Anthony Perkins is the October "Star of the Month" on TCM (Psycho Included)

Having completed their annual August "Summer Under the Stars" -- with a star being given a 24-Hour day of movies each day in August -- Turner Classic Movies has returned to having a Star of the Month. Four movies a night, every Friday.

It turns out that TCM has chosen Anthony Perkins to be such, this October.

Its how I stumbled onto "Tall Story" last week, and last night, I saw a commercial that showed this is just one of about 16 films they are showing. They have mixed Tony's SOTM status into a commercial about ALL of the October TCM showings -- which means that Psycho looms big and proud and Halloween ready. I haven't even checked when TCM will show Psycho this month, but I'm glad that SOME cable network has picked it for Halloween month.

Psycho is MY favorite Halloween movie, but it never really quite fits in with Brides of Dracula or Friday the 13th or The Wolf Man. Psycho remains famously as much a contemporary thriller as a horror movie, with a whole lot of dramatic dialogue scenes and comparatively little horror (about 3 minutes have been clocked among the two murders and the fruit cellar physical action.) Still, That House(above all), That Motel, That Swamp, That Skeleton Corpse...Psycho is horror enough.

Meanwhile, back at Anthony Perkins, I'm reminded of my personal rule: "The movie, not the movie star." Perkins was good looking for pretty much all of his career, gorgeous early on -- and looking his best (as most men are) in his thirties and early forties(a good decade after Psycho.) He LOOKED like a movie star.

Problem is, he didn't make all that many great movies, and watching them advertised on TCM I realized: I haven't seen many Tony Perkins movies, and I probably won't ever catch up to them all.

I was intrigued by watching part of "Five Miles to Midnight" a 1963 Hitchcock imitation(in b/w), in which Perkins plays the husband of Sophia Loren. They had been teamed in Desire Under the Elms in 1957, I think, and they looked rather ridiculously mismatched a lovers. But by 1963, Tony had the blockbuster Psycho under his belt, he looked somewhat older and more 'manly"(for Anthony Perkins) and he and Sophia made a better match as "a beautiful star couple." Tony's a baddie, though, in this one. Again. But not a psycho.

Anyway, nice to see Tony Perkins getting a month of honor at TCM, with Psycho proudly in the mix. (Pretty Poison, too -- THAT's a good thriller, but not at Psycho level.)