What to Watch on TCM this Weekend

The "Night at the Movies - Thrillers" series ticks on Friday the 23rd, this time featuring gothic chillers on Turner Classic Movies. I never pass up the excellent Night of the Hunter, with a menacing performance by Robert Mitchum as a murderous preacher. Later that night watch for Rebecca, Hitchcock's entry into the gothic romance/ghost story genre. Both are timeless classics, but Night of the Hunter packs the bigger punch.

On Saturday, I'm up for the 1975 sci-fi cheese-fest The Land That Time Forgot (which spawned the even more cheesy TV series and this year's wretched remake with Will Ferrell). Even better on Saturday is the truly terrifying 1982 haunted house classic, Poltergeist, a lovely choice for Halloween.

Sunday there's more great choices, with Spencer Tracy in Inherit the Wind, the excellent adaptation of the stage play about the Scopes "monkey" trial; and Nosferatu, a silent film film from the German expressionist era, and one of the earliest, most influential vampire movies.

A still from Nosferatu