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)”
A war picture made memorable chiefly through the casting as himself of Audie Murphy, America’s most-decorated soldier of World War 2, To Hell and Back, based on Murphy’s autobiography, delivers the goods. Though in part perhaps standard for the era — e.g., in the quirks of the assorted members of Murphy’s platoon — the film …
Unoriginal but entertaining western has a bad man (Audie Murphy) throwing in his lot with a rancher (Paul Kelly) being targeted by the crook who originally hired him. Murphy has appeal, and the other performers are effective in their roles; though the plot is fairly standard, watching this is a pleasant way to spend a …
Murder stalks the guests in the sinister home of a man (Ralph Morgan) left crippled by three doctors (among them Lionel Atwill), a man whose sister (Fay Helm) fears for her own sanity as well. Can plucky Dick Baldwin (Don Porter) unravel the mysterious goings-on and protect Dr. Lynne Harper (Irene Hervey), a psychiatrist summoned …
Read the full post →“<em>Night Monster</em> (Universal, 1942)”
Fans of the comic duo will likely have a fun time with Abbott and Costello’s science fiction comedy, in which the pair end up accidentally setting off in a rocket ship bound (they think) for Mars, though subsequent events prove their first destination much closer to home, while they do get a longer journey later. …
Read the full post →“<em>Abbott and Costello Go to Mars</em> (Universal, 1953)”
A brilliant neurologist (Bela Lugosi) becomes obsessed with a young socialite (Irene Ware) whose life he has saved, and he will stop at nothing — not even murder — to win her. Lugosi is excellent in the role, and Boris Karloff is on hand, too, as a criminal whom the doctor recruits to help him, …
Karloff and Lugosi are in fine form in this Universal picture, with the former essaying the not-unusual role of a scientist gone mad (here driven murderously so by exposure to the dreaded Radium X) and the latter a humanitarian doctor who saves the scientist’s life but must eventually face the consequence of his action. Well …
Read the full post →“<em>The Invisible Ray</em> (Universal, 1936)”
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 …
Read the full post →“<em>White Tiger</em> (Universal, 1923)”
Two Americans in Egypt looking for work find murder, cultists, criminal plotters, and the living dead instead. Abbott and Costello, in their last picture for Universal, offer up plenty of laughs, including Lou’s mugging when he finds a corpse and some amusing wordplay of the sort most famously found in their “Who’s on first” routine, …
Read the full post →“<em>Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy</em> (Universal, 1955)”
Richard Dix stars as a police chief with a hidden criminal past who is framed when he tries to crack down on an auto-theft ring. A special investigator (Don Porter) is not convinced of the chief’s innocence, but his loyal and adoring secretary (Wendy Barrie) although it seems that a new romance may be in …
Read the full post →“<em>Eyes of the Underworld</em> (Universal, 1942)”
