It is actually on in the early hours of Wednesday 7 January as well.
My son Daniel invited me for a belated New Year's dinner yesterday, and also to view a couple of programmes that he had recorded for me off Sky television. After a vigourating walk around the enormous Whisby Park with the dog, he put on a documentary he had taped a while back on the Sky ARTS 2 channel, "Discovering Charlton Heston," an excellent tribute to Mr. Epic. It was loaded with clips from his greatest movies, but it didn't mention one movie he made between the two DeMille epics, which really irritated me. Film critics Neil Norman and Derek Malcolm expressed interesting points on Heston's most iconic movies, particularly PLANET OF THE APES, and Wendy Mitchell and "Empire Magazine" editor Ian Nathan discussed Chuck's political activities. I enjoyed this documentary, and if it was ever on sale I would certainly purchase a copy.
After a huge roast dinner my son put on the creme-de-creme, the TCM movie SECRET OF THE INCAS "in High Definition." The introductory voice-over was a bad start though, " .... and now on TCM Charlton Heston and Robert Murray star in SECRET OF THE INCAS." I asked Danny what was the last name just mentioned, and he verified it as "Murray" but I rewound the tape just to make sure, and the announcer definetely said that Robert Murray, or it could be be Robert Maurey, was the co-star!
Watching the movie on a giant tv screen was a treat, but the colour was a bit rich. Daniel always likes to view his taped films on the "movie" mode which is really very high colour - it made Heston look like he had high blood pressure - until I turned it down to the more realistic "standard" mode of colour. There were three lengthy adverts during the TCM transmission, and considering the movie was advertised in some tv magazines as being "High Definition" there was considerable double exposure in some of the location footage of the Quechuan ritual dancing sequences. I always assumed the word "definition" meant "clearness of outline" which unfortunately wasn't the case in the actual Machu Picchu shots. A thin red/green outline surrounded the Quechua dancers, but this only seemed to happen in the real Peruvian footage.
It was great watching the movie with my son on a big tv screen; its turned full circle now because I first saw SECRET OF THE INCAS on a huge cinema screen with my dear old dad at the Regal cinema, Lincoln, in 1963.
I don't see any 'Cold War epsionage' in the film but maybe I'm just too young to understand whatever implications that reviewer is alluding to. Either that or the guy is a misinterpreting wing-nut.
