Richard Emory Movies

Scheming Frances Walden (Constance Ford) hopes to use the "gossip grapevine" in the small farming town of Palmetto to break up the marriage of her brother Martin (Robert Bray) and his wife Andrea (Diane Brewster). Frances goes so far as to pay her own nephew Roy (a pre-Lost in Space Mark Goddard), the town's biggest "stud", to compromise Andrea--who may already be amply compromised, if rumors of her affair with former boyfriend Nelson Tarr (Joe Maross) are true. When Martin is murdered, the police arrest Nelson--who, fortunately, happens to be a client of Perry Mason (Raymond Burr). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Friday (Jack Webb) and Smith (Ben Alexander) are on the trail of escaped convicts Powell and Selby, who after busting out of San Quentin have embarked upon a 24-hour crime spree in Los Angeles. The detectives end up heading south of the border to the Mexican fishing village of Encinada--where the local police officers have some surprising information about the two fugitives. This episode is based on the Dragnet radio broadcast of March 20, 1952. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A pair of crooks (Mauritz Hugo, Dale Van Sickel) posing as food service workers show up at the scene of several fires. While one of the crooks cheerfully serves coffee to the firemen, the other dons an asbestos suit and robs the safes in the torched buildings. When the criminals hit the "Daily Planet" building after a fire, editor Perry White (John Hamilton) is accused of arson and insurance fraud! Though Perry himself figures out what's going on, it falls to Superman (George Reeves) to end the caffeine-stained crime wave. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this melodrama, an American soldier finds himself by two private eyes hired by the wealthy German father of the man he wrongly killed eight years ago. The female detective begins working at the killer's drive-in; eventually she seduces him into marrying her. At that point the other private eye appears claiming to be her estranged brother. He gets the couple interested in a scheme whereby they all might split $200,000 in Berlin. The killer goes for the ruse, returns to Germany and finds himself prosecuted for the murder. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Loosely based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's Paradise Revisited, MGM's The Last Time I Saw Paris is a star-studded soap opera, luxuriously lensed by director Richard Brooks. In his last film as an MGM contractee, Van Johnson plays reporter Charles Wills, who while covering the VE Day celebrations in Paris, meets and falls in love with the gorgeous Helen Ellsworth (Elizabeth Taylor). Soon afterward, Charles and Helen are married. Charles supports his wife with a low-paying wire service job, devoting his evenings to writing a novel. After numerous rejections, Charles is more than willing to give up writing and live off the revenue of a Texas oil well in which he'd invested. As he squanders his newfound riches on creature comforts, he loses his literary ambitions and, slowly but surely, the love and devotion of his wife. His self-destructive behavior is halted only by a devastating tragedy. Donna Reed costars as Charles sister-in-law Marion, who carries a torch for him throughout the picture, and Eva Gabor contributes a supporting role. Since lapsing into public domain in 1982, The Last Time I Saw Paris has become a cable-TV and video-store fixture, though print quality varies sharply. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Billy the Kid doesn't really appear in Captive of Billy the Kid, but his memory lingers throughout this Republic "B"-western. According to screenwriters M. Coates Webster and Richard Wormser, Billy salted away a fortune in stolen gold somewhere in the hills. Before he died, he tore his treasure map into five pieces, giving one piece each to his most trusted friends--one of whom, Van Stanley (Grant Withers) eventually decides to grab all the loot for himself. When the other map-holders begin dropping like flies, Allan "Rocky" Lane is brought into the picture to tie up loose ends and thwart the villain--who, surprise or surprises, isn't the highly suspicious Van Stanley! