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Sunday 9/26/10

11:15 PM Turner Classic Movies
La Bandida (1963 MEX): TCM concludes its month-long salute to the Mexican Revolution with La Bandida, a Roberto (not Robert) Rodriguez-helmed romantic melodrama featuring (who else?) Pedro Armendariz as Roberto, a revolutionary who returns home from the wars to reclaim the hand of ‘La Bandida’, Maria (Maria Felix), only to find the fiery spitfire in bed with another man. Shortly after her new man-friend has, shall we say, been ‘dispatched’ by Roberto, Maria returns to her previous trade - street-walking - but soon regrets her decision when she realizes she really loves the man who killed for her. There’s enough telenovela action here for a full season, all of it lensed in gorgeous Technicolor by the great cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa.

Monday 9/27/10

7:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
Her Kind of Man (1946 USA): Here’s one of TCM’s more unusual film fests: six films featuring the great Dane Clark! Even though I’ve seen some of these films, I don’t think I could pick Mr. Clark out of a police lineup, but I guess every dog (or actor) has his day, and here’s Dane’s. The fest commences with Her Kind of Man, a film I always get confused with the superior Robert Mitchum-Jane Russell vehicle His Kind of Woman. Clark plays Don Corwin, a muckraking journalist vying for the hand of sweet Georgia King (Janis Paige) - but his competition is Steve Maddux (Zachary Scott), one of the gamblers Don’s been raking muck about. It’s a fairly standard crime story with romantic underpinnings, but hey…Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Dane Clark! There he is! No, over there…what, you don’t recognize him, either? Her Kind of Man is followed at 11:30 AM by 1947’s Deep Valley, a superior drama featuring Clark as an escaped convict and Ida Lupino as the young lady who takes pity on him; at 1:30 PM by That Way With Women (also 1947), in which our hero runs a gas station with Sydney Greenstreet’s money; at 3:00 PM by 1948’s Embraceable You, with Dane playing a gangster having regrets about his lifestyle choice; at 4:30 PM by Fort Defiance (1951), a western in which Mr. Clark plays a Civil War vet out to avenge his brother’s murder; and at 6:00 PM by Never Trust a Gambler (also 1951), a forgotten Columbia programmer about a poor fellow who’s of interest to both the cops and the mob.

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