About 90 years ago, the July 25th weekly issue of the crime and detection pulp magazine Detective Fiction Weekly offered up a fair amount of entertaining stories, some purportedly true. T. T. Flynn’s The Garroters of Ghost Cove, the issue’s novelette, is a fast-paced story in which protagonist Bob Riley, breaking into an apartment, discovers …
Read the full post →“<em>Detective Fiction Weekly</em>, July 25, 1931”
Buster Keaton at the height of his powers as a physical comedian delivers the goods in Steamboat Bill, Jr., the story of a soft young man from the East joining his rough but good-natured riverboat captain father (Ernest Torrence) and trying to make good. The comedy is terrific, both in understated ways — in his …
Read the full post →“<em>Steamboat Bill, Jr.</em> (UA, 1928)”
A traveling theatrical troupe that skipped out on its last hotel bill is forced by a storm to take refuge at an isolated castle, despite being warned against it, and there’s soon cause for them to regret their choice. Something strange is going on in the castle, and it means peril, but possibly also romance, …
Read the full post →“<em>The Playgirls and the Vampire</em> (1960)”
In Dance of Death (original title: Wu quan), a young woman (Angela Mao) convinces two rival martial arts masters to teach her their evenly matched techniques, so that she can use them to gain vengeance on the gang that murdered her friends. When even those techniques prove insufficient, the masters are able to develop a …
In this terrible Irish-Swedish co-production, a young man visiting the Continent after the close of the Napoleonic Wars is drawn to a mysterious woman who is married to a strange man who may be a vampire — or is she? A slow pace, poor camerawork and lighting, and unappealing characters really drag down the movie, …
The latest addition to my vintage HO rolling stock is this built-up Model Die Casting Roundhouse diecast Milwaukee Road boxcar. I purchased the kit assembled but without trucks mounted, though some Roundhouse sprung trucks were included in the kit box (the kit was originally sold without trucks). I’ve put the car — at least temporarily …
Alibi drags reluctant Crash and Dusty away from their vacation and to the aid of a young man and woman, joint heirs to a ranch, who are facing crooks out to swindle them (or kill them) to get the property, which has oil on it. Although the boys try their usual undercover approach, they face …
Read the full post →“<em>Texas Trouble Shooters</em> (Monogram, 1942)”
Intrigue and adventure in French Indochina, with Mr. Moto (Peter Lorre) working as an archaeologist when the arrival of an American flyer (Rochelle Hudson) and two documentary makers (Robert Kent and Chick Chandler) sets the stage for a confrontation with those plotting armed rebellion. This movie has Moto once again adopting a disguise — and …
Read the full post →“<em>Mr. Moto Takes a Chance</em> (Twentieth Century Fox, 1938)”
A young rancher (John Wayne) who has inherited a half-interest in a mine, a girl (Sheila Terry) whose father lost his half-interest to a crook, and a gang led by the man who has that half-interest now all come to a ghost town in response to mysterious letters. Creepy doings follow, including mysterious figures skulking …
