Monroe Talbot Movies

"An All-Star Cast" (well, that's what the credits say) helps bring a confusing tale of shenanigans in the jungle to the screen in this low-budget adventure saga, which has become a cult favorite. Steve Collins (Ray "Crash" Corrigan") is an explorer who stumbles injured and exhausted into Morgan's Trading Post, an oasis of civilization in the African jungle, and tells a strange tale of what he's seen over the past few days. Collins encountered Bradford, a fellow explorer who had run afoul of angry natives and was being held captive when they discovered a beautiful woman and her son, who were left stranded years ago by a death in their touring party. The young boy has developed an ability to communicate telepathically with the beasts of the jungle, and through them may be able to lead Bradford to the location of a long-lost treasure. Meanwhile, everyone lives in fear of the White Gorilla, an albino ape who has been shunned by the other creatures of the jungle and now regards every living thing as his enemy, in particularly an especially savage black gorilla. The majority of the jungle footage in The White Gorilla was taken from a silent serial, Perils Of The Jungle, which was shot in 1927; this helps to explain why Collins narrates the action, why many of the characters never actually meet on screen, and why the action frequently and abruptly speeds up or slows down. Ray "Crash" Corrigan donned an ape suit to play the White Gorilla, as well as portraying Collins. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A "special" by Monogram standards, Lure of the Wasteland was lensed in a not inexpensive process called Telco-color. Grant Withers takes a break from his duties in the "Mister Wong" series to play Smitty, a US marshal assigned to track down $250,000 in stolen bonds. To gain the confidence of the outlaws, Smitty pulls the old ploy of posing as a crook and joining the gang. Despite his mental agility in plotting and planning large-scale robberies, outlaw leader Butch (LeRoy Mason) is unable to see through Smitty's guise until it's too late for him. Former silent comedy star Snub Pollard, fresh from a comic-sidekick stint in Grand National's Tex Ritter series, plays a relatively straight role as a reformed crook who acts as Smitty's go-between. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Weather-beaten western star Harry Carey is consistently better than his material in the cheapie shoot-em-up Aces Wild. Astride his wonder horse Sonny, Cheyenne Harey (Carey) comes to the rescue of heroine Martha (Gertrude Messenger), the owner of a valuable gold mine. The villains try to buy Cheyenne off, but he's not about to be dissuaded from his purpose. Two veterans of Columbia's 2-reel comedy mills show up in important roles: Theodore Lorch as the mustachioed heavy, and second-echelon comic Phil Dunham as a crusading newspaper editor. Also on hand is black comedian Fred Toones, who spent most of his career saddled with the demeaning cognomen "Snowflake." ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Harry Carey's western series for bottom-of-the-barrel Ajax Pictures were definitely a mixed bag, but some were pretty good, and Last of the Clintons was even better. Carey is cast in the William S. Hart mold as frontier detective Trigger Carson. With stoic determination, Carson takes on a gang of cattle rustlers headed by the monstrous Luke Todd (Earl Dwire). An interesting subplot involves the kidnapping of heroine Edith Elkins (Betty Mack), who manages to reform her abductor (Del Carson) before any harm can be done. Only in its haphazard story construction and occasionally fuzzy photography does Last of the Clintons betray its poverty-row origins. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Silent Western star Harry Carey returned to his roots in this low-budget Western from Ajax Pictures. The strong silent type, Carey plays Cheyenne Kinkaid, a stranger claiming to be an outlaw on the run in order to infiltrate a gang lead by the notorious El Diablo (Theodore Lorch). At the villain's lair, Rustler's Paradise, Kinkaid discovers that a girl living there, Connie (Gertrude Messinger), is his long-lost daughter, who, years earlier, had been taken from him by his wife and her lover, Rance Kimball. Kimball, of course, is none other than El Diablo, and with the assistance of Larry Martin (Edmund Cobb) and his vaqueros, Kinkaid manages to catch the entire gang. El Diablo is brought back to Rustler's Paradise, where, tied up and threatened with being skinned alive, he confesses to having killed Kinkaid's wife. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi