Best Movies , Turner Classic Movies, Leslie Caron, 60's 70's rule breakers, Psychic Powers & More October 26 to 28, 2009 Review

 TNT shows us more Leslie Caron films on Monday Night,  Movies with Psychic Powers on Tuesday Night and controversial late 60's, early 70's counter-revolution films on Wednesday night.  Read all about it....

Monday Night  the focus is on Leslie Caron  who stars in 4 movies starting at 5 p.m.  1952's  Glory Alley, 6:30 p.m. it's 1971's Chandler which isn't a great movie but has the always watchable Warren Oates and Leslie Caron  then there is the 1966 comedy  Promise Her Anything which was directed by Arthur Hiller and stars Warren Beatty, Caron, Bob Cummings and Kennan Wynn which airs at 8 p.m.  followed by Rudolph Nueyev in Ken Russell's 1977s box office flop biopic of Valentino. 

Tuesday evening  after three excellent Westerns  (1954's Robert Aldrich directed Vera Cruz with Gary Cooper, and Burt Lancaster; 1958's superb Anthony Mann classic Man of  the West with Gary Cooper, Lee J. Cobb and Julie London; 1952's Oscar Winning High Noon directed by Fred Zinneman, starring Gary Cooper) TNT gives us  a night of Psychic Power movies.

That begins with far-fetched but box office blockbuster Poltergeist  Produced by Steven Speilberg; Directed by Tober Hooper, with Dominque Dunne as the little girl who talks the evil spirits in the television set as they invade her family's suburban home with JoBeth Williams and Craig T. Nelson.  This is followed at 7 p.m. with a rather silly film called  The Power in which a scientist tries to stop a murdering genius with psychic powers.  It stars George Hamilton, Suzanne Pleshette, Richard Carlson and Yvonne DeCarlo.  At 9 p.m.its the best and still scariest haunted house movie ever made;  1963's The Haunting.   Want to see how effective a movie can be with minimal special effects?  Check out this horror masterpiece from Director Robert Wise starring Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson and Russ Tamblyn. 

Then it's 1960's creepy Village of the Damned about children who possess a mysterious power;  with George Sanders, and  Barbara Shelley .  At 12:30 a.m. on the West Coast it's 1975's crowd pleasing  Escape to Witch Mountain  with Eddie Albert, Ray Milland and Donald Pleasence.  Two mysterious children with super powers elude a millionaire who wants to control them.

On Wednesday the 28th... controversial and ground breaking movies from the late 60s and early 70s are the focus for the evening. 

It starts at 3 p.m. on the West Coast with 1966's Alfie which made a star of Michael Caine as he played the cheeky selfish womanizer who needs to grow up fast when a tragedy strikes. 

Then it's a movie that was pulled from distribution and had to re-discovered in the 70s on college campuses.  It's a low budget  Roger Corman movie, directed by  Last Picture Show's Peter Bogdanovich that stars Boris Karloff.  1968's Targets is two interesting movies in one.  The first is about an aging horror star; Karloff, who wonders if his life's work has any value whatsoever; the second is about a man who decides to start shooting people indiscriminately.   The critically acclaimed, effective film was pulled from theaters after the Martin Luther King assassination of April 4th, 1968  and following the June 5th 1968  Robert Kennedy assassination, was not re-scheduled.   It airs at 5 p.m. 

This is followed by one of my personal favorites, 1971's  Harold and Maude.  I recently posted a very in-depth review of the film right here: http://www.viewpoints.com/Harold-and-Maude-review-167c6

Then it's time for an interesting documentary called  Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs and Rock N Roll Generation Saved Hollywood.  And indeed, Hollywood studios were in trouble until a group of maverick new directors like  Brian DePalma, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, Roger Corman, Dennis Hopper, Hal Ashby, Monte Hellman and few others brought a new kind of movie to the theaters.  Lots of stories are shared. It airs at 9 p.m. PST   

 Then it's the counter-culture icon movie itself,  Easy Rider with Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper hitting the road to see America and sell drugs meeting all kinds of people on their journey including Jack Nicholson.    Then it's Bob Rafelson's moody character driven road movie featuring one of Jack Nicholson's finest early performances; 1970's Five Easy Pieces.  It airs at 1 a.m. on the West Coast