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Hollywood, 1927: the silent-film romantic team of Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) and Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) is the toast of Tinseltown. While Lockwood and Lamont personify smoldering passions onscreen, in real life the down-to-earth Lockwood can't stand the egotistical, brainless Lina. He prefers the company of aspiring actress Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds), whom he met while escaping his screaming fans. Watching these intrigues from the sidelines is Cosmo Brown (Donald O'Connor), Don's best pal and on-set pianist. Cosmo is promoted to musical director of Monumental Pictures by studio head R.F. Simpson (Millard Mitchell) when the talking-picture revolution commences. That's all right for Cosmo, but how will talkies affect the upcoming Lockwood-Lamont vehicle "The Dueling Cavalier"? Don, an accomplished song-and-dance man, should have no trouble adapting to the microphone. Lina, however, is another matter; put as charitably as possible, she has a voice that sounds like fingernails on a blackboard. The disastrous preview of the team's first talkie has the audience howling with derisive laughter. On the strength of the plot alone, concocted by the matchless writing team of Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Singin' in the Rain is a delight. But with the addition of MGM's catalog of Arthur Freed-Nacio Herb Brown songs -- "You Were Meant for Me," "You Are My Lucky Star," "The Broadway Melody," and of course the title song -- the film becomes one of the greatest Hollywood musicals ever made. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This western stars Sterling Hayden as a man who innocently tends to the needs of a mysterious stranger. When it turns out that the stranger was part of a notorious gang of mercenaries, Hayden is condemned as a conspirator and sent to Hellgate Prison in New Mexico. He earns a pardon thanks to his courage and medical expertise during an epidemic. Hellgate was one of a handful of ambitious 1950s projects from the otherwise cost-conscious Lippert Studios. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ninety per cent of Little Big Horn takes place before Custer's Last Stand; thus, the emphasis is on character and suspense rather than spectacle (just as well, since spectacle was well out of the range of parsimonious Lippert Studios). Lloyd Bridges heads a small band of cavalrymen who desperately try to reach the Little Big Horn in time to warn Custer of a Sioux ambush. One by one, the men are picked off by Indian sharpshooters. The only survivors are Bridges and John Ireland, longtime enemies who may very well knock each other off before ever getting to Custer. Little Big Horn was the first directorial assignment for western-writer Charles Marquis Warren. It was hardly the last: Warren would later be one of the most prolific contributors to the Gunsmoke TV series of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Gene Autry is back in the saddle again, albeit North of the Border. Montana marshal Autry and another lawman pursue a bank robber into Canada. Teaming with a straight-arrow Mountie, Autry tracks down the criminal in the Canadian wilderness, taking time out once in a while to sing one of his host's national songs. Running 70 minutes, Gene Autry and the Mounties was promoted by Columbia Pictures as a western "special". While on location in Canada, the Autry unit decided to quickly make another film for next season's western schedule, and the result was Blue Canadian Rockies (52). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Lippert's Mask of the Dragon was filmed simultaneously with Fingerprints Don't Lie, utilizing the same director and cast. Richard Travis plays Phil Ramsey, a private eye, headquartered in San Francisco. He is obliged to investigate the murder of an old friend, a Korean war vet who had recently delivered a jade dragon to a Chinatown merchant. Aided by heroine Ginny O'Donnell (Sheila Ryan), Ramsey follows the trail of clues to a deserted TV studio (actually Los Angeles' KTLA). Sid Melton provides comedy relief as the head villain's dopey henchman. Though cheaply produced, Mask of the Dragon doesn't stint entertainment-wise. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Producer-director Edward L. Cahn's Prominent Pictures produced this low-budget thriller-noir which was then sold outright to RKO. Joyce MacKenzie stars as Laura Mansfield whose father (Franklyn Farnum) is killed in cold blood by smalltime hoodlum turned messenger boy Jackie Wales (Stanley Clements). But the latter has a seemingly ironclad alibi and Laura goes undercover as a nightclub cigarette girl to trap him. Unbeknownst to the heroine, however, Wales is blackmailing Armitage (Albert Dekker), the ruthless nightclub operator who had hired him to murder Mansfield in the first place. But is Armitage the real "Mr. Big" or is someone else pulling the strings? ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

The rubber-stamp quality of Allan "Rocky" Lane's Republic westerns continued to manifest itself in Bandit King of Texas. Lane plays an honest cowboy who has seemingly fallen in with an outlaw gang. It comes as no surprise when Lane turns out to be working undercover to bring the gang to justice. As with his earlier films, the whole story is wrapped up in a brisk 60 minutes. One of the pleasanter aspects of Allan Lane's vehicles was their depiction of the villains as fairly normal human beings: in this case, Jim Nolan is the wicked but essentially believable heavy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide