Warren Hull – Cinema of the World

Norman Deming – Mandrake the Magician (1939)

admin — Thu, 20 Oct 2022 02:00:00 +0000

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.

From IMDb:
While not made with an over-powering budget by any standards and populated with the dime-store variety of plot devices, mediocre special effects, and bearable, workmanlike performers, the Columbia serial Mandrake the Magician has many fun, entertaining moments and is quite thrilling at times. Isn’t that what a serial is suppose to be? Warren Hull plays the dapper Mandrake in top hat and tails and seemingly an expert in every field and every form of fisticuffs. With him is his faithful Lothar, a servant who like Mandrake can fight at will and ease under any circumstances. Of course when Lothar fights – the actor playing him Al Kikume is easily seen not to be fighting as the stunt double looks nothing like him. That is just one of a host of problems with the serial in terms of direction, production, and cinematic achievement. Routinely actors are poorly doubled. Fight scenes are nothing more in some instances than actors playing patty-cake with their fists. The identity of the serial villain – the Wasp – is clearly evident in the final three or four chapters. The leading lady – Doris Weston – is as bland as cottage cheese. When would the parade of henchmen end? And some of the storyline about “a machine invented by Professor Houston to benefit mankind”(you remember those catch phrases once you have heard it 12 different times at the beginning of each chapter)was utterly ridiculous with all that nonsense about shutting off/destroying public works so as to let the Wasp take over the world and the platinite(don’t ask) needed to fuel it. But despite all these things, Mandrake the Magician is a lot of fun to watch, and I must confess that for at least the first 9 chapters I had to find out who the Wasp was as three of Mandrake’s circle were framed so as to suggest each one. Each episode left with some great calamity, and this serial is definitely worth a peek.

https://nitro.download/view/ECFE5CEEA4B87BD/Mandrake.rar

Language:English
Subtitles:None

The post Norman Deming – Mandrake the Magician (1939) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Lambert Hillyer – Girl from Rio (1939)

admin — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 03:45:00 +0000

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.

Maria “Movita” Casteneda, married to Marlon Brando for a couple years in the early sixties and mother of two of his children, seems to have had a pretty rocky career until she got older and landed a gig on ‘Knots Landing,’ which I’ll admit I never watched. She does a good job here, with a toothy smile to die for and an uneven but probably semi-genuine Spanish accent (hard to find where her early education came from, but it’s widely noted that she was “Mexican-American”, born on a train between Mexico and Arizona).

1.30GB | 1h 01m | 720×480 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/D43C47C2686B33F/Girl.from.Rio.1939.DVDRip.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

Language:English
Subtitles:None

The post Lambert Hillyer – Girl from Rio (1939) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

James W. Horne – The Spider Returns (1941)

admin — Wed, 28 Apr 2021 05:29:00 +0000

The Spider Returns (1941) is a Columbia movie serial based on the pulp magazine character The Spider. It was the fourteenth of the 57 serials released by Columbia and a sequel to its 1938 serial The Spider’s Web. The first episode runs 32 minutes; the rest are about 17 minutes each.

Synopsis :
Amateur criminologist Richard Wentworth was formerly the masked vigilante, The Spider. Wentworth brings The Spider out of retirement to help his friend, police commissioner Kirk (Kirkpatrick in the pulps), fight a dangerous maniac. This new enemy is The Gargoyle, a mysterious crimelord who threatens America with sabotage and wholesale murder in an effort to wreck national defense.
(From Wikipedia)

Chapter titles :
1. The Stolen Plans
2. The Fatal Time-Bomb
3. The Secret Meeting
4. The Smoke Dream
5. The Gargoyle’s Trail
6. The X-Ray Eye
7. The Radio Boomerang
8. The Mysterious Message
9. The Cup of Doom
10. The X-Ray Belt
11. Lips Sealed by Murder
12. A Money Bomb
13. Almost a Confession
14. Suspicious Telegrams
15. The Payoff

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post James W. Horne – The Spider Returns (1941) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

James W. Horne & Ray Taylor – The Spider’s Web (1938)

admin — Mon, 26 Apr 2021 08:46:00 +0000

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 roles

Chapter titles :
1. Night of Terror
2. Death Below
3. High Voltage
4. Surrender or Die
5. Shoot to Kill
6. Sealed Lips
7. Shadows of the Night
8. While the City Sleeps
9. Doomed!
10. Flaming Danger
11. The Road To Peril
12. The Spider Falls
13. The Man Hunt
14. The Double-Cross
15. The Octopus Unmasked!

https://nitro.download/view/11CCFC8F329B878/The_Spider’s_Web_(1938).rar

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post James W. Horne & Ray Taylor – The Spider’s Web (1938) first appeared on Cinema of the World.