Starring Vincent Price and Lynn Bari. This is the first movie to show the effects of the powerful mind-control drug scopolamine. Scopolamine was used in Nazi Germany as an interrogation tool and is widely used by intelligence agencies around the world. Lynn Bari is an anxious housewife who witnesses a murder and turns to a psychiatrist to help her mental anxiety. Unfortunately the psychiatrist is also the murderer and begins to drive the unfortunate woman insane with scopolamine. A great film noir on the dangers of mind-control drugs.
The Phantom is a 1943 Columbia Pictures 15 chapter black-and-white cliffhanger superhero serial, produced by Rudolph C. Flothow, directed B. Reeves Eason, and starring Tom Tyler in the title role. It is based on Lee Falk’s comic strip The Phantom, first syndicated to newspapers in 1936 by King Features Syndicate. The serial also features Jeanne Bates as the Phantom’s girlfriend Diana Palmer, and Ace the Wonder Dog as the Phantom’s trusty German shepherd Devil (who is a wolf in the original comic strip).
A newspaper publisher and his Korean servant fight crime as vigilantes who pose as a notorious masked gangster and his aide. Wealthy publisher Britt Reid and his trusted Korean valet and sidekick disguise themselves as the crime fighting vigilantes, The Green Hornet and Kato. They battle the growing power of a ruthless crime lord “Boss” Crogan and his varied rackets across the city, all of which have strong links to unfriendly foreign powers… With Warren Hull, Wade Boteler and Keye Luke. Look out Bruce Lee, here come Keye Luke as Kato.
John Hart stars as Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy, who battles the evil Dr. Grood, who has placed a death ray aboard his spaceship orbiting Earth. In this exciting serial, Jack Armstrong and his friends attempt to rescue a renowned scientist, the inventor of a revolutionary atomic engine, from the clutches an arch-villain bent on world-dominion by means of a death ray place on board a aircraft capable of flying into the ionosphere. Their quest takes the adventurers to a remote island where they must not only contend with the criminal mastermind’s henchmen, but a fierce tribe who have their own reasons for thwarting our heroes. One of the great radio shows and exciting serials of the 1940s.
Secret Service Major Steel (Joseph W. Girard), is one of the few men in America aware of the fact that Captain Albright (Dave O’Brien) is also Captain Midnight, daring masked aviator dedicated to fighting gangsters and enemies of America. When murderous bombing attacks are made on West Coast munitions plants, Steel sends for Albright and asks him to track down the mysterious Ivan Shark (James Craven), the foreign agent mastermind behind the attacks. Shark has learned about an ingenious range finder, invented by John Edwards (Bryant Washburn, and makes plans to obtain a model of the invention. Edwards instructs his daughter, Joyce (Dorothy Short), to bring the model to Albright for safekeeping in his mountain laboratory. Shark takes Edwards prisoner by Albright assures Joyce that her father will be saved and an end put to Shark’s reign of terror. Dressing as Captain Midnight and enlisting the aid of his friends, Chuck (Sam Edwards) and Ichabod Mudd (Guy Wilkerson), Captain Midnight delivers on his promises fourteen chapters later. An action-packed serial!
Starring Buster Crabbe, as a famous detective who sets out to discover who stole $2 million in bonds. The plot soon evolves into a game of “Bonds, Bonds, Who Has the Bonds?,” it has so many groups, and their armies of henchmen, acquiring and re-acquiring the bonds that, in a chapter or two, the people who have the bonds don’t appear to know they are the current holders. Wing Fu, brings the bonds to the USA to buy war planes for an unnamed county, and quickly loses them to Quong Lee, a Eurasian underworld chief, but they are re-taken in chapter two by Red Barry. Ballet dancer Natacha, representing a ruthless group of Russians, acquires them in chapter three, but Barry gets them back in chapter four. In action-packed scene after scene the race to control the valuable War Bonds continues over 13 chapters of cliff-hanging adventure of conspiracy and murder!
A gang of criminals, which includes a piano player and an imposing former convict known as ‘Gruesome’, has found out about a scientist’s secret formula for a gas that temporarily paralyzes anyone who breathes it. When Gruesome accidentally inhales some of the gas and passes out, the police think he is dead and take him to the morgue, where he later revives and escapes. This puzzling incident attracts the interest of Dick Tracy, and when the criminals later use the gas to rob a bank, Tracy realizes that he must devote his entire attention to stopping them. Starring Boris Karloff, Ralph Byrd, and Anne Gwynne. Karloff is great as Gruesome. The comic strip come to life!
On a scientific expedition to Siam young Billy Batson is given the ability to change himself into the super-powered Captain Marvel by the wizard Shazam, who tells him his powers will last only as long as the Golden Scorpion idol is threatened. Finding the idol, the scientists realize it could be the most powerful weapon in the world and remove the lenses that energize it, distributing them among themselves so that no one would be able to use the idol by himself. Back in the US, Billy Batson, as Captain Marvel, wages a battle against an evil, hooded figure, the Scorpion, who hopes to accumulate all five lenses, thereby gaining control of the super-powerful weapon. Captain Marvel’s is granted his powers by 6 patron deities, whose name spells his catch-phrase “Shazam.” The deities are Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles and Mercury. With Tom Tyler as Captain Marvel, Frank Coghlan Jr. as Billy Batson, plus William ‘Billy’ Benedict, Louise Currie, and Robert Strange.
