Bad Day at Black Rock

If you're one of the UK's nearly three million unemployed, cheer up. You get to view classic movies in the afternoon, whereas all that workers get to view when they come home are cookery shows, quizzes, celebrities visiting places and general cheapo rubbish (excepting Earthflight, of course). Today's offering on Channel 4 at 1.35pm is John Sturges' Bad Day at Black Rock (1955). From the moment you watch the title sequence of a train speeding through an American desert, you know you're in the hands of a master. One-armed Spencer Tracy dismounts from the train at Black Rock and walks into trouble with three of Hollywood's greatest heavies: Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin. The fight scene in which Tracy demolishes a cock-sure Borgnine is one of the best fight sequences ever filmed. Terrific.