The Film Detective

In his only turn as Tarzan, 1936 Olympic decathlon champion Glenn Morris cavorts in the jungle with another Olympian, swimming star Eleanor Holm. Neither athlete pursued a movie career, so this film is a rarity in that we see them together! Also of note to film buffs is the musical score by Oscar nominated Hugo Riesenfeld (Make a Wish), one of the top composers of Hollywood's early sound era. Riesenfeld worked with such giants of the cinema as Cecil B. DeMille, D.W. Griffith, and F.W. Murnau.

Buster Crabbe swings into action in one of his earliest roles. Tarzan the Fearless was originally a 12 chapter serial from Sol Lesser Productions, a company known for its westerns and jungle titles. Director Robert F. Hill would go on to direct Crabbe in Flash Gordon (1936), but Crabbe's career really kicked off with this jungle adventure. The former Olympic swimming champion had previously auditioned and failed to get the role of Tarzan, but after appearing in a Tarzan knockoff called King of...

James V. Kern went on to direct some of the top television shows of the 1950s and '60s, but not before directing this taut suspense tale. In the tradition of Hitchcock classics like Spellbound and Rebecca, this movie centers around a woman (Betsy Drake) who finds herself involved with a mysterious man (Robert Young) who may or may not be in grave danger. With cinematography by two -time Oscar winner Hal Mohr (The Phantom of the Opera, A Midsummer Night's Dream), this is a lush piece of...

Rival newspapermen see their feud go too far in this zany film from the Producers Releasing Company (PRC), a group known for quickie, low budget movies that entertained audiences throughout the war years. Starring J. Edward Bromberg, Isabel Randolph, and Frank Jenks, this laugher from director Albert Herman (Shake Hands With Murder, Delinquent Daughters) features blackmailers, a mysterious killer, and the feistiest corpse you've ever seen!

Bela Lugosi and the East Side Kids team up in this crazy comedy from Monogram Pictures. Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Sunshine Sammy Morrison and the rest of the gang find themselves at a spooky mansion owned by the mysterious Nardo (Lugosi). Things get weird when the boys see one of their pals walking around in a trance. Did Nardo turn him into a zombie? Watch and find out!

Untamed maidens capture their mates! Savage in battle... primitive in love... prehistoric beauties live by the code of the jungle! This schlock epic from Jaywall Productions (Naked Africa) is about a tribe of beautiful women on the tropical island of Wongo. They discover that the other side of the island is inhabited by a tribe of handsome men. But a tribe of evil ape men live on the island, too, and that's never any fun. Joyce Nizzari, Playboy magazine's Playmate of the month in December 1958...

Bob Livingston and his fellow Mesquiteers Ray Corrigan and Max Terhune are ready...for a fight or a frolic at the bark of a gun or the wink of an eye! But there's no time for love when a range war looms! This Republic Pictures western from director Mack V. Wright (Winds of the Wasteland) finds a man wrongly accused of murder, in a town where no one gets a fair trial.

Some incredibly small actors were hired to star in this peculiar cult film. It's all about the villainous Bat Haines ('Little Billy' Rhodes), who is wreaking havoc on Tiny Town. Can Buck Lawson (Billy Curtis) and the townspeople band together and drive him away? This oddity, which was originally distributed by Columbia Pictures, was directed by one of the most prolific low budget filmmakers in Hollywood history, Sam Newfield, a man with over 200 movies to his credit. While it has appeared on...

Those roughneck rascals are running wild again! The East Side Kids tangle with former boxing star Maxie Rosenbloom in this comedy drama about Danny (Bobby Jordan) winning a 200 -dollar reward for helping to nab a wanted criminal. The boys get upset when he doesn't share the money, but the gang can't stay mad at each other for long. Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, and Ernest "Sunshine Sammy" Morrison star, and of course,Rosenbloom appears as Butch Brocalli. What a finish!

Englishmen fighting Nazis in Africa use an exotic woman to vanquish the enemy in this forgotten gem from director Henry Hathaway (Niagara, How the West Was Won). The film stars Bruce Cabot, George Sanders, Harry Carey, Cedric Hardwicke, Dorothy Dandridge, and the lovely Gene Tierney as Zia, the mystery woman. How did she end up among the natives? With a musical score by the great Miklos Rozsa (Ben Hur, The Thief of Bagdad) and cinematography by Oscar winner Charles Lang (A Farewell to Arms),...

William Lundigan and Virginia Bruce star in this tense drama about a U.S. Foreign Service officer trying to outsmart a Chinese warlord who has captured a village and threatened several American citizens with execution! Prodigious director Sam Newfield (The Terror of Tiny Town) worked under the pseudonym "Peter Stewart" for this feature, for fear audiences wouldn't understand how one man could have directed so many movies! The end result is a memorable potboiler, also starring Jonathan Hale,...

Mona Freeman stars as Ziggy Brennan, a feisty girl who's always getting the wrong advice; first from her gold-digging mother, and then from a local huckster. Ziggy means well, and she'll be the first to tell you that there's a girl like her in every town. You'll wish you could reach out to help her in this stirring Republic Pictures film from director Alfred Santell. The film also stars Oscar winner James Dunn (A Tree Grows In Brooklyn), and features art direction by Oscar nominated James...