George Hamilton, Cameron Mitchell, Lucianna Paluzzi. This is a real bad movie gem (2.5 on IMDB).  A luxurious yacht is found floating on the Aegean Sea, apparently abandoned, except for two lifeless bodies.  Proceeding from this perplexing beginning, the story—which is told in flashback by Hamilton (who's dead!), revolves around a Greek setting where a stewardess is viciously killed by a masked maniac...

(1929) William Black, Viola Richard, directed by Charles L. Glett.  Don’t bother looking, you won’t find this incredibly rare American-made crime featurette in any of the major film research books or websites.  It’s a little creaky but interesting—especially from a film history perspective.  PLUS:  BOTHERED BY A BEARD (1945) Tod Slaughter, Jerry Verno, John Salew.  Todd does a short reprisal of his Sweeny Todd character...

(1931) Lowell Sherman, Peggy Shannon, Lila Lee, Berton Churchill, David Landau, Joyce Compton.  Sherman gives a grand performance as a doctor who’s fired from his hospital job for being morally corrupt.  He then sets himself up as a plastic surgeon, although he is completely unqualified.   He seduces women, rips off his patients, and soon causes an operating room tragedy that lands him in criminal court...

(1936) Clive Brook, Victoria Hopper, Malcom Keen, Nora Swinburne.  Brook plays a drunken socialite who crashes his car on a lonely coastal spot where a smuggling operation is underway.  The smugglers don’t take kindly to being to discovered and beat the daylights out of him.  Later on he stumbles into a relationship with a girl who happens to be the brother of one of the smugglers...

(1956) Dinos Iliopoulos, Margarita Papageorgiou, Marika Lekaki, Giannis Argyris.  This is a brilliant piece of Greek filmmaking, filled with wonderful performances and perfectly written pieces of dialogue.  A peaceful, frightened little man is mistakenly identified as "the dragon", a notorious criminal at large and known womanizer. He somewhat reluctantly rules the local underworld until...

CROSS-UP (1958) Larry Parks, Constance Smith, Lisa Daniely, Donald Stewart. On the first night of his London assignment, news agency reporter Parks becomes heavily involved with a mysterious woman (Daniely). The affair ends when she is shot as they grapple for a gun she has pulled.  But this is only the beginning of Parks’ troubles, especially considering the dead woman worked for a criminal organization...

(1959) Horst Buckholz, Mario Adorf, Helmut Schmid, Alf Marholm.  Buckholz gives the performance of his life as a human castoff, in international limbo, because of the loss of his passport.  He is conned into taking a job on a tramp steamer filled with misfits, smugglers, and murderers.  Soon after realizing his plight, he and his pal discover the ship’s cargo isn’t exactly what it’s purported to be...  

(1962) Liz Fraser, Kenneth Griffith, Peter Reynolds, Tony Wickert, David Hemmings. Two small-time blackmail artists (a man and woman) run afoul of a brutal gangster, who  stabs the man to death in his apartment as a warning for others to stay clear of his territory.  But when the woman shows up with an intended victim (a drunken student), the body is discovered and the student, in a drunken stupor, agrees to dispose of it...

(1972) Stelio Candelli, Patrizia Viotti, Veronika Korosec, Rossella Bergamonti, Tom Felleghy.  A man finds his wife brutally murdered. He has no alibi so is instructed by his lawyer to go into hiding in an old, abandoned hotel. Strange occurrences start happening immediately, including the discovery of a woman with her throat cut! The hotel setting of this film is in some ways reminiscent of The Shining...

(1979) Toshiyuki Nishida, Isao Natsuyagi, Haruko Wanibuchi, Tomoko Saitô.  This is a really well-made Japanese “locked room” murder mystery set in the 1930s.  The famous Nipponese detective Kindaichi is called in to investigate a number of horrible slayings.  His investigations soon point the finger at members of a wealthy family—a family that, as it turns out, has many dark secrets to hide...

(1935, Mascot) Victor Jory, Evelyn Venable, Ralph Forbes, Esther Ralston.  A group of people become entangled in a web of intrigue on board a super-duper streamline passenger train, streaking across the countryside.  On board are a crook, a stage director, an actress and a number of other characters...  

(1938) Erich von Stroheim, Michel Simon, Armand Bernard, Aimé Clariond, Serge Grave.  This is another forgotten von Stroheim gem.  A group of college boys form a secret society with an ultimate plan of going to America.  There’s a mystery afoot, though, when people start disappearing.  Things take a turn for the worse when an art professor turns up dead—murdered!  

(1952) Tod Slaughter, Patrick Barr, Tucker McGuire, Ingeborg von Kusserow.  Tod is up to his nefarious plans once again as he plans an elaborate scheme for blackmail.  Barr plays the detective who’s out to bring him to justice.  There’s murder and mayhem aplenty in this curious film.  Tod has some priceless bits of dialogue, complimented here and there with his maniacal laughter...

(1960) Joel Rinne, Elina Pohjanpää, Matti Ranin, Leo Jokela, Leo Riuttu. This is a good old-fashioned closed room murder mystery.  The world famous Lieutenant Palmu is brought in to investigate when a much-despised millionaire playboy is found dead in his interior pool—murdered.  Who is the killer?  There are some nice tongue-in-cheek moments thrown into this well-made murder thriller...

(1951) Cesar Romero, John Hoyt, Hugh Beaumont, Hillary Brooke, Whit Bissell, Acquanetta. THIS IS AN ORIGINAL, FACTORY SEALED Timeless Video VHS pre-record and our quantity is limited.  An atomic powered rocket disappears over the south Pacific. An expedition to recover it lands on an unknown jungle island filled with bloodthirsty...

(1961) Bill Travers, William Sylvester, Christopher Rhodes, Bruce Seton, Vincent Winter.  THIS IS AN ORIGINAL, FACTORY SEALED VCI VHS pre-record and our quantity is limited.  This is a kind of British version of Godzilla.  Scientists capture a towering prehistoric monster and bring it back to London...

(1955) Orhan Erçin, Zafer Önen, Türkan Samil, Özcan Tekgül, Mirella Monro.  This really isn’t much of a movie, yet somehow it kind of works (5.5 on IMDB).  There’s a flying saucer, a dorky robot, an elixir of life, and a plethora of cheesy alien dames who have come to Earth looking for…you guessed it…men!  And who do they find?  

(1961) Eugenia Balaure, Haralambie Boros, Emil Botta, Florin Piersic.  This is perhaps the most surrealistic, offbeat sci-fi film ever made.  It starts with a man accidentally walking into a nuclear test area.  He is apprehended by a squad of men dressed like spacemen, all of whom are holding big ray guns.  He is soon released, but later finds himself the recipient of a fantastic, futuristic suitcase nuclear bomb...