Hump Day Classic Movie: His Girl Friday

It's pouring rain outside today and the weather experts say it will be raining all week. Time to break out the classics!

His Girl Friday is one of the quintessential romantic screwball comedies. It's famous for its frenetic, witty banter, and rightly so. I've probably watched this movie twenty times, and I catch something new every viewing. You'll need to crank up the volume to hear some of the dialogue.

Something I really love about this movie is how modern it is, even with the telephones and typewriters. It was made in 1940, adapted from a play, but the characters are so edgy. The two main characters are ex-spouses and in the newspaper business.  Hildy is going to be remarried, and Walter, confronted with the permanent loss of a wife he still cares for, sabotages her plans by using her love of the news business against her.

The dialogue is hilarious:

Hildy: "Walter, you're wonderful in a loathesome kind of way"

Walter: "There's been a lamp burning in the window for ya, honey... here."
Hildy: "Oh, I jumped out that window a long time ago. "

They remade this movie with Burt Reynolds, Kathleen Turner, and Christopher Reeve as Switching Channels in 1988, and it was nowhere near as good.

If you're a Prime member, His Girl Friday is free to watch via streaming.

Hump Day Classic Movie: Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

Maybe it's the storm outside. Maybe it's the whopping 4 hours of sleep followed by the morning power outage. I'm feeling like watching something with a little bit of dark humor. And in hump day movie language, that means Arsenic and Old Lace.

Looking at the cover image, along with seeing the name Frank Capra (of It's a Wonderful Life or Mr. Smith Goes to Washington fame), might give the false impression that this is a light-hearted screwball comedy. In reality, it's anything but.

Here's the blurb:


A drama critic learns on his wedding day that his beloved maiden aunts are homicidal maniacs, and that insanity runs in his family.

No, really. That's what this film is about. It's deliciously awful. Cary Grant's facial expressions are priceless. And the characters in this wacky film are mood lifters, despite the creepy premise of the film.

C'mon, you know you wanna watch it.