Shadow of Chinatown, a condensed 65-minute version of the 300-minute serial, presents a unique narrative. It delves into the destruction of San Francisco’s Chinatown by Victor Poten (Bela Lugosi) and The Dragon Lady (Luana Walters), hired by white businesses to eliminate the new Chinese businessmen who threaten their profits. This atypical plot, where white individuals are the aggressors against Asians, stands out in a time when the sinister Fu Manchu was the stereotypical villain in most serials.

One of the intriguing aspects of the film is the character of Bela Lugosi, who has the power to influence others. In this movie, he uses his mesmerizing abilities to instill hatred towards the Chinese, a reflection of his own feelings.

This was directed and written by Robert F. Hill, who had 116 directing credits in his career. After World War II, Universal sent him to Japan to open a movie studio, where he warned that the locals would try to attack him if he started an American studio in their country. He needed to get a doctor’s permit to prove his wife needed care back home before Universal would let him give up. The following person Universal sent? The Japanese filmmakers attacked him and used the studio for themselves.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Released in the U.S. as The Girl Was Young, this Hitchcock film was based on the novel A Shilling for Candles by Josephine Tey. In the book, the storyline involving Robert, Erica, and the missing coat is a subplot, not the main tale.

Christine Clay (Pamela Carne), a successful actress, and her ex-husband, Guy (George Curzon), are arguing over whether their quick Reno divorce is final. What is final is her washing up dead on a beach and the cops blaming the man who found her body, writer Robert Tisdall (Derrick De Marney). He’s defended by a cop’s daughter, Erica Burgoyne (Nova Pilbeam), and sneaks out of the courtroom and rides on the running board of her car to escape the law.

One of Robert’s old coats is behind the killing; the belt was used. He can’t find that coat until he sees it on a homeless man. The belt is missing, however, and the man tells Robert and Erica that a man with twitchy eyes — just like the one we saw Guy have at the beginning — gave him the overcoat. 

Despite how long ago this came out, the end is still great, as a crane shot reveals that Guy is a drummer in a band — in blackface — and he starts twitching so much when the cops arrive that he has to take medicine that knocks him out. Hitchcock said that it took two days to shoot the long tracking shot in the dance hall, as the camera pans from the ceiling to the band to Guy’s eyes.

You can download this from the Internet Archive.

“One Round” Jack Sander (Carl Brisson) is defeated by Australian heavyweight champion Bob Corby (Ian Hunter), whose manager offers to have Jack be Bob’s full-time sparring partner. But oh, Bob— he’s all over Jack’s girlfriend, Mabel (Lillian Hall-Davis), buying her a bracelet and canoodling with her. On their wedding day, Jack starts to believe that Bob is trying to steal his wife. He’s right, so he trains hard to be in contention for the title, wanting to take away the only thing that matters more to boxers than their women. You know how it ends? Mabel decides to leave Bob for Jack, giving him the power in their fight to knock out his former friend.

Yes, Alfred Hitchcock directed and wrote a boxing movie. At the age of 28, this was only his fourth movie, yet he was already demonstrating his unique storytelling skills. Despite his young age, Hitchcock used advanced camera tricks, like the Schüfftan process, to simulate a large audience for the Royal Albert Hall final fight, a technique he would later use in ‘ The Man Who Knew Too Much. The Ring is also significant as Hitchcock’s only “original” film, one not based on a play or book with no other published writers collaborating. 

It may also be the first movie where someone gives the finger.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Released in the U.S. as The Woman Alone, this Alfred Hitchcock film starts with movie theater owner Karl Verloc (Oskar Homolka) shutting down the power in London before working with a group of terrorists to leave bombs all over the city. Detective Sergeant Ted Spencer (John Loder) is working undercover to catch him, posing as a grocery store owner while starting to fall for the man’s wife, played by Sylvia Sidney.

The machinations of the terrorists lead to her brother Stevie (Desmond Tester) being killed, and a depressed Verloc literally walks into a knife that his wife is holding, ending his life. Spencer tries to keep her from confessing to the murder, and when the final bomb explodes, destroying Verloc’s body, she is able to get away with it. 

This was loosely based on Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, a story about a woman who learns that her husband is a terrorist. As Hitchcock had already made another movie called Secret Agent. When this was remade in 1959 for the Canadian TV series Startime, Homolka reprised the same role.

When the bus driver remarks in Inglorious Basterds that  “You can’t bring that on here. It’s flammable,” it comes from this.

In one of his interviews with François Truffaut, Hitchcock claimed he was wrong to shoot the scene where Stevie dies, because the character received too much sympathy and “the public was resentful”. Truffaut commented that having a child die in a movie is a “ticklish matter” and an “an abuse of cinematic power.”

