1931-1940

Description
Often compared to Reefer Madness, this low-budget exploitation melodrama features Lois January as Jane Bradford, a small-town coffee-shop waitress falling in love with smooth-talking city hoodlum Nick Brogan (Noel Madison), who gets her hooked on cocaine. While Jane goes from pretty ingénue to a hardened nightclub habitue known as Lil, her brother Eddie (Dean Benton), a waiter in a drive-in restaurant, is persuaded by co-worker Fanny (Sheila Manners) to enjoy a night on the town. They both become addicts and Fanny is reduced to walking the streets for money. Pregnant and rejected by the hopped-up Eddie, she finally kills herself.Read More »

From original nfo file:
Another pre-war Columbia serial, made before Sam Katzman could get his grubby hands on it, and as such is pretty good. Amateur magicians wil be interested in the magic show near the beginning of Chapter One. Among the routines performed by Mandrake is the Cup and Sponge Balls. This is a very old routine, but some magicians are better than others with hand magic.
Whoever is doing the cups and balls is very good.
I have no idea who is doing the actual hand magic. Certainly not Warren Hull. You can slow it down, play it backwards, and never see him make a slip.
The rest of the magic show is pretty ho-hum.Read More »

Two newspaper reporters, Thomas “Breezy” Elliott and Jane Morgan, inadvertently send a boy named Mickey Fallon to reform school after they write an expose of the illegal slot-machine racket the boy was a spotter for. Guilt-ridden, Jane convinces Breezy that they should marry in order to adopt Mickey so they can get him out of reform school.Read More »

A federal agent poses as a criminal to infiltrate a gang of parolees seeking vengeance on the lawmen who jailed them.Read More »

Synopsis:
An ex-con (John Garfield) embittered about being wrongly imprisoned is picked up for train-hopping and sent to a work farm, where he falls in love with the stepdaughter (Priscilla Lane) of a cruel foreman (Stanley Ridges) who dies shortly after a fight. On the lam, the falsely accused couple live a low-key life thanks to the generosity of a deli owner (Henry Armetta) who hires them, and later the owner of a newspaper (Alan Hale) who hires Garfield as a photographer — but the murder allegation continues to haunt them, and Garfield is convinced he’ll never get an even break.Read More »

Cast members of a show at the Alden theatre are being terrorized by a hunchback killer known as the Fiend, using frozen bullets, and two have been killed. Newspaper reporters Jean Monroe, drama editor, and Frank Gordon, accompanied by a dumb photographer, Elmer are on the story. Jean receives a note from Ted Wallington, the star of the play,”Satan’s Bride”, to meet him. From him, she learns the note was a fake, the lights go out and the Fiend strikes again as Wallington slumps to the floor dead. Peter Fortune, the author of the show, who has helped the police solve previous cases, agrees to assist on this case, but insists on working alone. Read More »

Quote:
This is a fun one, nothing very unexpected and definitely no ‘film noir,’ but if you are into a decently acted torch-songstress adventure this is a good pick. Marquita is an up-and-comer on the Rio club scene but has to back-burner her career for a trip up to New York (where nobody’s heard of her) in order to clear her dancer brother of a murder frame-up.Read More »

Synopsis
A gangster’s moll runs home to mother, with reporters and amateur detectives hot on her tail. Cast: Joan Bennett, Adolphe Menjou, William Gargan, Victor Mature.Read More »

A nurse’s younger brother is caught in a shootout between a criminal gang and the police, and he is shot and killed. The officer who is accused of shooting the man knows that he didn’t do it, and sets out to find the real killer and clear his own name.Read More »