, historical dramas, horror films, tearjerkers, melodramas, comedies, and film noir masterpieces. The director's staggering output of 180 films surpasses that of the legendary John Ford and exceeds the combined total of films directed by George Cukor, Victor Fleming, and Howard Hawks.
Alan K. Rode’s affinity for classic cinema is part of his DNA. His mother grew up in Hollywood and was an extra in Our Gang comedy shorts and studied acting at Ben Bard Drama. His grandfather was a silent film violinist who went from bit actor to Universal Studios house composer and eventually founded Corelli-Jacobs Recording Inc. A great-uncle doubled Gary Cooper in The Virginian (1929) and fought Jack Dempsey. Yet another grandfather promoted rodeos with cowboy star Hoot Gibson at Gilmore Stadium.
Before the advent of classic films on cable, video or streaming, Alan incessantly watched and catalogued movies on television. He is the author of a pair of notable cinema biographies. Charles McGraw: Film Noir Tough Guy is a critically acclaimed saga of the rough-hewn actor’s life and times. Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film is the first comprehensive biography of the director of Casablanca, Mildred Pierce, Yankee Doodle Dandy and The Adventures of Robin Hood among other classic films.
Alan has been the producer and host of the annual Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival in Palm Springs, California since 2008. He has hosted and programmed classic cinema events for a variety of organizations including: The American Cinematheque, the Los Angeles Conservancy, the Alex Film Society and the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Alan is also charter director and treasurer of the Film Noir Foundation. With FNF president Eddie Muller, Alan has spearheaded the preservation and restoration of “lost” films and co-programs and co-hosts several of the annual NOIR CITY film festivals.
Alan founded TVP Enterprises in 2017. With his talented filmmaking partners, he exec-produced featurette packages for the Blu-ray releases of: T-Men, He Walked by Night, The Man Who Cheated Himself and Trapped.
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