Charles Starrett, best known for his long-running series as the Durango Kid, essays an early role in this rather soapy picture. A shipwreck strands a young woman (top-billed Anita Page), her fiancĂ© (Kenneth Thomson), the man (Starrett) she believes guilty of a murder for which her brother was imprisoned, and that man’s sidekick (Eddie Borden) …
Read the full post →“Monogram Monday: <em>Jungle Bride</em> (1933)”
Incoherent action and a muddled plot fatally weaken this tale of rival groups of gun-runners out to obtain a fortune in gold and jewelry stolen during the Second World War and concealed beneath a swimming pool in the former home of the Japanese commander in charge of Surabaya (hence the original title, Surabaya Conspiracy). Michael …
Engineer Oliver Reed (Kent Smith) meets and marries Irena, a Serbian immigrant (Simone Simon), who is fascinated by the big cats at the zoo and who worries that she herself may be descended from the were-panthers of her homeland. Although Oliver tries to help her, Irena’s beliefs put a strain on their relationship, as does …
Glenda Farrell, often cast as a wise-cracking gold digger, found a fitting role as clever reporter Torchy Blane in Smart Blonde, the first of a series of nine pictures from Warner Brothers (Farrell played the role in seven of them). In this initial outing, she is right on the scene when a fellow buying a …
This early entry in the Bowery Boys series offers another example of the blend of crime and comedy so often found in the films. This time, thanks to a photographer friend, Sach (Huntz Hall) ends up suspected of involvement in a bank robbery, one in fact committed by a gang led by Ace Deuce (Sheldon …
Read the full post →“Monogram Monday: <em>Bowery Bombshell</em> (1946)”
A small-time crook (John Thaw), his gal (Ingrid Hafner), and his pal plot to rob a bookie (Lee Montague) who doubles as a fence of a bundle they induce him to put together on the promise of loot from a different robbery. But unexpected actions on the part of their target complicate matters, and the …
A-Haunting We Will Go opens with our heroes, Laurel and Hardy, being warned to leave town after a night in jail. To accomplish that, the boys, who are down on their luck, take a job escorting a coffin to Dayton, Ohio. Yet unbeknownst to them, the coffin contains not a cadaver, but a notorious criminal, …
Cowboy Everett Tarkington John Clark (Bob Steele) looking forward to a long-awaited reunion with his mother stands in for a wounded pal, Marshal Lamar Blyth (Jack Rockwell), and sets out to round up the Kootney Kid (Earl Dwire) and his gang. The project becomes personal when he learns that the Kid is pretending to be …
U.S. Marshals Nevada Jack McKenzie (Johnny Mack Brown) and Sandy Hopkins (Raymond Hatton) are sent to investigate a series of bank robberies and stage holdups, arriving just as the latest crime occurs. As is common with this series, they both go undercover: Nevada follows the escaping crooks and tries to get in with the gang, …
What should have been a lighthearted screwball romp (based on the Thorne Smith novel The Night Life of the Gods), as a mad scientist (Alan Mowbray) brings the ancient gods to life, unfortunately falls flat, with just a few chuckles amid an overall meandering plot that offers oddities instead of laughs. Despite the poor writing …
Read the full post →“<em>Night Life of the Gods</em> (1935)”
