Common Law Wife (1961)

A cheap, sleazy and exploitative film which is surprisingly good.

A rather unpleasant rich man called Shug (George Edgley) has told his live-in lover Linda (Annabelle Weenick) he is kicking her out. Instead, Shug has invited his young niece back instead to take her place (yes you read that right!) 

Baby Doll (Lacey Kelly), the niece, arrives in town and immediately causes a stir. Baby Doll is after Shug's money but has a plan to get it a bit quicker than Shug would like...

This film really shouldn't work at all, it is trashy and shoddily made and has some rather dubious themes. It also shamelessly exploits Kelly's body in various dancing and semi-nude scenes. Somehow the film is rather compelling, and not because its so bad it's good. It is bad but doesn't try to be something it isn't. 

The Devil's Mask (1946)

A complicated but decent crime tale involving shrunken heads, poison darts and wild animals.

Recovered cargo from a plane crash causes a stir, as it is a shrunken head in a box! It is later thought the head belongs to a missing explorer who went missing in the South American jungle. His daughter Janet (Anita Louise) hires a pair of private investigators Jack and Doc (Jim Bannon and Barton Yarborough) as she fears that her step-mother Louise (Mona Barrie) is trying to kill her.

This is a strange tale, and rather complicated too. Is the explorer actually dead? Is Louise really trying to kill Janet? Who's head has been shrunken? What does the code mean? Why does a man keep a live big cat in a room full of stuffed animals? 

Unfortunately, trying to answer these questions takes a little time and isn't always that clear. This is a competent if not exhilarating crime drama, the weird and novel situations and plot helps things along. Part of the I Love A Mystery series.

Pilot X (1936)

A somewhat strange and poor murder mystery but makes up for it with some excellent aerial scenes.

A fighter with an X painted on it shoots down an airliner. A number of suspect pilots are bought together into a room, which has been covered in 1930s state of the art surveillance technology so the suspects can be listened in on. 

However, this doesn't really lead to anything and the suspects are whittled down one by one until the final showdown between Blackwood (John Carroll) and Pilot X while his gal Helen (Lona Andre) watches on...

This is a rather dry crime drama, it doesn't have the snappy dialogue, gloomy atmosphere or fast moving action which usually makes these kinds of films from the period entertaining. However, the aerial dogfight scenes are excellent and make up for the lackings elsewhere. Not brilliant but worthwhile.

The Screaming Tiger (1972)

A violent martial arts film full of vengeance and anti-Japanese sentiment.

The Japanese (evil of course) kill everyone in a Chinese village. The only survivor of the village is Wang Yu (Jimmy Wang Yu) who has top kung fu skills (of course). He heads to Japan for revenge... and that is largely it. There are more subplots but they are rather underdeveloped. Wang Yu is accompanied (and occasionally scolded and advised) by a man who wears a basket on his head.

So, this is basically just a very long fight scene. But what a fight scene it is too, excellent and innovative fighting is shown many times. The xenophobia makes the film a bit too one dimensional and distasteful but the main problem with the film is that it is a bit incomprehensible.

The fighting though, which is the point of a film like this after all, is top notch. 

The Crime Doctor's Courage (1945)

Another entry in the Crime Doctor series, and one which has some quite abrupt changes in direction.

We start off with a quite possibly insane man on his honeymoon, when asked by his new wife if he did indeed - as people allege - kill his first wife, she falls to her death down the cliffs! A while later wife number 3 (Hillary Brooke) contacts Dr Ordway (Warren Baxter) asking for his help to see if her husband is murderously insane or just unlucky! At a dinner party the man is later found shot dead. There are a number of suspects, including a pair of suspected vampires!

This film lures you into one story direction then abruptly changes direction, the sub-plot about whether a pair of dancers are centuries old vampires or not is another fascinating, if bizarre, swerve. 

Despite the weirdness this is a solid crime B-movie, with a good locked room mystery at it's heart. The strange plot directions both make this film stand out from the usual fare though also distract from what is a pretty decent mystery.