Today’s Number One Film:

The Shining, 5.59pm HBO Plus BEST FILM OF THE DAY. Watch this if you liked A Nightmare on Elm Street, Jaws or Don’t Look Now. Stanley Kubrick’s interpretation of Stephen King’s best book about the man descending into madness at the haunted hotel is far better than the travesty King himself perpetrated 17 years later. The movie is ram-crammed with scares of all kinds – creepy-under-the-skin/ set-your-heart-racing/ jump-out-of-your-seat – and, as lanyap, Jack Nicholson’s greatest performance. This is BC on TV’s unquestionably favourite horror, with real chilling scenes that get to and stay with you instead of the modern special effects bloodbaths that are forgotten even as they’re watched. A masterpiece from one of the great American – and anywhere else – filmmakers of all time. When it’s done, console yourself with a stiff red rum! Directed by Stanley Kubrick/ 1980/ UK-USA/ Horror/ 146 mins/ Rated R.

Also watch:

The Exorcist, 8pm HBO Plus. Watch this if you liked The Omen, The Shining or the original Wes Craven A Nightmare on Elm Street. Though gore and special effects have been greatly improved in modern movies, The Exorcist, at 44 years old, is far, far scarier than most of today’s rubbish. Before excess replaced finesse, this movie had people running screaming out of cinemas all over the world. Watch the scene with the crucifix – far, far more upsetting than the book version – and you’ll see why. The opening music alone, the first minutes of Mike Oldfield’s 25-minute long, ‘Tubular Bells’ is by itself terrifying. This, the “version you’ve never seen”, includes three seconds of footage – the stairs descent – that adds years to the viewers’ life through sheer creepiness. A masterpiece of unease, distress and fright. Directed by William Friedkin/ 1973/ USA / Horror/ 122 mins/ R for strong language and disturbing images.

Poltergeist 4.03pm HBO Plus. Watch this if you liked A Nightmare on Elm Street, Phantasm or The Shining. The man who made one of the most imitated horror movies of all time – the early American slasher movie, 1974’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre – does for the supernatural horror what he does for the splatter one. The screenplay, by one Steven Spielberg, is wonderfully spooky, starting off in haunted house realms but wandering into dream/space territory towards the end (and even then it’s gripping). This is the template from which the makers of Paranormal Activity and all the modern, far less scary, versions are cut. Directed by Tobe Hooper/ 1982/ USA/ Horror / 114 mins/ Rated PG.

Just Nosed Out:

North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock Suspense Thriller), 11.32am TCM; *Nobody Walks (Indy Drama), 12.45 midday FoxCin; Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man (Documentary-Music), 9pm Sund; **Man on Fire (Action-Thriller), 2.55pm FoxAct; Zoolander, 2.25pm FoxCom; *The Matrix (Sci-fi-Thriller), 7.31pm TCM; Meek’s Cutoff (Indy Western), 12.25 midday Sund; *25^th Hour (Spike Lee Drama), 2.06pm TCM; *Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood inner-city drama), 6.35pm MaxP;

Also Ran:

Action/Adventure: Armageddon, 12.26 midday Max.

Animated/Family: *The Jungle Book, 8.10pm HBOF.

Arthouse/Independent: Moonrise Kingdom (Dark Comedy-Drama), 10.15pm ISat.

Biography/Documentary: Abortion: Stories Women Tell, 9.10am HBO; MS Dhoni: The Untold Story (Sports), 8.40am Max.

Comedy: *Death at a Funeral (Black version), 8.37pm Edge.

Drama: A Late Quartet (Classical Music), 10.55am FoxCin.

Foreign: *Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Chinese Kung Fu), 11.50am Max.

Horror: *Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows Pt I, 11.18am HBO2.

Sci-fi/Fantasy: **Chappie, 12.25 midday MaxP.

Thriller: *Star Wars VII (Adventure-Sci-fi), 5.50pm HBOF.

War: Pearl Harbour, 8.42am Spac.

Western: Gunfight at the OK Corral, 9pm FoxClas.

*Starred films have been picked before. **Double-starred films have been picked in the last two months. ***Triple-starred films were picked last week.

Particularly strong Also Ran films are bolded.

Please verify times. Advance Internet scheduled times can be wrong, especially at month-end.

OF COURSE, the genuine day-to-day horror of the Jackass in the White House turns Halloween, John Carpenter’s 1970s benchmark splatter film about the child-murderer, Michael Myers, into a sidesplitting comedy. Where Donald Pleasance and Jamie Lee Curtis only had to outwit and outrun a knife-wielding maniac for 91 minutes, the whole world has to endure this Twitter-wielding Donald Unpleasant for the next three years; where is a heart attack when you need one?

My own worst nightmare is that someone will assassinate Donald J-for-Jackass Trump and catapult a moron who doesn’t belong in the company of his immediate predecessor into the group that, if America got it right, would have their heads on Mount Rushmore: John F Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Bobby Kennedy, men assassinated for their bravery by cowards.

Planet of the Apes, 2.05pm Fox Classics. Watch this if you liked Aliens, 2001: A Space Odyssey or Aguirre: The Wrath of God BEST FILM OF THE DAY. The monkey-suit sequels and the dreadful Tim Burton/Marky Mark 2001 remake obscure one of Hollywood’s – and, indeed, the world’s – best-ever films. It offers stunning cinematography, an unassailable script, superb costuming and even a great performance from Charlton Heston as the leader of the US spaceship crew landing on a planet where the roles of apes and humans are reversed; the last frame

TRINIDADIANS AND, to a far less psychologically-devastating extent, Tobagonians, will next week enter what has been, so far this year, uncharted territory: six back-to-back weeks without a single public holiday to soften the blow of having to go to work every day, like every sufferer in every country in the world.

It seems to go against the very marrow of Trinidadian-ness.

This is the Trini definition of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: six working weeks, each five days long. It cannot help but result in mass catatonic shock. Understandably. But how, in that context, will Trinis continue to convince themselves that God is a Trini?

Today’s Number One Film:

The Revenant, 4.30pm Fox Action Ch 561 BEST FILM OF THE DAY. Watch this if you liked Deliverance, Django Unchained or The Road. The film that took the 2016 Best Lead Actor, Director and Cinematography Oscars (and Best Actor and Picture Golden Globes) may be the most perfectly made film so far this century.