Wealthy shipowner Bruce Vail is insanely jealous of wife Irene, who divorces him for that reason. Vail schemes to get Irene in trouble with a hired gigolo; but passerby Paul Dumond rescues her, and Paul and Irene fall in love, much to Vail’s dismay.Read More »
A tough district attorney has been cleaning up the town, and has already imprisoned twelve dangerous criminals. As he is about to name the target for his next investigation, he is murdered in the midst of a crowd. The police have many suspects
and hardly any clues, so two reporters decide to investigate for themselves.
(Written by Snow Leopard)Read More »
A prison trustee rescues a despondent executioner from a bar-room brawl, and is blamed for the fight by a tabloid reporter who actually started it, and loses parole, becomes embittered, and gets blamed for murder of guard.Read More »
The Spider’s Web (1938) is a Columbia Pictures movie serial based on the pulp magazine character The Spider. The 15-chapter adventure (first episode was double length) was directed by serial and western specialist Ray Taylor and comedy and serial veteran James W. Horne. It was the fifth of the 57 serials released by Columbia.
The film was wildly successful when first released; it was the most popular serial of 1938, according to a tally published in The Motion Picture Herald, and was the first serial that Columbia brought back as a reprint (in 1947). A sequel, The Spider Returns, was released in 1941; of the Spider’s Web principals, only Warren Hull and Kenne Duncan returned in their original rolesRead More »
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Believing they can make a ton of money, a gang of opportunists uses the country’s racial and ethnic tensions to start a Ku Klux Klan-type organization.Read More »
Based on a short story by Nobel Prize-winning author Kawabata Yasunari, this lighthearted road film follows the rolling wheels of a country bus manned by a driver who says “thank you” to everyone he encounters. “Mr. Thank You” drives into various humorous and telling episodes with different passenger and travelers as he rumbles his way through the mountainous countryside. Arigatau-san highlights common Shimizu motifs of location shooting, constant movement, and heartwarming sentiments, while at the same time subtly addressing real-world worries like Depression-era woes and the condition of Korean laborers.Read More »
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After directing three of Universal’s finest horror films, James Whale shifted gears with the elegant romantic comedy By Candlelight. Though quite miscast, Paul Lukas successfully conveys the role of Josef, ultra-dutiful valet to the libidinous Count Von Bommer (Nils Asther). Falling in love with Marie (Elissa Landi), whom he assumes to be a countess, Josef poses – quite convincingly – as his rakish master. The catch: Marie is herself a poseur, a mere maidservant to Count and Countess Von Rischenheim (Lawrence Grant, Dorothy Revier). Based on a play by Siegfried Geyer, By Candlelight is chock full of delightfully double-entendre pre-Code dialogue and dextrous directorial touches.Read More »
Two newsreel reporters doing an outdoor fashion shoot accidentally film a
Nazi criminal. The Nazi is aided by clever Joe the gangster (an ex-actor gone bad!)
who uses a variety of methods to retrieve the film before it is used to identify the Nazi.
Ironically, if left unpursued, the film would have been destroyed. A few predictable but
well-placed plot twists and double-crosses round out the film.
One is left wondering how Joe would know to employ a romantic couple to run
interference for the Nazi as he exited a bank. Joe also surprises by hamming it up
with drunken nostalgia for his acting days, and whipping people with his belt.Read More »
