Ann Savage

Al Roberts is a piano player hitchhiking from New York to Los Angeles to find his girlfriend, a singer who left to try her luck on the coast. He is picked up by a man who dies, and Al takes the man's identity and his car to avoid being blamed. Then he picks up Vera, a woman who knew the dead man and who decides to use what she knows against him. The film was shot in under a week on a tiny budget, and it is one of the bleakest films noir ever made. Edgar G. Ulmer uses voiceover, rear projection, and obvious sets to make the world feel closed in, and the story Al tells is so unreliable that the truth of what happened is never clear. The film entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Noir · Drama

Reporter Sue Gallagher (Detour's Ann Savage) discovers the corpse of a notorious gangster propped up in a wax museum and fights to keep the scoop — while a rival reporter (William Gargan), the museum's bumbling maintenance man (Leo Gorcey), and the killer himself (George Zucco) all converge on the evidence. A fast, funny 64-minute programmer from Pine-Thomas Productions, Paramount's prolific "Dollar Bills" B-movie unit. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Crime · Mystery

Larry Elliot, a timid chess columnist who covers murders for a newspaper, flees to Grape City to escape a gangster's threats — only to land in a haunted-house mystery involving a stolen jade chess set, a missing corpse, and a fortune hidden in a creepy mansion. Jack Haley, the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz, plays the jittery reporter alongside Ann Savage and Barton MacLane. A Pine-Thomas production for Paramount, also released as Treasure of Fear. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Comedy · Mystery · Horror