Panama Patrol (1939)

Major Waring (Leon Ames) is just about to marry his secretary Helen Lane (Charlotte Wynters) when he gets the call to translate a coded message that has just been received, well duty calls! After a brief interlude to arrest a suspicious East Asian and suspected spy (who promptly gets shot by enemy unknown) the code is broken.

Waring heads to New York masquerading as the shot spy and begins to uncover a plot by Chinese spies to damage the Panama Canal. However is one of his own men, Arlie Johnson (Abner Biberman) in on the plot? Why indeed and Waring ends up getting captured by the spies, who luckily are pretty useless...

Much of the plot doesn't make sense and there is plenty of Yellow Peril nonsense but it is an exciting and fast paced movie with plenty of action and some neat code breaking. The soundtrack though is weird, no attempt at all seems to have been made to match the music to the actual action.

Madonna of the Desert (1948)

A valuable Madonna has been unearthed in a ranch owned by Joe Salinas (Don Castle). Crooks Nick Julian (Sheldon Leonard) and Monica Dale (Lynne Roberts) plan to steal the Madonna and replace it with a replica made by skilled forger Hank (Paul E. Burns).

When Monica is trying to switch the Madonna she learns that Joe truly believes that it is supposed to bring good luck to good people and begins to have second thoughts on the plan... Naturally Nick isn't too pleased on the change of plan.

So a neat little crime movie with a few twists and turns plus the added mystery of the Madonna. Leonard and Roberts play good roles.

Flash Gordon (Serial) (1936)

Classic serial action (in fact in many ways the classic serial) as Flash Gordon (Buster Crabbe) and Dale Arden (Jean Rogers) travel to the world of the evil Ming the Merciless (Charles Middleton) which is travelling towards Earth...

The planet Mongo is inhabited by various warring factions including the Hawkmen and Lionmen but Ming rules over all. Flash, Dale and scientist Dr Zarkov (Frank Shannon) have a series of adventures in the crazy world, and as its a serial there are many cliffhangers.

It is just so much fun, and sparking space ships. Of course it is also rather simplistic but that doesn't matter as its thrills a minute and has so much charm and energy.

Princess Aura (Priscilla Lawson) is endlessly scheming to get Flash for herself but he only has eyes for Dale of course... To be honest that's just one of many things that doesn't really make much sense in the cold light of day but that is exactly the wrong way to approach this romp.

Christmas Eve (1915)

A cute little short feature with a traditional Christmas story. Gregory Scott plays a poor man with a sick wife and a young daughter. Desperate to improve his wife's condition he steals from his employer and is fired. Angry and even more desperate he gets a gun and goes to fire his ex-employer but he sees his daughter talking to him and changes his mind. In the end his employer forgives him in the spirit of Christmas and invites the family to join Christmas with them.

That is basically it really for the story which is a bit basic and is probably inspired by Dickins. It is nicely filmed, the acting is fairly natural especially by the little girl whose name unfortunately does not seem to have been recorded.

The Way of the West (1934)

An unexceptional B-movie western. It has a reasonable story though the dialogue is oddly stilted in delivery. Wally Gordon (Wally Wales aka Hal Taliaferro) is a government agent who stumbles upon a conflict between cattlemen and sheep farmers the Parker family which include Firey (Myria Bratton) who provides the love interest.

Parker has the best grazing land in the area for his sheep and the cattlemen want to get rid of him. They hire in an ornery gunman called Cash Horton (William Desmond) to do the job - this is a bad guy so hardcore he has a swastika on his back! (You wouldn't get away with that in a few years...) Wally meanwhile decides to help out and find out exactly what's going on...

So the story isn't that original but it's a decent enough movie, except for the rather shoddy editing. The "humour" with the kid Little Bobbie (Bobbie Nelson) falls a little flat. The action especially some of the horsemanship is pretty good.