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Saturday 9/18/10

7:30 AM Turner Classic Movies
Crazy Over Horses (1951 USA): No, the Bowery Boys aren’t joining the cavalry this time - they’re taking on the bookies reaming the rubes at the local race track. Naturally, Sach gets to don riding gear and moonlight as a jockey to help bring the crooked gamblers to justice. Believe it or not, this is Bowery Boys film number 24 - only the half way point in the series!

7:00 PM Fox Movie Channel
The Van (1977 USA): As a wise man once said, “and we’ll make love in my Chevy Van, and that’s alright by me”. Ah yes, the 1970s were the Golden Age of the Van, when teenagers and immature men of all ages enjoyed nothing as much as pimping their rides with the latest eight-track technology, waterbeds, and custom paint jobs, usually ones featuring American Eagles or sunsets. Hollywood could not overlook this cultural phenomenon, of course, and The Van was duly pumped out by the sausage factory at Fox. Filmed in beautiful Moorpark, California, the film features Stuart Goetz (probably no relation to Bernhard) as a wimpy college kid who decides he’ll get all the ladies’ attention if he starts coming to school in a tricked out Dodge. The Van makes its widescreen television debut this evening, but remember - if this van’s a rockin’, don’t come a-knockin’.

9:30 PM Turner Classic Movies
Man About Town (1947 FRA): Here’s a rare Rene Clair comedy I’ve never seen before. After making millions in Hollywood during the 1930s, Maurice Chevalier returned to his native France after the Second World War and appeared in a handful of films - including this one - before returing to the US in the late 1950s. He plays a film producer who falls in love with a much younger woman - thank ‘eaven for leetel girls indeed, you dirty old man. Interesting footnote: apparently American prints of this French-language film feature no sub-titles - the dialogue is repeated by Chevalier in his adopted Anglais.

Sunday 9/19/10

1:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Las Mujeres de mi General (1951 MEX): As much as I dislike writing about films I haven’t actually seen yet - especially back-to-back! - sometimes the greater good demands I make this sacrifice. TCM continues its celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution with another Ismael Rodriguez-helmed flagwaver, this time starring Mexican heartthrob Pedro Infante as an army general who’s popular with the ladies. I don’t think he owns a Chevy Van, though, so he can’t be that popular.

Monday 9/20/10

3:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Secret Beyond the Door (1948 USA): Unavailable on DVD and rarely seen on television - even in the good old days of the Million Dollar Movie - Secret Beyond the Door is one of director Fritz Lang’s least known American features, and though not in the same league as Metropolis, M, or even Scarlet Street still well worth watching. It’s another of those "why won’t my husband let me into that locked room?" mysteries akin to Rebecca and Cry Wolf, this time starring Joan Bennett as the woman being driven round the bend by some rather surreal dreams and a secretive hubby (Michael Redgrave) who won’t let her into his special man-cave. Nothing to see here, sister…other than evidence that he might have been involved in some questionable behavior with other women! Co-starring Anne Revere as Redgrave’s suspiciously masculine sister, Secret Beyond the Door is followed at 5:00 PM by 1951’s The Prowler, another excellent little seen thriller, this time directed by Joseph Losey and starring Van Heflin as an adulterous police officer.

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