Jack Ingram Movies

Lash LaRue stars as U.S. deputy, with Al "Fuzzy" St. John as his comic-relief deputy. Lash and Fuzzy are on the trail of El Sombre (Michael Whalen), a notorious bandit. Unbeknownst to everyone but the audience, El Sombre doubles as a kindly dentist named Jarvis. While trying to stem the villain's activities, Our Heroes rescue heroine Vicki (Noel Neill) from various perils. True to his name, Lash LaRue wields his bullwhip with deadly accuracy. Son of a Badman received better reviews than usual, by virtue of the clever screenplay by Ron Ormond and Ira Webb and the top-flight supporting cast. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

For some reason, whenever Universal used the word "Gal" in a film's title, Yvonne de Carlo usually headed the cast. In Gal Who Took the West, de Carlo plays Lillian Marlowe, an New York songstress who heads Thataway. She becomes the romantic bone of contention between the feuding O'Hara cousins, Grant (John Russell) and Lee (Scott Brady). The hostilities boil over into an all-out range war, and federal troops are summoned. Can Lillian succeed where other, better-armed negotiators have failed. The lighthearted nature of Gal Who Took the West is underlined by staging the film in flashback, as related by a pair of toothless old codgers (Clem Bevans and Houseley Stevenson). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Desert Vigilante perpetuated the long-running "Durango Kid" western series starring Charles Starrett. Per the title, Starrett gallops into a remote desert town, where he single-handedly (or so it seems) rounds up the villainous element. At this point in time, Starrett was being extensively doubled by the legendary Jock Mahoney, and the results were never less than spectacular. The subterfuge was helped along by the fact that Starrett's "Durango" character was required to wear a mask during most of the film. Desert Vigilante represented the first directorial assignment for Fred F. Sears, who remained with the Columbia "B" unit throughout the 1950s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Years before she played Dennis Mitchell's mom in TV's Dennis the Menace, Gloria Henry was a B-picture ingenue at Columbia. In Racing Luck, Gloria is top-billed as Phyllis Warren, sister of headstrong jockey Boots Warren (Stanley Clements). There's plenty of stock racetrack footage, intermingled with newly-lensed sequences of staged races. The plot is the usual "disgraced jockey redeems himself" folderol, told with speed if not freshness. Of special interest is the presence in the supporting cast of Dooley Wilson, who as we all know portrayed the legendary "Sam" in Casablanca (1942). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Yet another comic strip character -- Whitney Ellsworth's Congo Bill -- reached the screens in serial form courtesy of Columbia Pictures' penny-pinching Sam Katzman. But this intrepid jungle hero broke no new ground, to put it mildly. Played by a mustached Don McGuire -- a B-movie actor lacking somewhat in the charisma department -- Congo Bill again used the tired old plot about the search for a white Jungle Goddess, this time the possible heir to a 500,000-dollar trust fund. McGuire does manage to find the girl -- played by buxom Cleo Moore, who later gained fame in several exploitative film noirs of the 1950s -- but only after surviving attacks from a killer gorilla, an assortment of thugs, a runaway boulder, a shooting, and a stabbing, plus various other perils, none of them too exciting. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Yet another comic book hero -- Tex Granger of Calling All Boys fame -- came to the serial screen courtesy of cheapskate producer Sam Katzman. To save a buck, Katzman cast a nonentity named Robert Kellard, who despite former serial exposure in King of the Royal Mounted (1940), Drums of Fu Manchu (1940) and the starring role in Perils of the Royal Mounted (1942) had singularly failed to persuade the small fry of his true hero credentials. But here he was again, this time playing the new owner of the daily newspaper in the small Western community of Three Buttes. The citizenry proves a tough crowd to please, however, what with the local marshal, Blaze Talbot (former singing cowboy Smith Ballew), being in cahoots with a gang of gold thieves headed by a loan shark (I. Stanford Jolley). To battle the forces of evil, Tex dons the ever-popular disguise of masked rider and becomes the avenging "Midnight Rider of the Plains." There is a dog and a young child (Buzz henry), who get in the way of things on occasion, not to mention a damsel-in-distress (Peggy Stewart) and the ever present rustic (big-nosed Britt Wood). Although four hack writers claimed the screenplay to be an original, Tex Granger "borrowed" its story from a 1926 William Boyd vehicle, The Last Frontier, which itself had been copied by RKO's serial department in 1932. Whatever the origins, the results were doleful and not even the usually so tolerable Miss Stewart, on loan from Republic Pictures, could do much with this dud. Leading man Robert Kellard gave up his screen career soon after. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

