Nightmare Alley
October 20

Wildly unpredictable circus and penthouse noir with gorgeous scumbag Tyrone Power, at the height of his doomed charms, attempting to juggle romances with the useful-but-worn-out seer Zeena Krumbein (perennially blowsy Joan Blondell) and yummy youth Colleen Gray (fresh from Richard Widmark's Kiss of Death; and, more importantly, the title character of 1960's hugely underrated Leechwoman) while concocting a lucrative ballroom-psychic scam, and keeping at bay the nipping jaws of the ever-howling circus geek, the tormented soul who stares back up at Power from the slightly reflective depths of his own personal moral abyss. After viewing this picaresque and cathartic film, you will never again misuse the word "geek."

—Guy Maddin

• Written by Jules Furthman, from a novel by William Lindsay Gresham. Photographed by Lee Garmes. With Tyrone Power, Joan Blondell, Colleen Gray, Helen Walker. (109 mins, B&W, 35mm, From Criterion Pictures/20th Century Fox)