(1932) Conrad Veidt, Esther Ralston, Hugh Williams, Donald Calthrop, Cedric Hardwicke.  Like any good train murder mystery, there is an assortment of interesting characters, each seemingly with something to hide...

 (1969) Philippe Leroy, Dagmar Lassander, Lorenza Guerrieri, Varo Soleri.  This has become kind of a cult classic over the years.  Leroy, who was wonderfully delightful in the Seven Golden Men films, plays, with much conviction, a sadistic millionaire with a penchant for degrading women.  It’s all part of his elaborate S&M fantasies, in which he abducts beautiful young women...

(1975) Gloria Guida, Paolo Carlini, Annie Carol Edel, Gianluigi Chirizzi.  A young, sexually free-spirited drifter falls in love for an older man, who she claims is her long-lost father.  She comes to live with him and causes no end of trouble...

(1932) Pierre Renoir, Georges Térof, Winna Winifried, G. A. Martin, Michel Duran, directed by Jean Renoir.  A diamond merchant is found dead, murdered, inside a car near a gloomy, muddy, foggy French crossroads...

(1937) Edmund Lowe, Constance Cummings. Thomy Bourdelle, Henry Oscar, Joyce Kennedy.  This is an excellent Gaumont thriller.  Lowe plays a devil-may-care American detective traveling abroad in France.  During a costume party he finds a corpse in his hotel room, which conveniently disappears when he leaves to fetch the manager.   When the body disappears, Lowe and Cummings are lead on a trail of death and destruction...

(1943) Fernand Ledoux, Georges Rollin, Blanchette Brunoy, Robert Le Vigan, Arthur Devere, Albert Remy, Germaine Kerjean.  Rollin plays a long lost member of the “Groupi” family who has been called home to the family manor in the French countryside to marry his beautiful young cousin.  Before long he finds himself victimized by various family members, partly for fun, partly from hatred...

(1946) Viviane Romance, Michel Simon, Max Dalban, Evile Drain, Guy Favieres.  Romance and Dalban are lovers—she would do anything for him, including a stretch in women’s prison for a crime she didn’t commit.  When an elderly woman is murdered in the neighborhood (for money), suspicion falls Dalban’s way.  Simon, as Dr. Vargas (aka Mr. Hire), has witnessed the crime and has proof of Dalban’s guilt...

(1964, aka DER HEXER, Anamorphic Widescreen) Joachim Fuchsberger, Heinz Drache, Sophie Hardy, Carl Lange, Eddi Arent.  The sister of a famous, but as yet uncaught, criminal named The Hexer is murdered. Inspector Higgins of Scotland Yard believes that The Hexer will surface to take his revenge on his sister's killers, and plans to set a trap to finally capture him. However, soon bodies start piling up...

(1954) Arthur Kennedy, Constance Smith, Joy Shelton, Jack Allen, James Carney, Cameron Hall.  Kennedy play an American realtor living an unexciting life in England.  Adventure falls into his lap, though, on a weekend when his wife is out of town and he meets up with a gorgeous dame...

(1959) J Radovan Lukavský, Jirí Vala, Jirina Svorcová, Stanislav Remunda.  Being that this is a communist film from Czechoslovakia, it’s quite well done and genuinely exciting at times—a little grim, too, in places.  The story concerns the Czech border guards of the late 1940s and their constant challenges in keeping the smuggler and refugee problem in check (pun intended)...

(1953) Frank Lovejoy, Edmund O'Brien, William Talman, Jose Torvay.  This is truly one of the most gripping film noir classics you'll ever see. The plot concerns two vacationing businessmen who are held captive by a psychopath. The hitch-hiking killer puts his companions through sheer hell as they roll through the lonely highways of Mexico...  

(1946) Edward G. Robinson, Orson Welles, Loretta Young, Richard Long, Philip Merivale.  Robinson is excellent as the soft-spoken investigator, Mr. Wilson of the War Crimes Commission.  He is searching for the notorious Franz Kindler, one of the masterminds of the Holocaust, who is hiding, incognito, in plain sight.  Robinson releases one of Kindler's former cronies in an effort to track down his target, but he is murdered before he...

M (1951) David Wayne, Howard Da Silva, Martin Gabel, Raymond Burr, Luther Adler, Steve Brodie.  A well-done remake of the ’31 Lorre classic.  A mad killer is murdering small kids (this time in L.A.). The cops are combing the underworld, looking for the maniac. MOTHER RILEY MEETS THE VAMPIRE (1951) Bela Lugosi, Arthur Lucan, Maria Mercedes, Dora Bryan. Although this was officially a “Mother Riley” film, the real star here is Bela, who brings to his part an intensity not seen since his early ‘30s films. Worth it for him alone. Bela plots to dominate the world with an army of robots.

BLOOD DEMON (1967, Anamorphic) Christopher Lee, Lex Barker, Karin Dor, Carl Lange.  Barker sentences Lee, the evil Count Regula, to death for slaying 12 virgins.  Many years later, Lee returns from the dead to claim revenge on Barker’s son. THE HUNCHBACK OF SOHO (1968, Anamorphic) Gunther Stoll, Pinkas Braun, Monika Peitsch. Terrifying things are happening around the grounds of an old castle, within which is a boarding house for delinquent girls... 

Armchair Fiction presents classic science fiction double novels with original illustrations. The leadoff novel is “The Secret of Elena’s Tomb” by Karl Tanzler von Cosel. This is a novelized true story of death and rejuvenation. And readers beware, this frightfully delicious tale of love, obsession, and science gone mad is morbidly true and not for the faint of heart.  The second novel is Amazing Stories regular Leroy Yerxa’s “Witch of Blackfen Moor.” Summoned just before midnight, Doctor Thaddius Quantry raced to the looming fortress of Blackfen manor, which stood in the desolation of the moors as an unwavering beacon in the darkness. As he neared the manor, an agonized scream broke through the eerie stillness of the moor.

HIGH SCHOOL BIG SHOT (1959, Anamorphic) Tom Pittman, Virginia Aldridge, Malcom Atterbury, Howard Veidt. Gritty teenage crime drama about a smart, but geeky high school kid who makes the mistake of falling for a pretty face. ANATOMY OF A PSYCHO (1961, Anamorphic) Ronnie Burns, Darrell Howe, Judy Howard, Russ Bender. A juvenile delinquent swears revenge on all those who helped send his wacko brother to the gas chamber... 

THE BACCHANTES (1961, Anamorphic) Taina Elg, Pierre Brice, Alberto Lupo, Akim Tamiroff, Alessandra Panaro.  To ward off a drought, the king of Thebes plans the sacrifice a young virgin. But the god Dionysus intervenes, bringing Thebes a torrent of rain, sparing the girl’s life seconds before death.  SAMSON (1961, Anamorphic) Brad Harris, Walter Reeves, Mara Berni, Brigitte Corey, Alan Steel.  Samson attempts to restore a queen to her rightful throne... 

ALICE, OR THE LAST ESCAPADE (1977, Anamorphic) Sylvia Kristel, Charles Vanel, Ferdinand Ledoux, Francois Perrot. A woman drives through the night on a lonely road.  After a breakdown, she seeks help from a strange man and his butler who reside in a nearby creepy mansion.  FOOTPRINTS ON THE MOON (1976, Anamorphic) Florinda Balkon, Klaus Kinski, John Karlsen, Peter McEnery. An astronaut is purposely left on the moon as part of a bizarre experiment...