Young David Worth and Joan Lawrence are children with a group of explorers that are seeking African radium deposits. They are playing in the basket of the party’s air balloon when the bag takes off with Joan aboard, last seen sailing over the back-lot jungle. A flash forward of about 18 years finds that the now-adult David Worth has returned to Africa to search for his long-lost childhood friend. Unknown to David, she was discovered by an African tribe and became their queen. He hits the trail and is quickly captured by jungle tribesmen. Starring Mary Kornman, Marilyn Spinner, and Reed Howes. A lost retro-jungle girl serial from the 30s!
Mesa of Lost Women-1953. A mad scientist named Arana is creating giant spiders and dwarfs in his lab on Zarpa Mesa in Mexico. He wants to create a master race of superwomen by injecting his female subjects with spider venom. Starring Jackie Coogan, Allan Nixon, and Richard Travis. One of those “so bad, its good” Mexican monster movies. Stay away from this mesa!
The new science teacher Dr. Julian Olcott, with a mysterious past, arrives in an institutional boarding school for female troublemakers. That night intern Mary Smith, who is blackmailing another teacher —Sir Alfred Whiteman—with some love letters, is slaughtered. The detective in charge of the investigation attributes the crime to a animal, while her mate Priscilla believes she was killed by Sir Alfred. Over the next few days, other deaths happen at the school, reducing the list of suspects. Starring Barbara Lass, Carl Schell, and Curt Lowens. This is every teacher’s nightmare! A campy monster movie from the early 60s!
Kane Richmond plays Alan Armstrong—a masked super-hero. He just happens to have an identical twin brother, Jack, who THINKS Alan was killed in a plane crash. However, it turns out the crash was staged–in order to allow Spy Smasher to work undercover to destroy the Axis menace–and Nazi spies in particular. This film finds Alan investigating a Nazi counterfeiting ring run by “The Mask.’” Starring Kane Richmond, Marguerite Chapman, and Sam Flint. The film version of the 1942 serial!
Atomic scientist/pilot Doug Martin is missing after his plane crashes on an reconnaissance mission after a nuclear test. Miraculously appearing unhurt at the base later, he is given a truth serum, but authorities are skeptical of his story that he was captured by aliens determined to conquer the Earth with giant monsters and insects. Martin vows to use existing technology to destroy them. Starring Peter Graves, James Seay, and Steve Pendleton. The classic flying saucer movie of the 50s with the star of Mission Impossible!
Charles Kessler (Bela Lugosi) is plagued by homicidal urges. His wife (Betty Compson), who had left him for another man, gets into a car accident that leaves her brain damaged and is kept in a cellar in secret, by Kessler’s gardener. When an innocent man is executed for a murder Kessler committed in the house, his twin brother visits and tries to unravel the mystery. He discovers that Kessler is the killer and doesn’t know it. His brother subdues him and contacts the police, who arrest Kessler.
On the day of Alice Wentworth’s wedding, mad scientist Dr. Lorenz sends the young bride an unusual orchid, the scent of which places the young woman in a state of suspended animation resembling death. He then spirits her body away to the basement laboratory of his isolated mansion and extracts glandular fluid from behind her ears to inject into his vain and aged wife in order to renew her youth and beauty. This is only the latest in a series of brides who appear to die at the altar and whose corpses subsequently vanish en route to the hospital or mortuary, and the police are thoroughly baffled. Starring Bela Lugosi, Luana Walters and Tristram Coffin.
Dr. Carruthers feels bitter at being betrayed by his employers, Heath and Morton, when they became rich as a result of a product he devised. He gains revenge by electrically enlarging bats and sending them out to kill his employers’ family members by instilling in the bats a hatred for a particular perfume he has discovered, which he gets his victims to apply before going outdoors. Starring Bela Lugosi, Suzanne Kaaren, and Dave O’Brien. Maybe the Devil Bat is really a Chupacabra!
Kindly soup kitchen operator and professor of criminology Karl Wagner uses his soup kitchen as a front for a criminal gang who commit a series of daring robberies and murders. When things get out of hand, Wagner kills his henchmen, who wind up as zombies in the cellar of the soup kitchen. Starring Bela Lugosi, John Archer, and Wanda McKay. A strange retro-zombie-thriller!
Entertainers Mitchell and Petrillo (Martin & Lewis clones) parachute into the jungles of the Pacific island of Cola-Cola, where they meet primitive tribesmen, the chief’s sarong-clad daughter Nona, and a mad scientist named Dr. Zabor who is conducting experiments in evolution. Seeing Duke as a threat, a jealous Dr. Zabor plans to literally make a monkey out of Duke, for he too loves Nona. Sammy tries to help his pal, with unexpected results. Starring Bela Lugosi, Duke Mitchell, Sammy Petrillo and Charlita. A goofy gorilla-bigfoot movie from the 50s!
The mad scientist Dr. Cameron has succeeded in his experiments with a serum that will turn a man into a wolf-like monster, and is ready to avenge himself on the men who caused his professional failure. He uses it on his gardener Petro and one after the other is killed by his creation. His daughter, Lenora, grows suspicious and confides with newspaper reporter Tom Gregory. Starring Johnny Downs, George Zucco, and Anne Nagel. Is it a man-made bigfoot? A great retro-horror movie from the 40s!
Animal tracker Ivan Marx opens by mentioning the film is the culmination of 10 years of research. He says that the Eskimos called the creature “bushman,” the Colville Indians “Sasquatch,” and the Hoopa “Om-mah,” but is most commonly known as Bigfoot. A notorious movie on Bigfoot from the 70s that has to be seen to be believed!
