I MARRIED A WITCH — SHOCKTOBER!

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While this classic screwball comedy's obvious influence on inspiring "Bewitched," that great '60s/'70s television show, it's Veronica Lake who casts the longest shadow.

Talk about iconic.

Veronica Lake is at her most seductive as Jennifer, a witch being chaperoned by her alcoholic witch dad (Cecil Kellaway). Daughter and dad travel by broom while resting as smoke plumes.

Ted Tetzlaff's cinematography is so lush it could bring a tear to your eye.

Prolific French director René Clair sets a racy tone for the comedy to spike with sexy innuendo.

Jennifer is a shameless homewrecker to Fredrick March's Jonathan Woodley, a small town politician on the verge of marrying local socialite Estelle (Susan Hayward).

René Clair allows his energetic actors to snap their dialogue into a modern rhythm that is contagious. We get swept up in the promise of unreasonable romance and all of the destruction that it brings.

"I Married A Witch" is a high concept movie, especially for 1942. The picture carries a Frenchness in its lighthearted attitudes regarding relations between men and the women who enchant them.

Very witchy indeed.

Not Rated. 77 mins.

 

EYES WITHOUT A FACE — SHOCKTOBER!

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Master filmmaker Georges Franju had been making films for 25 years before he terrified audiences with "Eyes Without A Face" in 1960.

This groundbreaking horror movie significantly influenced Alfred Hitchcock, whose "Psycho" and "The Birds" owes "Eyes Without A Face" several obvious debts.

Agonizingly grotesque sequences are executed with admirably simple effects. 

Georges Franju uses a jarring soundscape to ratchet up suspense in a disquieting narrative about Dr. Génessier (Pierrre Brasseur), a mad doctor attempting a risky face-transplant for his horribly disfigured daughter, Christiane. The irritating sound of dogs barking sends chills down your spine.

Dr. Génessier keeps Christiane locked away in his mansion's attack, where she wears a plastic mask to hide her disfigurement from a car accident that her father caused.

Edith Scob gives elegant physical resonance to Christiane's pained existence with gentle dance-like movements that give her an ethereal quality not far removed from that of a zombie.

Alida Valli brings beauty and gravitas to the film as Dr. Génessier's partner-in-crime, medical assistant, lover, and former patient, whose pretty face he delivered as his greatest medical achievement.

Noir elements from a criminal investigation, play out against Dr. Génessier's serial killer habit of feeding off local college girls whose faces he steals.

"Eyes Without A Face" is a rare horror film that allows the audience's imagination to run wild, while also giving us an unrelenting sense of suspense. When things get gory, we understand their underlying meaning of abject terror on multiple emotional levels.

Prepare to be shocked.

God may not believe he's a doctor, but there are doctors who believe the reverse.

Not Rated. 90 mins.

HOW TO GET AHEAD IN ADVERTISING — SHOCKTOBER!

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Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does. This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel. Punk heart still beating.

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Richard E. Grant's supreme tool box of comic skills brings his follow-up to "Withnail and I" to an explosive boil.

The film's hot comic condition equals the gargantuan actual boil that grows into a talking head on the neck of Grant's British ad exec character Dennis Bagley.

Director/screenwriter Bruce Robinson's second collaboration with Richard E. Grant builds on their impressive working relationship to push the film into heretofore unknown comic boundaries.

Dennis Begley is on a hard deadline to create an ad campaign for a pimple cream. His supportive wife Julia (Rachel Ward), is use to nursing Dennis through such episodes of writer's block, but this one marks an especially dark transition.

"How To Get Ahead In Advertising" is foremost a prescient satire predicting with uncanny accuracy, our modern cataclysmic social dilemma relating to such things as guns, cell phones, cars, and social media.

Nothing is true when everything is a lie.

Times have changed, nothing is permitted now.

Outrageous laughs spring from this classic movie.

Slapstick, sight gags, rapid-fire dialogue, and ingenious comic sequences allow Richard E. Grant to levitate his performance like some otherworldly creature.

No amount of description can sufficiently prepare you for this movie. It's one of those where the less you know going in, the better time you'll have watching it for the first time.

Is "How To Get Ahead In Advertising" a one-of-a-kind satirical masterpiece?

Yes, yes it is.

Rated R. 90 mins.