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Friday 10/30/09

Midnight Turner Classic Movies
The Match King (1932 USA): Continuing this week's theme — really, really weird subject matter — here's a wacky drama about a janitor who becomes a millionaire. Selling matches. In Sweden. Warren William plays Paul Kroll, a Chicago facilities maintenance engineer who uses some ill-gotten gains to finance a trip to Scandinavia, where he gains control of his uncle's match factory and eventually creates a European match monopoly. But man cannot live on handheld incandescent devices alone, and Kroll falls in love with actress Marta Molnar (Lili Damita), a Good Woman who tries — unsuccessfully — to lead him to the path of righteousness. Co-starring Glenda Farrell and Claire Dodd, The Match King is a fascinating and—dare I say it? — enlightening morality play. Thank you, I'll be here all week. It's followed at 1:30 AM by I Promise to Pay (1937), in which Chester Morris makes a regrettable deal with the devil (in this case a loan shark) to take his family on vacation. Silly Chester, that's what credit cards are for!

3:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
Behind the Mask (1932 USA): Over 12 hours of obscure Boris Karloff features kick off this morning with Behind the Mask, an effective First National thriller featuring Dear Boris as a dope peddler. Newly released from prison, Henderson (Boris) goes to work on behalf of drug smuggler Mr. X (Edward van Sloan), whilst G-Man Hart (Jack Holt) tries to put the kibosh on their dirty dealings. Behind the Mask was marketed as a horror film to cash in on Karloff's recent Frankenstein-spawned stardom, but it's a crime drama all the way, albeit an atmospheric one. Amongst other offerings in today's Karloff-thon: at 7:00 AM, 1935's The Black Room, a gothic melodrama featuring Boris as twin brothers; at 9:30 AM, 1940's The Man They Could Not Hang, one of William Henry Pratt's many Columbia ‘mad doctor' second features; and at 1:15 PM by 1940's The Ape, a Monogram cheapie in which Karloff portrays a kindly doctor driven to take extreme measures in order to treat a case of polio.

4:15 PM IFC
Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003 USA): The drop-off from the first Jeepers Creepers is considerable, but fans of that spookfest will still want to check out this sequel. Set shortly after the events depicted in JC, JC II takes the well-worn path of depicting the episodic demise of a group of annoying teenagers, but manages to do so in fairly interesting fashion: after their bus breaks down on a remote stretch of highway, the members of a high school basketball team find themselves stalked by a winged demon with a taste for human souls. It's the setting that makes the film work: the bus serves as both haven and trap for the youngsters, and they're victimized not because of the usual moral failings (sex, drugs, rock and roll) but simply because they're in the wrong place at the wrong time. Previously seen on other channels in pan and scan, Jeepers Creepers 2 makes its widescreen television debut this afternoon on IFC.

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