My Favorite Week for Movies Shown on TV


With Halloween falling on Friday this week, several television stations have been showing many movies dealing with horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Many of these movies seem to be of the type that were never shown in movie theaters, but instead went straight to video. Such movies can be loads of fun; I've enjoyed many one-star movies. Although this probably disqualifies me as any sort of movie critic, I really love movies, especially those dealing with horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Unfortunately, I don't have much time to watch TV nowadays. Nevertheless, I did manage to catch a couple of excellent movies this past week, both love stories dealing with the supernatural.

The first one, Portrait of Jennie, aired last Friday on Turner Classic Movies (TCM), was made in 1948 and stars Joseph Cotten, Jennifer Jones, and Ethel Barrymore. This film brings together two people, a starving artist (Cotten) whose paintings are technically sound, but lack feeling, and a strange girl (Jones) who appears to be from another time. This is a love story, in which supernatural forces unite the artist and girl, overcoming the strongest barrier of all, time.

The second film that I caught within the past week, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, was made in 1941, and stars Robert Montgomery, Evelyn Keyes, and Claude Rains. Here Comes Mr. Jordan is about a boxer (Montgomery), who on the verge of winning the championship, is prematurely "collected" by an overzealous angel from a plane which appears to be about to crash. The trouble is that the Montgomery character was not meant to die at that time. The overzealous angel's boss, Mr. Jordan (Rains), takes charge, and after discovering that the boxer's body has been cremated (I would have thought the plane crash would have done enough damage), allows the Montgomery character to live out his life in the body of a ruthless tycoon, who was just murdered by his wife and business underling. The Montgomery character, now in the body of the tycoon, meets and falls in love with a woman (Evelyn Keyes). But trouble is brewing for the tycoon. After all, the two folks who murdered him may try again. The focus in this movie is the love between the Montgomery and Keyes characters, and the ability of true love to overcome the limitations of physics.

I enjoyed both movies a great deal. Portrait of Jennie is a bit more melodramatic than Here Comes Mr. Jordan, which includes more comic relief. I found the stories interesting, and the movies well acted and directed. Portrait of Jennie was especially visually appealing too.

There are plenty of other fine movies this week scheduled on TCM. How could you go wrong with stars like Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff, and Bela Lugosi?

Posted: Wednesday - October 29, 2003 at 06:36 AM        

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