Paul Hurst

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

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