The Shadow on the Window (1957)

An excellent Noir with some tasty detective work.

Little Petey (Jerry Mathers) witnesses something terrible happen to his mother Linda (Betty Garrett) and goes into a shocked trance. He is found wandering the roads when he is picked up. Now Petey is the son of Detective Tony Atlas (Philip Carey) and he tries to work out what has happened. Unfortunately no one knows where Linda is or what she was doing. In fact she is the prisoner of a group of thugs. As Tony begins a complicated investigation, the thugs begin to fall out putting Linda into even greater danger...

This is a good crime film with rising tension and a clever police procedural plot. The only flaw is the utter dopiness of the criminals but as we have seen in many films, if criminals were clever then they would probably never get caught!

Shadowchaser (1992)

Cheesy violent nonsense, this is either brilliant or terrible. Maybe both.

A hospital is seized by trigger happy terrorists who make hostages of some of the staff, what makes matters even worse is that one of the hostages is the President's daughter Sarah (Meg Foster). FBI agent Trevanian (Paul Koslo) has the architect of the building released from a prison where sentences are carried out in deep freeze (this film is set kind of in the future). 

Unfortunately, they release the wrong man and De Silva (Martin Kove) is really an ex-football star who has now been released into the hospital without much clue of what to do. He is kept busy trying to avoid being killed by the terrorists, one twist being they are led by Romulus (Frank Zagarino), a billion dollar android killing machine...

This is pretty chaotic, the plot is rather vague and makes little sense but it is... somehow brilliant. Action scenes are frequent and do not use one bullet when three thousand will do. Don't ask how it works but it does.

Panic on the Air (1936)

A perfectly decent crime drama involving frantic amateur detective adventures.

Radio sport commentator Jerry (Lew Ayres) becomes involved in a complicated criminal case involving a $5 bill with a code on it. This case involves a much larger sum of money and also murder! Jerry continues to investigate the case with Mary (Florence Rice) despite the annoyance of his show's sponsor, a garter company!

The criminal case is a little too complicated to make this film truly enjoyable though the speed and energy of the cast helps drive things along (though doesn't help much with following the case at times). The case itself is fairly standard though the code on the money is an interesting touch. Not a brilliant film but a perfectly decent B-movie.

The Falcon Strikes Back (1943)

The Falcon died in the previous film in the series but his brother now takes over the name and role...

An amount of war bonds are stolen. The (new) Falcon (Tom Conway), who has been employed by a mysterious woman, is framed for the theft. The Falcon manages to escape the law and seeks to clear his name. After a bit of sleuthing he heads to a hotel at a rural retreat and uncovers a nefarious plot involving stolen bonds, murder and ..er.. puppets.

This is a fine enough film with the usual romp of red herrings and antics. The Falcon is assisted by perky reporter Marcia (Jane Randolph) and his butler Jerry (Richard Loo). The film has a nicely unexpected ultimate villain.

Spaceways (1953)

This may appear at first glance to be an early 1950s science fiction film but really it is quite a good murder mystery!

Tensions are high at a top secret and high security British research base as Britain attempts to be the first to send a rocket into orbit in efforts led by Dr Mitchell (Howard Duff). However, there are other tensions too as Mitchell's wife Vanessa (Cecile Chevreau) dislikes the restricted life on base and is having an affair with Dr Crenshaw (Andrew Osborn). Vanessa and Crenshaw go missing on the day of a new rocket test, the rocket failing to reach the correct orbit for some reason.

Ministry investigator Dr Smith (Alan Wheatley) comes in looking into why the two disappeared. He knows of the affair and logically deduces that Mitchell killed the pair and then stuffed their bodies into the rocket which is now in orbit! Mitchell volunteers to pilot another rocket into space to prove his innocence but Smith has a new lead and the pair might not be dead after all...

If you wanted a 1950s science fiction film you might find this a bit limited (though there are some orbital thrills at the end) but the crime investigation part of the film is pretty good and makes the film a perfectly reasonable watch.