After radio writer Sally Ambler (Wendy Barrie) quarrels with her fiancé Kirk Pierce (John Hubbard) because he finds her latest script too fantastic, she ends up heading home in response to a telegram from her Aunt Maggie (Elizabeth Patterson). The death of Sally’s uncle (and just how he died is uncertain) is followed by clear …
Read the full post →“<em>Who Killed Aunt Maggie?</em> (Republic, 1940)”
A dashing and clever young man (George Chakiris) gets a job as a framer’s apprentice as part of a scheme to steal the Mona Lisa. Along the way, he finds romance with a money-hungry young woman (Marina Vlady) who regretfully opts to join another man’s magic act. Events culminate in an extended, and amusing, chase …
Read the full post →“<em>Il ladro della Gioconda</em> (1966)”
An action movie in the vein of the 18 Bronzemen films, in The Unbeaten 28 (original title: Shi ren guan shi ba qi), the protagonist faces a similar battery of trials as he attempts to win the right to a document detailing a secret, powerful martial arts technique. Here, however, the “men” he must fight …
Leon Ames returns as Major Waring, together with much of his crew from the movie Cipher Bureau, including Charlotte Wynters as Helen Lane; there’s even a mention of Waring’s brother, who had a prominent role in the prior film. Indeed, this sequel opens with Waring and Lane about to get married, when they are interrupted …
Read the full post →“<em>Panama Patrol</em> (Grand National, 1939)”
A surgeon with scandalous secrets is murdered in the middle of an operation. Which of those with a motive in the room could have done it? And just how did the killer manage to have the lights go out to facilitate the crime? Bruce Cabot is the lead as a doctor who is one of …
Read the full post →“<em>Mystery of the White Room</em> (Universal, 1939)”
Some sort of inexplicable illness is carrying off inhabitants of a Cornwall village, and the young doctor there (Brook Williams) is unable to prevent the deaths. Fortunately for him and eventually for the rest of the villagers, famed doctor Sir James Forbes (Andre Morrell), whose daughter is a close friend of the young doctor’s wife, …
Read the full post →“<em>The Plague of the Zombies</em> (Hammer / Twentieth Century Fox, 1966)”
When the lead in the remake of a studio’s big silent hit is murdered, there’s plenty of suspicion to go around, particularly as the director was jealous of the star’s closeness with his wife (Gail Patrick), herself another star at the studio. Reginald Denny plays the studio PR man and the amateur investigator as this …
Read the full post →“<em>The Preview Murder Mystery</em> (Paramount, 1936)”
A radio engineer ends up unknowingly working for Axis spies who are using a stolen new shortwave transmitter to supply information to a Japanese sub targeting U.S. ships. Richard Arlen is fine as the lead, a man who has lost his job and takes what he can, and Wendy Barrie has a good role as …
Read the full post →“<em>Submarine Alert</em> (Paramount, 1943)”
