The vault seems to be opening again

I've mentioned on this blog on quite a few occasions before my belief that whoever programs FXM basically gets access to a limited number of movies and runs them a ton of times for several months, with a few new movies coming out of the vault each month while some others go back in. Perhaps it might be every quarter instead of every month, however.

In any case, tomorrow is October 1, the first day of not just a new month but the fourth quarter of 2022. And looking at the schedule, there are a lot of movies that I don't think have been on FXM in a while, although I think I've blogged about them all. First up is The Reward, starring Max von Sydow as a crop duster who gets involved in a bounty-hunting adventure in Mexico. Henry Silva, who died not too long ago, plays a tracker.

That will be followed at 7:35 AM by The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, whch I blogged about all the way back in 2011. As you can guess from the title, the movie details the famed 1929 Chicago gangland massacre, but doing it in a sort of docudrama way with voiceover narration that's reminiscent of the old 1940s docudramas.

Later in the day at 11:15 AM, there's the return of The Emperor of the North, which somewhat surprisingly to me was on only five years ago. Lee Marvin plays a Depression-era hobo who insists on riding a freight train that has vicious conductor Ernest Borgnine trying to keep everybody off. Borgnine and Marvin are quite good, although the supporting character played by Keith Carradine detracts from the movie, a bit.

Saturday's FXM Retro lineup concldes at 1:20 PM with Trouble Man, with Robert Hooks as a Los Angeles private eye who is set up to be the fall guy in the investigation into a gambling ring. The last time this one was in the rotation, it always seemed to be running along with another movie I wish would show up again on the FXM schedule, Together Brothers, althoug that one doesn't seem to be back.

As I mentioned at the top of the post, it's not uncommon for FXM to run the movies on consecutive days, and even sometimes at the end of the FXM Retro block on day and early the next day. All four of the movies that I linked to above will also be on the FXM schedule on Sunday (October 2), although in the same order. But there are a couple of other movies joining the rotation again, on Sunday, those being Doll Face and Phantom of the Paradise.

And then, later in the week, we get some surprisingly old movies returning, notably the 1935 Call of the Wild and a Shirley Temple movie on Tuesday, and the very early Gregory Peck movie The Keys of the Kingdom on Friday.