One of the strongest entries in the Charlie Chan series sees the detective (Warner Oland) racing to Germany (part of the trip aboard the Hindenburg) and the 1936 Olympics to catch up with a murderer and a stolen aeronautical invention before the latter can be sold to sinister foreign buyers. Two sons lend a hand …
Read the full post →“<em>Charlie Chan at the Olympics</em> (1937)”
One hundred years ago this week, the magazine Weird Tales debuted. The “Unique” magazine is perhaps the most famous of the pulps to readers today thanks to its publishing of horror by H. P. Lovecraft and Conan tales by Robert E. Howard, but it encompassed many more authors and works during its three-decade run. I’m …
Read the full post →“Wednesday Pulp: <em>Weird Tales</em>, March 1923”
Before the Charlie Chan series moved to Monogram in the 1940s, that little studio had its own series about a Chinese detective, James Lee Wong, who had starred in short stories in the magazine Collier’s. The first five of the six movies star Boris Karloff as the sleuth, an expert on many things, including Chinese …
Read the full post →“Monogram Monday: <em>Mr. Wong, Detective</em> (1938)”
I finished three books during this week, as well as one pulp magazine issue. Books Scarlet Riders: Pulp Fiction Tales of the Mounties, ed. by Don Hutchison — as an anthology, the usual mixed bag, with some stories straightforward adventure (e.g., “Red Snows,” by Harold F. Cruikshank, and “Doom Ice,” by Dan O’Rourke) and some …
Petty car thieves stumble into a kidnapping and decide to try to nab the ransom for themselves. The kidnappers are clever enough to figure out how to track down their “rivals,” however, and the two groups end up headed for a collision. The unraveling of the crimes holds the viewer’s interest while awaiting the inevitable …
There’s round-up action on the cover of this issue of the long-running pulp (indeed, the last to end publishing as a pulp). I like the image, but I can’t make out the artist’s signature. Ranch Romances is reputed to have fairly hard-boiled stories around this time, and I’ll be interested in seeing whether that is …
Read the full post →“Wednesday Pulp: <em>Ranch Romances</em>, Second October Number, 1949”
George Sanders ably handles the opposition in this story of intrigue in Damascus in the early years of World War II, with Nazi agents seeking to bring the Arab tribes into the war on behalf of the Axis, and a journalist (Sanders), aided by an off-duty American diplomat (Robert Armstrong), seeking to stop them. Complicating …
Trapper Paul Lautrec (Edward Norris) is shot and framed for a string of fur robberies and killings, and it’s up to Mountie Rod Webb (Kirby Grant), aided by his faithful dog Chinook, to untangle the scheme. This is another entertaining programmer in the Monogram series starring Grant and Chinook. Recommended. Otto finds this one pleasing …
Read the full post →“Monogram Monday: <em>The Wolf Hunters</em> (1949)”
