A young woman visiting Spain with a skydiving team is recruited to recover a missing atomic device that is desired by the Chinese and apparently in the hands of a notorious international criminal, but she soon hears many different stories from the competing parties. There are lots of twists in this lighthearted entertainment that is …
Wednesday Pulp: Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction, September 17, 1927
The magazine begun in 1924 was by mid-1927 being published under the title shown above, though within a year it would be renamed once more, to its most familiar title, Detective Fiction Weekly, which it would retain until 1941. The September 17, 1927, issue contains the usual array of long and short fiction, including serial …
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Wednesday Pulp: Weird Tales, March 1923
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 …
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The Rivals (1963)
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 …
Stoney (1974)
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 …
Monogram Monday: Bowery Bombshell (1946)
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 …
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Five to One (1963)
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 …
The Biggest Bundle of Them All (MGM, 1968)
Limp entry in the caper genre has a gang of inept criminals working with a retired (and poor) mobster as he plans one last big score to recover his self-esteem and make it possible to live it up in retirement. The laughs are fewer than they should be, and though there are reasonable contributions from …
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Bulldog Drummond in Africa (Paramount, 1938)
Hugh Drummond (John Howard), together with Algy (Reginald Denny) and Tenny (E. E. Clive), and with Phyllis (Heather Angel) aboard his plane as a stowaway, dashes off to Morocco when he learns that Colonel Nielson (H. B. Warner) has been abducted by a ruthless spy (J. Carrol Naish). A hostile reception from the local British …
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White Tiger (Universal, 1923)
Two siblings, separated when their father is killed in a police raid after betrayal by a fellow criminal, grow to adulthood still within the ambit of crookdom, Roy (Raymond Griffith) as part of a “mechanical chess player” con, and Sylvia (Priscilla Dean) as a pickpocket under the tutelage of Hawkes (Wallace Beery), the man who …
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