Former silent film star George O’Brien made the transition to sound chiefly performing in westerns, and he appeared in a well-regarded string of westerns at RKO at the end of the 1930s. Lawless Valley was one of these: an efficient little B picture with a helping of humor. The plot is based on a story …
Monogram Monday: Jungle Bride (1933)
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 fiancé (Kenneth Thomson), the man (Starrett) she believes guilty of a murder for which her brother was imprisoned, and that man’s sidekick (Eddie Borden) …
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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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A-Haunting We Will Go (1942)
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, …
Charlie Chan at the Opera (Twentieth Century Fox, 1936)
“Warner Oland vs. Boris Karloff in…” says the title card of this movie, easily one of the strongest entries in the long-running Charlie Chan mystery series, thanks to setting, cast, and resolution. Karloff plays an amnesiac opera singer who escapes from a lunatic asylum after recovering his memory that someone — presumably his then-wife — …
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Monogram Monday: King of the Zombies (1941)
The comic contribution of Mantan Moreland is the highlight of this otherwise rather lackluster Monogram horror movie. In it, a plane driven off course in a storm makes a crash landing on a small Caribbean island. There, the fliers — Mac (Dick Purcell), Bill (John Archer), and Bill’s valet, Jeff (Mantan Moreland) — find shelter …
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Monogram Monday: In Fast Company (1946)
The Bowery Boys (Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, and the rest) square off against a strong-arm taxi company on behalf of the independent hack drivers in this early series entry that benefits from a supporting cast including Jane Randolph and Douglas Fowley. The boys’ usual antics provide action and humor in a movie that zips right …
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Doctor in the House (1954)
Dirk Bogarde held a spot at the top in British cinema in the 1950s, in part thanks to this movie, a smash success in the year of its release (1954). The movie is the comedic story of medical student Simon Sparrow, played by Bogarde, who begins school at the start and finds congenial companions in …
Monogram Monday: Yukon Manhunt (1951)
Kirby Grant, best known as TV’s Sky King, starred as a Mountie in a series of 10 movies for Monogram Pictures that prominently featured Chinook, a dog who later played White Shadow in Disney’s Corky and White Shadow (and my dog’s favorite actor — the only one for which she pays attention to the screen). …
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Murder by Television (1935)
During an experimental broadcast, the inventor of an improvement for television technology is murdered. The chief of police (Henry Mowbray), who is among the party gathered in the inventor’s home to watch the broadcast onscreen, has his work cut out for him, as there are various potential culprits, including the inventor’s assistant (Bela Lugosi) and …