A king murdered by his elder son (Jack Palance) passes along the secret to a magic sword to the younger (John Terry), who then busies himself righting wrongs. When his older brother, now a ruthless brigand leader, kidnaps an abbess and demands a ransom for her return, Hawk “the Slayer” assembles an interspecies team — …
The Echo Murders (Anglo-American, 1945)
A mine owner in fear for his life sends for great English detective Sexton Blake (David Farrar), and the sleuth soon finds himself investigating murder and more. Hectic and choppy, with far too much going on to follow the story as it jumps around, but interesting withal, though the version I saw was also so …
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Terror Trail (Columbia, 1946)
Mediocre Durango Kid outing has saloon owner Duke Catlett (Lane Chandler) plotting to push out the local cattlemen using large herds of sheep to overwhelm the grazing land. To that end, he also makes use of newly arrived Easterner Karen Kemp (Barbara Pepper) as a dupe to conceal his involvement; her brother, Rocky (Elvin Field), …
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Murder on a Bridle Path (RKO, 1936)
Helen Broderick takes over as Stuart Palmer’s sleuth, Hildegarde Withers, here helping Inspector Piper (James Gleason) — with some good-natured rivalry, too — solve the murder of a woman who met her doom while taking an early-morning ride. Suspects abound, including an ex-husband, jailed for non-support but sprung the night before the killing, the ex-husband’s …
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Wyoming Roundup (Monogram, 1952)
Wandering cowboys Whip (Whip Wilson) and Bob (Tommy Farrell) break up a saloon confrontation and in the aftermath are offered jobs as marshals for the town, which is on the brink of a range war. More is going on than meets the eye, of course, and soon the boys are threatening to disrupt a conspiracy …
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Carefree (RKO, 1938)
RKO tried something different with stars Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers with Carefree, the team’s penultimate movie for the studio. Here, Fred plays Tony, a psychiatrist induced by friend Stephen (Ralph Bellamy) to try to convince Stephen’s fiancée, Amanda (Ginger Rogers) to go through with their planned wedding. She has already called it off more …
Rock River Renegades (Monogram, 1942)
Range Busters Crash and Dusty rush to help out old friend Luke Graham (Kermit Maynard), a newly elected marshal who has been unable to bring local outlaws to justice (their tracks disappear) and who thus is facing increasing pressure from the town’s citizens, led by newspaperman Dick Ross (John Elliott), who begins to push for …
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The House of Fear (Universal, 1945)
A killer seems to be stalking a group staying at an isolated house along the coast, and Sherlock Holmes is called in by an insurance man to investigate, as the members of the group have provided for their fellows to be the beneficiaries of their relatively recent policies, suggesting that one may be murdering the …
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The Lawless Frontier (Lone Star / Monogram, 1934)
Archvillain Pandro Zanti (Earl Dwire) sets his sights on young Ruby (Sheila Terry) and plots the murder of her grandfather, Dusty (George “Gabby” Hayes) as well. John Tobin (John Wayne), whose parents Zanti had murdered years ago, comes to the assistance of Dusty and Ruby, but the hostility of the local sheriff and the conniving …
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Thank You, Mr. Moto (Twentieth Century Fox, 1937)
After an opening scene of violent death in the Gobi Desert, the scene shifts to China, where rival parties are after scroll painting maps that contain the secret of the location of the tomb of Genghis Khan. Six of the scroll paintings had long been in the keeping of an old but impoverished noble family, …
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