1930s and 1940s crime films

NANCY DREW...REPORTER (1939). Running time 68 minutes.

There is a renewed interest in the Nancy Drew sleuth character. This will be of interest to today's teenage girls and some of the younger viewers too IMO.

Nancy gathers with her school friends to get assignments as newspaper reporters. Pushy Nancy manages to get a real assignment and tries to clear the name of a new heiress accused of murder. She gets into a lot of trouble when she tries to beat the bad guy to the essential evidence of the case. There are a lot of thrills and laughs as she schemes her way out of peril. She manages to turn a hotel's neon lights to read 'bed bug' to draw her attention for help at one point.

Strange but I felt sure that I her saw her teenage sidekick played by Frankie Thomas wearing a wedding ring in one sequence. The actor is reported not to have married until he was in his sixties so there's a another mystery for keen-eyed viewers to sort out.

MURDER WITH PICTURES (1936). Running time 69 minutes.

This moves very fast with plenty of quick talking so you need your wits about you to follow the plot. A gang leader is in the courtroom being defended against a murder charge. I thought his defense lawyer kept calling him 'mate' which I found very strange. I had to check the character list before I realized that the gang leader's name is Nate.

Lew Ayres is a photographic reporter who sets out to solve the murder after someone else is shot dead in a crowded room. If he had made time to process the negative plate he would have solved the murder a lot earlier. But he keeps getting distracted by the police who want to nail his girlfriend for both murders. He hides her fully clothed in the shower he had been taking with his trousers on for some reason. He has to satisfy his other girlfriend with the reward money at the end to get the girl he wants.

THE HEADLINE WOMAN (1935). Running time 75 minutes.

This is a story how newspaper reporters run a town instead of the police. They work it so they upgrade a dunderhead of a policeman with a German accent. In return he gives them leaks after the police chief has shut off news to the reporters about their leads. The policeman in question needed his reputation to be rebuilt after he had help let the murderer of Full House Johnny escape in a taxi. Full House had been a gang leader who had won too often in the gambling war game.

A newspaper owner's daughter is wanted for the murder after a mix up. So she and her reporter boyfriend have to find the real murderer before she gets arrested. A good sequence is where the reporters run up a huge bill they cannot pay while they wait for the place to be raided by the police. Ward Bond is a lazy reporter who phones in his reports from a settee after he has overheard the other reporters get the info while he pretends to be asleep.

THE NIGHT OF JANUARY 16TH (1941). Running time 79 minutes.

A sailor named Van Ruyle returns from the sea to find his uncle has left him $3 million dollars but he is immediately in danger of losing that money. $20 million dollars have gone missing from the company in which his uncle's money is invested. The head of the company is killed and his secretary gets arrested for murder. The sailor and the secretary join forces after he bails her out. They need to catch the real murderer when they are forced to go on the run.

The secretary's life is under threat when she is sent orchids with a tag that reads "It's better not to know too much." Also she gets a strange dictograph message to further warn her off. Her and Van Rule manage to escape the apartment where they are under siege from the police when they get help from a drunken socialite. They manage to get to Havana where a twist ending awaits them.

COSMO JONES IN THE CRIME SMASHER (1943). Running time 62 minutes.

Cosmo Jones turns to being an amateur detective after taking a correspondence in criminology. He is a slightly-built little man carrying a brolly. His talent is mimicry and can impersonate any person after a few moments acquaintance. He takes charge of an abduction case involving a wealthy man's daughter.

Rival gangs specialize in abductions. Even Jake who is one of the gang leaders gets snatched by the other mob and his wife has to pay up to get him back. There are a few killings but for the most it is lighthearted. Cosmo does a bag switch in a drug store so the father won't make the mistake of giving money in vain to retrieve his daughter. A burly blustering Irish policeman provides some good laughs.

THE SPHINX (1933). Running time 62 minutes.

A stockbroker gets killed in his office at Garfield Investment Company. The janitor Luigi discovers the body after an after-hours visitor had walked up to him and asked the time. Luigi is convinced that a man called Jerome Breen is the murderer and testifies at the trial. But Breen's defense convince the court his defendant is deaf and dumb and therefore could not have been the man who talked to Luigi.

Another man gets murdered and again it seems that Breen is on the scene. Breen is a philanthropist which helps convince certain people that he is innocent. So the police and a reporter have to discover how Breen manages to kill stockbrokers and yet he can convince certain people that he is elsewhere at the time. This was remade as 'Phantom Killer' nine years later and some technical improvements were made in it. But this original has the sinister Lionel Atwill as the villain so a lot of crime fans will probably opt for this version.

MURDER AT MIDNIGHT (1931). Running time 66 minutes.

The film opens with a tall dark crusty-looking butler altering the hands on a grandfather clock so the setting of an old mansion kicks in. The dramatic scene that follows turns out to be a little stage play in a game of charades. Live bullets have been exchanged for blanks turning the charade into a real death. It looks like murder instead of an accident so a hectoring Inspector Taylor is called in to sort it out.

A search for a will and a letter is the key to solving the crime. We see these items being hidden behind walled portraits and a vacuum cleaner. Other deaths follow and there is a great selection of murder suspects. Harridan Aunt Julia and house-maid Millie Scripps and the butler Lawrence are really good characters in this entertaining crime mystery. Also there is a twist ending involving a telephone.

BANK ALARM (1937). Running time 60 minutes.

Department of Justice man O'Connor gets annoyed when all his leads get stymied by Inspector Macy. Macy had imprisoned a mob member O'Hearne who only gets killed inside prison by his own side which silences the info that O'Connor needs.

O'Connor then goes to meet his sister off a plane. Sister Kay has been picked up on board by a stranger who has traveled there to become a member of a counterfeit-money gang. The very people that O'Connor himself is employed to track down. O'Connor and his girlfriend/co-worker Bobbie Reynolds need to get to the bottom of the small bank robberies and counterfeiting set up. This leads to Bobbie putting in for a job at Club Karlotti from where the organization is run.

A good sequence is where the gang find that money is stashed away in a prison that doubles as a post office depot. Two gang members deliberately get arrested for vagrancy so they can find a way of picking their way out of their night cell while the sheriff is asleep.