Lyle Talbot

Professional gambler Ross Hadley runs a plush gaming house in New York while his childhood friend Mike McGlennon, now a police lieutenant, is sworn to shut it down. Their rivalry turns personal when both men fall for nightclub singer Mary Hayes, and a murder forces each to choose between duty, friendship, and the law. Chester Morris, Nancy Kelly, and Russell Hayden star in this Pine-Thomas crime drama for Paramount, directed by Frank McDonald. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Crime · Drama

A young man gets involved with a criminal who forces him to participate in a robbery. Things go wrong, and the criminal uses a plastic surgeon to change his face. Ed Wood's first feature film, made before the movies that made him infamous. Steve Reeves, who would later become a Hercules star, appears in a supporting role. The film was registered for copyright in 1954 and never renewed, which is why it entered the public domain on January 1, 1983. It is a competent low-budget crime picture, more straightforward than the science fiction and horror films Wood would become known for.

Crime · Drama

A mad scientist named Dr. Aranya (Jackie Coogan) conducts experiments on Zarpa Mesa in Mexico, injecting women with spider enzymes to create an army of spider women and dwarfs. When a group of survivors escapes the mesa, their pilot must recount the horrors to a doctor who doubts his story. Coogan — best known as Uncle Fester on The Addams Family — gives a memorably strange performance in this notorious low-budget production from Ron Ormond and Herbert Tevos. Frequently cited among the worst films ever made, it later appeared on Mystery Science Theater 3000. The film is in the public domain through non-renewal of copyright.

Horror · Science Fiction

Insurance salesman Albert Tuttle arrives at the Rutherford mansion to sell a policy — only to find his prospect already dead, the heirs locked in by a will that won't be read until the body is entombed, and the corpse itself refusing to stay put. Jack Haley plays the jittery Tuttle, with Bela Lugosi in a red-herring role as the sinister butler, plus secret passages and a disappearing body. A Pine-Thomas production for Paramount, directed by Frank McDonald. It is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Comedy · Horror · Mystery

When a string of notorious criminals walks free on suspiciously easy parole, the federal government sends undercover agent Richard Hendricks to find out who is selling the state's leniency. Posing as wanted convict Rick Carson, Hendricks works his way into the gang run by the cunning Barney Rodescu — until his cover is blown and the racket turns on him. Directed by Alfred Zeisler and starring Michael O'Shea, Turhan Bey, and Evelyn Ankers, this lean Eagle-Lion release is a brisk Poverty Row noir built on an early version of the undercover-cop story. The film is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Crime · Noir · Thriller

She Shoulda Said No! (also released as Wild Weed and The Devil's Weed) is a 1949 exploitation film directed by Sam Newfield and starring Lila Leeds, whose arrest with Robert Mitchum on marijuana charges the previous year provided the marketing hook. Leeds plays a chorus girl whose descent into marijuana addiction ruins her career and drives her brother to suicide, in the spirit of earlier drug-scare pictures like Reefer Madness. The film was produced and roadshown by the exploitation impresario Kroger Babb under his Hygienic Productions banner, with a sensational prologue and an in-person lecture component. It features the feature-film debut of the character actor Jack Elam. The film is in the public domain.

Exploitation · Drama