March Malice

I think I posted some years back that there aren't that many classic movies with basketball scenes, mostly because basketball was invented later than football and baseball so it would have taken time for the sport to be enough a part of the culture to show up in movies. But with the big basketball tournament, known as "March Madness" being on now, some programmer at TCM decided to riff off of that with "March Malice".

Starting tonight in prime time and going straight through for five and a half days until the end of TCM Underground, TCM is running 64 movies, grouped into 32 double bills, each given a different theme, and all more or less in the area of villains. There's nothing mentioned about a guest host, so I'd assume it's Ben Mankiewicz, or possibly whoever this month's regular guest host is.

Tonight, for example, starts off with "Psycho Killers", which come at us in the form of Psycho (8:00 PM) followed by Peeping Tom (10:00 PM). Of course, some of the pairings seem a bit similar, such as "Aliens Among Us" and "Space Monsters". But that's a quibble. I've always kind of liked the idea of double-bills in terms of TCM programming, since it's a lot easier to come up with just two films that fit a creative theme, and because there's a natural time slot for them on Sunday evenings just before Silent Sunday Nights.

There's nothing really new in terms of the movies running, but a lot that's worth watching especially if you haven't seen it before.