Author Archive: Retro

A penal colony governor invites a ravishing blond vagabond to join him for a week on his island prison grounds, unaware that she has manipulated their meeting for ulterior motives.

An Army pilot and his mechanic are captured by bandits when their plane develops mechanical trouble in Mexico.

Alfafa (Carl Switzer), Orvie (Bennie Bartlett), Scat (Rudy Wissler) and the gang look for stars and find a murder.

When a dry spell threatens their livelihood, two farm brothers become vagrants.

A young couple pose as criminals in order to get the goods on their crooked bosses.

At the Bainbridge Research Foundation, Professor Franklin Arnold, displays his creation, the Metalogen Man, a robot, to Professor Ernst and three other colleagues. Shortly afterward, the three associates are killed by Thor (Ray Corrigan, in his for-rent ape suit), a huge ape trained by Ernst, and Arnold, his daughter Babs and Ken Morgan, a representative of the company for whom the robot was made, find it has been stolen. Their 15-chapter search for Thor, the robot and Ernst leads to a series of cliff-hanging adventures as Ernst strives to gain control of the robot and the supply of metalogen needed for its production.

Alvin Merle, a womanizing Broadway matinée idol, is found strangled in his dressing room. The door is locked from the inside and there is no possible other way into the room. Merle is having an affair with his leading lady, while his wife, actress Ethel Wynn, appearing in another play in a theater around the corner, is doing the same with Frank Murray, the stage manager on Merle’s play. Newspaper reporter Jim Ryan is investigating the case and meets Jean Royce, a young actress who had been fired from the play while in rehearsals. Everybody, including Michael, the old actor now relegated to being just a stage-doorman, has a motive. The explanation for the murder lies within the script of the play.

After her fiancé, Ronald Bruce (Bruce Seton), breaks their engagement, fearing he will be financially dependent on her recent lottery winnings, stenographer Carol Howard (Ann Harding) decides to rent her apartment and go to France. Debonair Gerald Lovell (Basil Rathbone) comes to look at the apartment, and later turns up on her boat. Carol falls in love with Gerald, and the two elope. But upon returning to England, he has them move to an isolated home, and Carol begins to suspect and fear him.

In this pre-Pearl Harbor recruiting poster, colonel’s estranged son Bill Burke, football hero Donald Morse, and hillbilly Jeff Hollis enlist in the paratroopers. Their training at Fort Benning, Georgia is followed in semi-documentary style, with time out for personal dramas and the romantic rivalry of Bill and Don over the sergeant’s daughter.