Terror by Night (Universal, 1946)

Sherlock Holmes is hired to protect the famous gem the Star of Rhodesia, and he and Watson travel with its owner on a Scotland-bound train. When a murderer strikes and the stone disappears, Holmes must sort through a car-full of suspects to unravel the mystery. The pacing is good on this one, and there’s a …

Flame of the West (Monogram, 1945)

This movie is a bit different from the Johnny Mack Brown movies from Monogram that I’ve been watching. Here he is not U.S. Marshal Nevada Jack McKenzie. Rather, he is a doctor, a man who used to wield his guns but did so in error once and put them aside. He tries to steer clear …

The Phantom Light (1935)

Spooky doings at a lighthouse whose lamp mysteriously goes out from time to time, even as another ghostly light appears to lead vessels to their doom. It’s all a bit of a jumble, with a few bits unclear even at the end, but Gordon Harker is good as the new lighthouse keeper, dealing with irregular …

London Blackout Murders (Republic, 1943)

Odd little wartime thriller from Republic, in which a young woman (Mary McLeod), bombed out of her home in London, gets a room in the building where a tobacconist (John Abbott) lives and has his shop. This tobacconist, however kindly he may seem, has a secret: on some nights of air raids, he stalks and …

Who Killed the Cat? (1966)

After the death of her kindly husband, a vicious woman torments her tenants — in part by raising rent to erase the benefit her spouse had provided by his will, and eventually by poisoning one’s cat — and her stepdaughter, not least by planting suspicions with her boyfriend’s employer that lead to his sacking. So …

Get That Girl (Richard Talmadge Productions / Mercury, 1932)

Expect loads of action, along with some lighthearted romance, when an heiress is menaced by villains with a base at a weird sanitarium. Her only hope of rescue lies in a new acquaintance who himself is suspected of wrongdoing. As usual, Richard Talmadge, who produced, delivers on the stunts and battles, even if the plot …

Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory (1961; MGM, 1963)

In this Austrian-Italian co-production, first released under the title Lycanthropus, a new teacher comes to a reform school for girls, and soon a young woman engaged in an affair with one of the teachers is murdered, apparently struck down by some sort of beast. More killings follow, and suspicion soon falls on the arrival, who …

Come On, Tarzan (K.B.S. Productions / World Wide, 1932)

Ken Maynard’s horse plays a major role in this picture (he’s the title character) — although for much of the film, Tarzan isn’t really Ken’s horse, but rather a smart, free-ranging equine that helps to foil the aims of horse rustlers who want the wild creatures for dog food. Maynard plays a likeable character, as …

Riders of Destiny (Lone Star / Monogram, 1933)

John Wayne is Singin’ Sandy Saunders, a government agent who is working undercover to investigate in response to ranchers’ complaints about Kincaid (Forrest Taylor), a businessman who controls nearly all the water in the area and is forcing the landowners to pay up or is by denying them the water needed for their livestock. The …