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The Lady and the Bandit

3 votes

Highwayman Dick Turpin rides 200 miles to save his wife from the gallows in 18th-century England.

Status: Released

Released Date: 1951-08-13

Runtime: 79 mins

Director: Ralph Murphy

Spoken language: English

Genres: Adventure, Romance

Original title: The Lady and the Bandit

Production Companies: Columbia Pictures

Production Countries: United States of America

Cast

Louis Hayward

Patricia Medina

Suzanne Dalbert

Tom Tully

John Williams

Malú Gatica

Lord Charles Willoughby

Alan Mowbray

Lumsden Hare

Barbara Brown

George Baxter

Ivan Triesault

Norman Leavitt

Stapleton Kent

Frank Reicher

Reviews

Geronimo1967

Dick Turpin's is one of those legends that should have fitted nicely with Louis Hayward's style of swashbuckling heroics. Plenty of opportunity to rob the wealthy that travel the as yet un-policed roads of 1730s England. Sadly, though, Ralph Murphy chooses to focus more on the romantic elements of his roguish subject and we are left with a rather slow moving melodrama. After one of his hold-ups, he meets and falls in love with "Joyce" (Patricia Medina), settles down to middle-class inn-keeping for a while before he goes back to his old ways with friend Tom King (Tom Tully). That's when he robs "Lord Willoughby" (Alan Mowbray) and relieves him of a document proving the existence of treason afoot - the price on his head rockets and his jealous friend "Cecile" (Suzanne Dalbert) sets about betraying him too. At times it is quite exciting - his break-neck race to York on "Black Bess", for example - but otherwise this just plods along with neither of the leading ladies having much on-screen charisma, nor dialogue to work with. Mowbray features sparingly as his foe and the direction is just, well, lacking... Hayward does try, but he has lost the glint from his eye and can't carry this all by himself as entertainingly he once could. I hadn't heard of this film before today, but after watching I'm afraid I am not really surprised.

2024-09-01

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