Edward Peil Sr.

A wartime espionage quickie from Monogram, rushed into theaters three months after Pearl Harbor. Bela Lugosi plays Dr. Melcher, a plastic surgeon who has spent years transforming six agents of Japan's Black Dragon Society into doubles of prominent American industrialists — a fifth column planted to sabotage the US war effort. When the infiltrators start turning up dead with ceremonial daggers in their chests, a doctor and a detective try to untangle the conspiracy. Clayton Moore, a few years away from the Lone Ranger, plays a young FBI man. Cheap even by poverty-row standards, but a vivid snapshot of wartime paranoia. The film entered the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Thriller · Mystery · War

Bela Lugosi plays the title role in this Monogram poverty-row thriller, a Chinatown crime lord hunting down the twelve legendary coins of Confucius, which are said to grant their possessor control of a Chinese province. Bodies start turning up across the district as Wong's men retrieve the coins one by one, and wisecracking reporter Jason Barton, played by Wallace Ford, follows the trail into Wong's secret headquarters. Lugosi is clearly enjoying himself in a dual role that lets him be both the suave mastermind and his own humble shopkeeper cover. Directed by William Nigh, a Monogram regular who also helmed several of the studio's Mr. Wong detective films. The film entered the public domain after its copyright was never renewed.

Mystery · Crime · Thriller

Ken Maynard rides into Tombstone Canyon looking for the man who murdered his father and finds the valley terrorized by a masked killer called the Phantom, who strikes from a cave hideout with a scream that echoes off the rocks. A prototype of the "weird western" — half horse opera, half old-dark-house mystery — the film leans on Maynard's stunt riding and a genuinely spooky masked villain. Made for Tiffany Pictures near the end of that studio's run. The film is in the public domain.

Western · Mystery