You can watch this on YouTube.

La Noche de Walpurgis (released in the United States as The Werewolf vs. The Vampire Woman and in the UK as both Shadow of the Werewolf and Werewolf Shadow) was the fifth time that Paul Naschy played the doomed lycanthrope Waldemar Daninsky.

Written by Naschy and directed by Leon Klimovsky (The People Who Own the Dark, The Dracula Saga), this film seems to come from another planet, perhaps because so much of it is in slow motion. It also kicked off a horror craze in Spain that maniacs like me are still enjoying to this day.

After the last film — The Fury of the Wolf Man — Waldemar Daninsky is brought back to life during his autopsy. After all, you don’t remove silver bullets from a werewolf’s heart and expect him to treat you nicely. He kills both for their trouble and runs into the night.

Meanwhile, Elvira and her friend Genevieve are looking for the tomb of Countess Wandessa de Nadasdy. Coincidentally, as these things happen, her grave is near Daninsky’s castle, so our dashing werewolf friend invites them to stay. Within hours, Elvira has bled all over the corpse of the Countess (Patty Shepard, Hannah, Queen of the Vampires), who soon rises and turns both girls into her slaves.

But what of the werewolf, you ask? Don’t worry — he shows up too, after we get our fill of the ladies slowly murdering people in the forest. Also, as these things happen, Waldemar must fight the Countess before the only woman who ever loved him, Elvira (Yelena Samarina, The House of 1,000 Dolls), finally kills him again.

There’s also a scene where our furry friend battles a skeleton wearing the robes of a monk in the graveyard. Some claim that this scene inspired Spanish director Amando de Ossorio to write Tombs of the Blind Dead just a few months later.

Daninsky’s lycanthropy is not explained in this one. Was it the bite of a yeti that made him howl at the moon? Is he a college professor or a count? Who cares!

Based on The Ticket-of-Leave Man, an 1863 play by Tom Taylor that introduced the character Hawkshaw the Detective, a popular figure in Victorian literature known for his cunning and relentless pursuit of justice, the name of this movie is a reference to the ticket of leave issued to convicts upon release.

Robert Brierly (John Warwick) and the notorious criminal, The Tiger (Tod Slaughter), both find themselves entangled in a love triangle with May Edwards (Marjorie Taylor). The Tiger, in a bid to separate Brierly from his beloved, orchestrates a cunning plan. He manipulates the situation to send Brierly to jail for passing bad checks, and then attempts to frame him for a heinous crime.

Another film that teams up Slaughter with director George King, this also has Hawkshaw the detective (Robert Adair) as the hero, stalking beer gardens for info on The Tiger and his henchmen. Soon, The Tiger has become Purvis, CEO of The Good Samaritan Help Society, presiding over this charity but really committing villainous deeds. I mean, the dude sets his office on fire and watches as one of his men burns inside, laughing like a lunatic. 

And of course, what’s a Tod Slaughter movie without his signature performance? His over-the-top cackling and scene-stealing antics are what you’re here for.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Bill from Groovy Doom and Drive-In Asylum always jokes about movies where nothing happens as being his favorite movies. If that’s true, he must absolutely adore this movie.

Christopher Lee, the main selling point of this movie, said, “Some of the films I’ve been in I regret making. I got conned into making these pictures in almost every case by people who lied to me. Some years ago, I got a call from my producers saying that they were sending me a script and that five very distinguished American actors were also going to be in the film. Actors like José Ferrer, Dean Jagger, and John Carradine. So I thought “Well, that’s all right by me”. But it turned out it was a complete lie. Appropriately the film was called End Of The World.”

The film opens with a shaken Lee as a Catholic priest trying to get to a phone call. All hell breaks loose and a diner is destroyed, with the owner blinded by coffee before being killed and the pay phone being blown up. Turns out that Father Pergado is due to be replaced by the alien Zindar. Good start. And it was the trailer, filled with science fiction machines and evil nuns that got me interested in this picture!

Professor Andrew Boran discovers radio signals that predict natural disasters.   He and his wife investigate, discovering that they come from a convent where aliens have taken over. The aliens want him to join them, as the Earth is too diseased to exist.

The leads are wooden and only seem to want to have sex with one another, yet there are no love scenes. They’re utter failures at being heroic and simply move the plot along to its conclusion, where we learn that the Earth is filled with glitter. It blows up real good!

There are some ridiculous moments, such as Lee’s true form and seeing nuns operate supercomputers. Seriously, if I just read the description of this movie, it’d sound like everything I love. But seeing the execution leaves a lot to be desired.