(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...

(1960) Terence Morgan, Hazel Court, Donald Pleasence, Robert Beatty.  This is a great British crime film.  Morgan gets out of the slammer and sets up what seems to be a legitimate modeling agency.  Back of it all, though, is a blackmail operation...

(1960, Anamorphic Widescreen) Adrian Hoven, Renate Ewert, Hans von Borsody, Jochen Brockmann.  This cool Krimi offering is available with English subtitles for the first time.  Inside a smoky nightclub called “the Green Spider” a beautiful singer finishes her song, then the band takes over, playing a raucous jazzy tune.  Lost in all the noise is the sound of a gunshot...

(1953) Gordon Jackson, Barbara Murray, Pamela Alan, Jane Aird, Sam Kyd. The setting is an all-girls school.  A teacher is found lying in a wooded area next to the school—choked to death with a scarf.  Murray, one of the first on the scene, is shocked to find that the scarf is hers!...

(1952) Patrick Barr, Tucker McGuire, Tod Slaughter, Frank Hawkins. These two episodes are from an obscure Brit detective TV series.  Barr, as Morley, is an ex-police inspector, now in private practice.  He’s called in by two elderly sisters who say that someone is plotting to kill them...

(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...

(1950) Lee J. Cobb, Jane Wyatt, John Dall, Lisa Howard. Cobb is a tough homicide detective who gets involved with a real black widow, a dame who’s willing to kill her husband—and does!  Cobb, blinded by infatuation, wants to turn a blind eye to the situation...

(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...

(1934) Leslie Banks. Anne Grey, Carol Goodner, Frank Cellier, Frances L. Sullivan.  Don’t let the non-descript title fool you, this is one tough, mean-spirited thriller about insurance fraud and murder.  Banks is marvelous as a slick talking fire insurance investigator who falls in with a gang of arsonists...

(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...

(1974, Anamorphic Widescreen Edition) Senta Berger, Luc Merenda, Umberto Orsini, Anita Strindberg, Bruno Corazzari.  This is a very well-made Euro-thriller with Merenda playing a bewildered man who’s lost his memory as the result of a car crash...

(1969, Anamorphic Widescreen Edition) Joachim Fuchsberger, Konrad Georg, Horst Tappert, Arthur Richelmann, Karin Hübner.  This film plays, in places, like an Edgar Wallace film; in other places like a seedy JD movie filled with troubled youths.  At a boarding school for boys a firebrand student goes missing.  It’s theorized he may have met with foul play.  When his rich father also goes missing...

(1964, Anamorphic Widescreen) Heinz Drache, Elga Anderson, Ralf Wolter, Sabine Sesselmann. Drache is a suave private eye.  He’ss dumped into the middle of a murder mystery when a woman is shot dead in his office with his own gun...

(1956) Googie Withers, John McCallum, Bill Kerr, Joan Hickson, Ewan Roberts.  This is a pretty good British B thriller. A couple of sailors come ashore in London looking for a good time and a few laughs before returning to their ship...

 (1956) Ida Lupino, Ralph Moody, Walter Coy, Richard Lupino.  Ida and her kid brother (her real life cousin, Richard) plot to kill Ida’s husband and collect the insurance money.  They use a gas leak to commit the crime.  The only problem is her husband’s invalid father...

(1953) Boris Karloff, Ewan Roberts, Sheila Burrell, Richard Wattis, Joan Sims.  In this enjoyable anthology of three episodes of Colonel March of Scotland Yard, Karloff plays the smooth-talking title character.  He’s faced with three seemingly weird cases...

(1945) Bernard Blier, Sophie Desmarets, Jacques Pills, Jean Davy, Louis Salou, Ginette Baudin.  This isn’t a good movie, it’s a great movie—one of the best mysteries we’ve released in a long, long time. Blier is the rookie detective assigned to the murder-by-strangling cases of two young women.  The only clue he has is that the killer is always heard softly singing a current hit tune before he strikes...