Steve Reynolds (Charles Starrett) and Smiley (Smiley Burnette) come to the aid of an Indian boy who has inherited a contract to round up wild horses for the Army, which he can keep only so long as he manages to deliver 300 head within a month’s time. The nefarious Grat Hanlon (Clayton Moore) deploys his …
Read the full post →“<em>Cyclone Fury</em> (Columbia, 1951)”
Tarzan (Lex Barker) finds a young boy (Tommy Carlton) and brings him home, while at the same time he and Jane (Dorothy Hart) receive a visit from a man purporting to be Tarzan’s cousin (Patric Knowles), though in fact one of two crooks (the other played by Charles Korvin) who have murdered the real cousin …
Read the full post →“<em>Tarzan’s Savage Fury</em> (RKO, 1952)”
This British movie offers a disappointing version of a standard mystery plot — a wealthy but unpleasant relative (here an uncle) brings the family together to talk about his will (which he might change!) but is soon the victim of a killer, and the rest of the movie involves attempts to uncover the culprit. The …
Read the full post →“<em>Three Steps in the Dark</em> (1953)”
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)”
Joel McCrea does a solid job as a stage company detective seeking to uncover the crook(s) responsible for recent holdups. To accomplish his goal, he goes to work for the local sheriff (Addison Richards) as deputy. Velvet Clark (Mark Stevens), the man responsible for the crimes, proves to be a ruthless killer, and though the …
David McCallum falls short as a special agent sent to Mexico undercover as a would-be drug dealer in an effort to trap a Mafia boss (Rip Torn). The complicated plot involves partnering with a drug lord (Telly Savalas) who has lost access to the U.S. and thus luring the Mafia to try to shut down …
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)”
Movie star Shelah Fane (Dorothy Revier), who is contemplating marriage to Alan Jaynes (William Post, Jr.) but whose past connection with the death of actor Denny Mayo weighs upon her, is found murdered in her pavilion ahead of an evening party. Charlie Chan (Warner Oland) investigates, with no help from his offspring — such less …
Ming loyalists battle Manchus in this historical tale, originally titled Wu lin ke zhan, that offers some twists — including one that was a surprise to me but others that were fairly obvious — but drags despite a good deal of action, in part because the editing makes it hard to follow. Carter Wong stars …
Read the full post →“<em>Shaolin’s Magnificent Disciples</em> (1977)”
In the days leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a somewhat shady nightclub owner (Preston Foster) gets tangled up with a British spy (Lynn Bari) and the Japanese forces in Shanghai when his club is used as the delivery spot for a coded letter with explosive contents. The leads are unimpressive, but …
Read the full post →“<em>Secret Agent of Japan</em> (Twentieth Century Fox, 1942)”
