Author Archive: Retro

In and around some great blues, swing and jazz music, a very unpopular band-leader. Prince Ellis, is killed in a Harlem nightclub, and, in and around some more great music, a detective finds the lists of suspects is very long, as Prince Ellis was indeed very unpopular with many citizens.

Description Coming Soon

Criminals plant a bomb on a high-speed train. It will explode when the train slows down, unless a ransom is paid.

It is Richard Talmadge times two in this low-budget action adventure about a young man, Dick Rainey, who switches places with Norman Gray, a look-alike thief out to double-cross the gang. The latter ends up very much dead and Dick has a hard time explaining his real identity. Lovely Audrey Ferry (Janet Chandler) believes him, though, and together they catch the real crooks. Filmed at Universal by Reliable Pictures Corp., Now or Never was retitled Tearing Into Trouble when released to television in the early ’50s. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

Stuffy father tries to fix up his playboy son with a poor, honest young woman, but she falls for dad instead. Dir. George Archainbaud.

Hopkins spends much of the movie playing out scenarios of how his murder trial would play out if he killed his wife, with a portrait ofhis father playing the judge. He goes through different methods of killing her, and playsout the trial until he finds the mistake in his plan. These one-man scenes are very funny,and Hopkins delivers them expertly, as one would expect.

Man gets in trouble with the law for beating up on the wealthy man who’s leading his underage sister astray.

The kids get in hot water when they try to help a young girl and find themselves accused of murder. Features the two-fisted boys from Dead End in the comedy/drama series. Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan, Gabe Dell and Billy Benedict.

Mugs McGinniss (Leo Gorcey), top dog of the East Side Kids, takes a job at an airplane plant. Here he grows suspicious of Dr. Nagel (George Pembroke), operator of a flying ambulance service. Mugs becomes convinced that Nagel is using his plane to smuggle aviation secrets to a gang of enemy agents, but he can’t prove his allegations. With the help of his East Side pals Danny (Bobby Jordan), Scruno (“Sunshine Sammy” Morrison), Peewee (David Gorcey) and Louie (Bobby Stone), Mugs gets the goods on the duplicitous Doc-but nearly gets killed in the process. A not-bad combination of comedy and melodrama, Flying Wild offers the viewers a more intelligent group of “East Side Kids” than they’re accustomed to. Even so, this is the film in which Leo Gorcey introduces the comic malapropisms for which he became famous.