TCM and Peter Bogdonavich

Peter Bogdanovich's Movie of the Week is an excellent movie guide. I mention it because TCM showed Night of the Hunter and The Bad and the Beautiful, both of which I saw for the first time in Rochester, NY, during a film series based on that book. Rochester doesn't have a whole lot going for it, but by far one of the best things is the Dryden Movie Theater, which is attached to the former mansion of George Eastman. The mansion has been turned into a photography museum, which is pretty good in its own right, but next door is a large film archive, with three underground stories of nearly every film ever made, starting with the earliest 19th centruy films.

Anyway, every night they show a film from this collection, and when I moved there in 1999, they started on Bogdanovich's Movies of the Week. Big surprise, they showed one once a week. I didn't go to all of them, but the ones I did I almost always enjoyed, including Night of the Hunter and The Bad and the Beautiful.


Night of the Hunter is a great thriller, with Robert Mitchum as a serial killer Reverend with LOVE and HATE tattooed on his fingers and who goes from town to town, marying widows and then chucking them in rivers. It was directed by Charles Laughten, whom Mitchum later called the best director of his career. And speaking of Laughten, thumbs-up to Hobson's Choice.

Anyway, if you haven't seen Night of the Hunter, it has some truely impressive dream-like visuals as two children are floating down a star-lit river trying to escape their murderous step-father. It also features a pretty, if haunting, soundtrack. One song later served as an inspiration for a track of Fantomas speed-metal improvisation.

The Bold and the Beautiful is also pretty good, which you might suspect given its five oscars. Kirk Douglas chews up the scenery as a Hollywood mogul on the rise, which in this case, is good.