(1941) Harry Baur, Renée Faure, Marie-Hélène Dasté, Raymond Rouleau, Robert Le Vigan.  A fascinating film with a wonderful music score.  It’s Christmas Eve in a snow-covered mountain community.  The children are just getting out of school when a darkly-clad baron returns to his nearby chateau after a ten-year absence.  He is in hiding because of leprosy.  Meanwhile, a mysterious intruder attacks a local priest while attempting to steal a sacred ring from the church... 

 (1960, Anamorphic Widescreen) Spencer Teakle, Felicity Young, Martin Benson, Hugh Latimer, Dorinda Stevens, Dawn Brooks.  A couple of burglars (one old, one young) crack the safe in a jewelry shop, but just as they’re making their getaway they’re attacked by rival gangsters.  The young one manages to escape...

(1946, United Artists, Upgraded 6/15/21) Robert Cummings, Peter Lorre, Steve Cochran, Michele Morgan, Jack Holt, Lloyd Corrigan. A minor film classic!  Intriguing story of an ex-G.I. who, by the simple act of returning a lost wallet, finds himself mixed up with hardened criminals. Cochran and Lorre give terrific low-key performances as a couple of overdressed psychos. The horrific scene with Lloyd Corrigan will...

(1928) Helene Costello, Cullen Landis, Wheeler Oakman, Mary Carr, Eugene Pallette.  Here it is, filmdom’s first all-talking picture.  The setting is a Broadway speakeasy.  Landis is a gullible kid from upstate who’s taken in by a couple of crooks, thinking that they’re going to help him...

(1929) Conrad Nagel, Leila Hyams, Margaret Wycherly, Helene Millard, Bela Lugosi; Richard Dix, Miriam Seegar, Margaret Livingston, Lucien Littlefield.  The Thirteenth Chair is a good early-talkie whodunit... Seven Keys to Badpate is a well-done old dark hotel comedy-thriller...

(1929) Anny Ondra, John Longden, Sara Allgood, Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.  A pretty girl goes on a date with a young male artist.  When he gets her to his apartment he tries to rape her.  She kills him in self-defense...  Bonus Feature: THE FLYING SCOTSMAN (1929) Moore Marriott, Pauline Johnson, Ray Milland.  Milland (who was only 21 at the time) plays a fireman stoking the flames on the Flying Scotsman train from London to Edinburgh...

(1945, PRC) Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Claudia Drake, Tim Ryan, Edmund MacDonald.  Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer.  A film noir classic. Neal plays a down on his luck musician who thumbs a ride that leads him into an unbelievable series of circumstances that finds him implicated in murder and crime...

(1941, PRC) Kane Richmond, Pauline Moore, John Miljan, Wynne Gibson.  Here’s a PRC crime film that hasn’t been around that much.  Gibson guns down a cop who’s raiding her boss Miljan’s gambling joint.  Her boyfriend, also a cop, grabs the gun but...

(1964, Anamorphic Widescreen) Peter Vaughan, John Carson, Yvonne Romain, Gerald Flood, Glynn Edwards, Sam Kydd.  What a cool movie this turned out to be (7.0 on IMDB).  In the opening moments of the film, a blazing car goes crashing over a seaside cliff, plunging into the murky waters below and killing its driver.  The deceased had been insured for 100,000 pounds...

(1951) John Bentley, Carol Marsh, Roddy Rogers.  The Toff was a well-known, upper crust British detective character who appeared in magazines, books, and films, dating back to the early 1930s.  In this, his first motion appearance, he is well-played by John Bentley, who played him in both Toff films.  In this fast-moving mystery, a man walks out of a nightclub onto a darkened street.  Moments later he is knifed in the back...

(1959, Anamorphic Widescreen) Karl-Arne Holmsten, Annalisa Ericson, Gunnel Broström, Bengt Brunskog, Nils Hallberg, Gio Petré, Björn Bjelfvenstam, Mona Malm.  Rider in Blue is part of a series of five detective thrillers directed by the incomparable Arne Mattsson and featuring Holmsten as detective John Hillman.  The plot here is pretty straightforward, while Hillman is tackling an assignment in London, his wife (Ericson) visits an Army riding school...

(1952) Dermot Walsh, Barbara Murray, Charles Victor, John Blythe, Thora Hird, John Horseley.  Walsh is a college lad who shatters his father’s dreams when he is basically expelled from Oxford University for being a bit of an upstart...

(1952) John Bentley, Patricia Dainton, John Robinson, Valentine Dyall, Lockwood West.  Bentley is the Toff, a “Saint” style detective who falls upon a sinister plot while on a train.  It seems that a criminal known as “the Hammer” is looking to steal a secret formula for a new lightweight metal alloy that’s tougher than steel...

(1942, Warners) Faye Emerson, Julie Bishop, Frank Wilcox, Jackie Gleason, Roland Drew.  Emerson is a struggling actress who’s almost broke and desperately needs money.  So she agrees to help three crooks in their bank robbery scheme...

(1935) Jack Hulbert, Fay Wray, Ralph Richardson, Claude Hulbert, Gibb McLaughlin, Atholl Fleming.  Master sleuth Bulldog Drummond pulls into a gas station where his car is sabotaged by crooks.  Minutes later he crashes into Hulbert’s vehicle.  In the hospital, the injured Drummond asks Hulbert to temporarily masquerade as him...

(1929) William Powell, Jean Arthur, James Hall, Louise Brooks, Charles Lane, Lawrence Grant, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Eugene Pallette, Ned Sparks. As early talkies go, this is a pretty good whodunit, with gorgeous silent star Brooks as a shrewd nightclub singer known as “the Canary.”  She has a bad habit of blackmailing her acquaintances...

(1945, Upgraded 3/3/21) Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Claudia Drake, Edmund MacDonald, Tim Ryan. A film noir classic. Neal plays a down on his luck musician who thumbs a ride that leads him into an unbelievable series of circumstances that finds him implicated in murder. Savage is priceless as the female psycho who...

 (1964, Anamorphic Widescreen) Heinz Drache, Ingmar Zeisberg, Paul Klinger, Judith Dornys, Friedrich Joloff.  The utterly imposing Dartmoor prison is surrounded on all sides by perilous swamps.  Yet a dozen prisoners have escaped in recent years—none of whom have ever been seen again...