Paul Fix

Cowboy Dan Somers and oilman Jim "Hunk" Gardner square off over drilling rights on Indian land in Oklahoma — and over schoolteacher Catherine Allen — in a feud that escalates from fists to sabotage to a race against a burning oil field. John Wayne stars opposite Martha Scott and Albert Dekker, with Gabby Hayes, Marjorie Rambeau, and Dale Evans. One of Republic's biggest pictures of 1943, later reissued as War of the Wildcats. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Western · Romance · Drama

A Monogram crime programmer built on a genuinely nasty twist. Warren Hull plays John Randolph, an idealistic newspaper editor crusading against a crime syndicate — not knowing that the gang's secret boss is his own father, long believed dead. When a hit man with a conscience gets involved and a society engagement party turns into a shootout, the crusade becomes very personal. Howard Bretherton, one of poverty row's fastest and most reliable directors, keeps it moving through a tight hour. The film entered the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Crime · Drama

Preston Foster plays "Killer" Mears, a condemned man leading a death-row breakout in this adaptation of the Broadway prison play that made stars of its stage leads. The escape attempt goes wrong in stages — a hostage guard, a machine gun turned on the tier — and the film's final act is essentially one long, escalating riot. An early talkie prison drama from Sono Art-World Wide that set the template for every death-row picture that followed. The film is in the public domain.

Crime · Drama

A string of murders has witnesses giving identical descriptions of a man seen leaving each scene — Jerome Breen, a wealthy philanthropist who has been deaf and mute since birth and could not possibly have been overheard. Lionel Atwill plays Breen in a Monogram old-dark-house mystery directed by Phil Rosen, with Sheila Terry as the reporter convinced there is more to the suspect than his affliction suggests, and Paul Hurst as the detective working the case. The solution, when it comes, is a genuinely nasty piece of pre-Code plotting. Made the same year Atwill headlined Mystery of the Wax Museum, it shows why he was the era's go-to man for quiet menace. The film is in the public domain.

Mystery · Crime · Thriller