Author Archive: Retro

The Kids stumble into a haunted house used as a hideout by a Nazi spy.

Nagel portrays an attorney defending five Jews accused of murder.

Ground-breaking pilot Dick Merrill plays himself in this exciting film about a plane owner who goes up against an airplane tycoon in a race over London. Dir. William Nigh.

Boys’ Reformatory was the third of Frankie Darro’s tough-guy vehicles for Monogram Pictures. Darro is cast as orphaned teenager Tommy, who to avoid breaking his foster-mother’s heart takes the rap for a crime committed by his foster-brother Eddie (Frank Coghlan Jr.). Sent to a dismal reform school, Tommy finds a friend in the form of school doctor Owens (Grant Withers), a tireless crusader for improved reformatory conditions. With Owens’ help, Tommy is able to take a “vacation” from the institution and round up the crooks responsible for leading Eddie astray.

In deep depression, Prince Florizel discovers an organization which helps people to commit suicide. The thing is, they don’t like these people to change their minds.

British playboy bores of his care-free existence and takes a bet that he can make his own way in the world for a year, without touching his inheritance. Dir. Alfred Zeisler.

Robin Hood star Richard Greene plays an agent who goes to the French-Spanish border to round up some smugglers and counterfeiters after his brother is murdered. He is helped by singer Anouk Aimee, who he falls in love with.

six RAF fliers are forced to bail out over occupied Holland and try to get back to England.

Fashioning an early entry in the wuxia subgenre of martial arts films – sweeping and graceful action epics with literate subtexts – the legendary Shaw Brothers modeled their 1968 Bells of Death (AKA Duo hun ling) on a traditional spaghetti western. At the story’s center is Wei Fu (Chang Yi), a seemingly unremarkable woodcutter. When his family is wiped out by psychotic marauders, Wei undertakes extensive martial arts training at the hands of an expert swordsman (Yeung Chi-hing) and sets out to exact revenge on the evildoers. En route, he encounters a young woman pathetically reduced to prostitution, and whisks her out of the sordid life that ensconces her. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi