Ray Bennett

Evelyn Venable plays the wife of a small-time crook who takes the fall for a payroll robbery and goes on the run, hiding out as a cook on a truck farm where Craig Reynolds's earnest farmer slowly falls for her — while her husband's gang closes in. A Crescent Pictures production released through Monogram, it is a compact poverty-row crime melodrama built on the era's favorite engine: a decent woman on the wrong side of the law through no fault of her own. Director William Nigh keeps it moving at the pace Monogram audiences expected. It entered the public domain after its copyright was never renewed.

Crime · Drama

During the bloodiest days of the French Revolution, a mysterious operative known as Charles D'Aubigny infiltrates Paris to recover Robespierre's "black book" — a list of intended victims whose executions would cement his dictatorship — before it can be used. Robert Cummings plays the double agent, with Richard Basehart a chilling Robespierre and Arlene Dahl as the woman caught between them. Anthony Mann shot it like a noir despite the period setting, all shadows and paranoia, on a shoestring budget for Walter Wanger. Reissued as The Black Book. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

History · Thriller · Noir

A Monogram crime picture directed by Howard Bretherton. Russell Gleason plays a railway postal clerk whose mail routes keep turning up phony sweepstakes tickets, and when the service can't crack the counterfeiting ring from the outside he goes in undercover — straight into a gang that doesn't hesitate to kill. Shirley Deane plays the reporter who both helps and nearly exposes him, and J.M. Kerrigan co-stars. Brisk poverty-row melodrama with a postal-inspector hook that was timely in an era when mail-fraud rackets were front-page news. The film entered the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Crime · Drama