Fritz Lang’s 1952 Clash By Night with Barbara Stanwyck, Paul Douglas, Robert Ryan and Marilyn Monroe was on Turner Classic Movies’ Noir Alley last Saturday, hosted by Film Noir Foundation founder and master of all things noir, Eddie Muller. Unfortunately, I wasn’t watching it. Apparently, I won’t be watching This Gun For Hire or Johnny Eager on Noir Alley in upcoming weekends either.
I noticed that TCM had gone AWOL last week. At first, I assumed it was just a glitch, but a little digging confirmed the worst: Turner Classic Movies/TCM was abruptly deleted from my cable package and moved to some kind of new sports package. (A sports package?!) Want to keep TCM? Fine, so long as I upgrade with a new monthly surcharge.
Channel by channel, once interesting operations have been turned into dreary 24/7 sitcom reruns, Law & Order marathons and tired old action films on endless repeats. Now TCM and its Noir Alley feature have been taken away. Sure, I can still see most anything I want one way or another, though I’m annoyed with what I spend for additional viewing platforms, and with being stuck in front of a desktop computer or squinting at my laptop to watch them. Well, no one should expect to find justice in the cable-verse, or even in ‘Noir Alley’, it being…well, ‘noir’.
Gee, just when I was getting ready to order my NOIRISTA t-shirt…
Leave a Reply