RKO Films on iPlayer

[Sebastian Cobb]

There's been a bit of hype that Citizen Kane was shown on BBC4/iPlayer, but there's actually a collection of RKO films on there at the moment. Including the excellent Angel Face and Fort Apache.

    Angel Face
    Beautiful But Dangerous
    Blackbeard, The Pirate
    Bringing Up Baby
    Carefree
    Citizen Kane
    Fort Apache (1948)
    King Kong (1933)
    Kitty Foyle
    Love Affair (1939)
    Mr Blandings Builds His Dreamhouse
    My Favourite Wife
    She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
    Suspicion
    The Gay Divorce
    The Magnificent Ambersons
    The Miracle Of The Bells
    The Sky's The Limit
    The Spanish Main
    The Velvet Touch
    Top Hat
    Vivacious Lady
    Wagon Master

Press Release:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2020/rko-films-iplayer

I don't know if you can actually make iPlayer list them as a group, that'd be too simple wouldn't it?

[Sin Agog]

That was forward thinking of them making a movie about gay divorce long before gay marriage was even legal.

[Neomod]

I don't know if you can actually make iPlayer list them as a group, that'd be too simple wouldn't it?

The film selection on Iplayer is so small you'll just have these and Day of the Jackal.

Always Day of the Jackal.

[notjosh]

I don't know if you can actually make iPlayer list them as a group, that'd be too simple wouldn't it?

I think they're all listed here. This still barely scratches the surface of the BBC's RKO holdings, so hopefully they'll be adding more in future.


My personal picks, if anyone's interested:

Cat People. Peerless psychological horror and one of the best B-movies ever made (an actual B-movie, in the original, 'supporting feature' sense of the term.)

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. The John Fordiest John Ford film that John Ford ever made, with one of John Wayne's best ever performances (there's one bit that reliably makes me choke up).

My Favorite Wife. Fantastic screwball comedy - the second Cary Grant/Irene Dunne collaboration. Not quite on the same level as The Awful Truth (not on iPlayer) but still very funny.

All the Fred and Gingers of course, but I particularly like The Sky's the Limit. No Ginger, but one of Fred's best.

King Kong, naturally. Bit like Citizen Kane but better and hairier.

[Keebleman]

Cat People. Peerless psychological horror and one of the best B-movies ever made (an actual B-movie, in the original, 'supporting feature' sense of the term.)

Starring Simone Simon, possibly the sexiest star of all time.  (She's in Curse of the Cat People too, a surprisingly worthwhile and unusual sequel.)

[Sin Agog]

I much prefer Curse, actually.  The child actress is a little shrill at first, but it's a lovely, mildly autobiographical insight into a moon-eyed child's mind (Lewton also used to leave letters for the fairies inside the hollow of a tree in his back garden).  He was steeped with praise at a talk he attended for his depiction of the then brand-new concept of autism, much to his own surprise.