Jimmie Dugan Movies
- 1946
Sidney Toler seems listless and barely awake throughout the intrigues of the Monogram "Charlie Chan" opus Shadows over Chinatown. This time out, Charlie Chan (Sidney Toler) and his erstwhile assistants, son Jimmy (Victor Sen Yung) and chauffeur Birmingham (Mantan Moreland), investigate a clever insurance scam. The crooks are using a series of brutal "torso murders" to rip off an insurance company by claiming that the long-missing Mary Conover (Tanis Chandler) is a victim of the unknown murderer. Actually, Mary is in hiding from the insurance hucksters themselves, forcing Chan to race against time (if "race" is the correct word) to save the girl from certain doom. Perennial movie drunk Jack Norton has all the film's best lines as a garrulous boozer who isn't quite what he seems. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sidney Toler, Mantan Moreland, (more)
- 1943
Wally Brown and Alan Carney, RKO's prefab "answer" to Universal's Abbott and Costello, made their joint starring debut in Adventures of a Rookie. The boys play a couple of GIs on leave, who attend a party at a girls' boarding house. The fun begins when the house is quarantined during a scarlet fever epidemic, forcing our heroes to stay with their lovely hostesses indefinitely. Typical of the humor level is the following exchange: "My stomach's too fat." "Why don't you diet?" "But I like it this color." Primitive though it may have been, Adventures of a Rookie posted a $198,000 profit for RKO, leading to a three-year series of low-budget, lowbrow Brown & Carney vehicles. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Wally Brown, Alan Carney, (more)
- 1943
The fact that star Errol Flynn had been recently embroiled in a real-life rape trial only served to increase the box-office "pull" of Warner Bros. Northern Pursuit. Flynn is cast as Canadian mountie Steve Wagner, assigned to track down and capture downed Nazi pilot Hugo von Keller (Helmut Dantine) in the snowier Hudson Bay regions. Once Wagner and fellow mountie Jim Austin (John Ridgely) catch up with Von Keller, they pretend to be on his side, hoping that he'll reveal his espionage plans. Taken in, Von Keller leads the mounties towards a secret Nazi hideaway, where the Germans have hidden a huge bombing plane, to be used against North America. The fact that Wagner is posing as a Nazi sympathizer hardly endears him to Von Keller's hostage Laura McBain (Julie Bishop), but when the truth is revealed she professes her love for him. In the light of Flynn's recent legal problems, one line in Northern Pursuit invariably brought down the house in 1943: After assuring Laura that she's the only woman he's ever loved, Wagner/Flynn turns to the camera and quips "What am I saying?" ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Errol Flynn, Julie Bishop, (more)
- 1932
A mentally unstable naval officer goes mad with jealousy when his wife's recent lover shows up as a lieutenant on the submarine he commands. It is the smell of cheap perfume that arouses the husband's suspicions, and he plans to confront the lieutenant in the sub. The wife follows him there, knowing very well that while in a jealous rage her husband cannot be responsible for his actions. Her husband catches her and locks her in his cabin then deftly steers the sub towards a freighter. Just before the ships collide, he forces the lieutenant to take the controls. It is a terrible crash and the sub sinks, stone-like, towards the bottom. Even as they go down, the cuckoo commander insists the lieutenant is to blame for the tragedy. Meanwhile the woman successfully convinces the remaining crew members of her husband's lunacy, they accept the orders of their new commander, the lieutenant, and escape together just in the nick of time. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tallulah Bankhead, Gary Cooper, (more)