When scientific mastermind Jack Armstrong is kidnapped by a devious fiend determined to discover the secrets of atom-powered motors, our hero must escape the island fortress of his nefarious captor in this thrilling cliffhanger starring John Hart and Rosemary La Planche. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Based on a popular comic strip, this 15 episode Columbia chapterplay produced by legendary cheapskate Sam Katzman (aka "Jungle Sam") heralded the beginning of the end of the American movie serial. Starring the otherwise watchable Kane Richmond in the title role, Brick Bradford had pretensions of becoming the next Flash Gordon, but Katzman's notorious reluctance to part with a dollar bill sealed its fate. Perhaps the cheapest producer releasing through a major company (Columbia) in the '40s, Katzman employed a generous dose of carelessly inserted stock footage in his serials, thus earning the epitaph as the typical cigar-chomping hack producer who is in the movie business merely to make a fast buck (actor Mike Starr eminently portrayed the prototype in Ed Wood, 1995). A Secret Service agent employed by the United States government to protect the Interceptor Ray, a newly invented missile, Brick Bradford gets involved with a mysterious scientist, whose "crystal door" transports him to the moon and back, to 18th century Central America, etc. All of this demanded inspiring sets and special effects and not Jungle Sam's tired potted plants and moth-eaten stock footage fauna. Comic strip hero Brick Bradford deserved better and so did his portrayer, Kane Richmond. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

In the first of his three serials for Columbia Pictures, Larry "Buster" Crabbe starred as Captain Silver who, with his crew, gets involved with rescuing John Whitney (Milton Kibbee), a man with a certain knowledge of sunken treasure. Whitney has been kidnapped by a mysterious pirate known as The Admiral (Robert Barron), who rules over the ubiquitous South Seas Island. The girl in the case is Whitney's lovely daughter (Pamela Blake). Based on both a comic strip and a radio series, The Sea Hound was produced by the corner-cutting Sam Katzman and looked it. A former MGM starlet, brunette leading lady Pamela Blake was earlier known as Adele Pearce, her real name, apparently. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Fans of William "Wild Bill" Elliot vastly prefer his B westerns to his big-budget Republic "specials", though the latter films have their adherents. In The Fabulous Texan, Elliot emulates his idol William S. Hart in the role of ex-Confederate officer Jim McWade. Returning to Texas to find his home turf under the jurisdiction of corrupt, despotic carpetbaggers, McWade shoots it out with the authorities after his father is slain. Forced to flee to the mountains with his war buddy John Wesley Barker (John Carroll), McWade vows revenge on those bluecoated thugs who've ravaged his beloved Texas. Eventually, McWade realizes that he'd be better off cooperating with the Federal government to rid his state of its plunderers, but Barker comes to enjoy the life of an outlaw, and refuses to surrender his independence. Thus it comes to pass that McWade is obliged to hunt down his old friend, thereby restoring Law and Order to Texas. Catherine McLeod costars as Alice Sharp, the woman who will become McWade's wife-- and, in old age, the torchbearer of his memory. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Slave Girl is the sort of fare that the Universal higher-ups used to dismiss as "tits and sand;" nonetheless, this kind of entertainment (along with the equally lowbrow Abbott and Costello and Ma and Pa Kettle pictures) paid the bills for the studio's more ponderous projects. The slave girl of the title is Yvonne DeCarlo, one of many in servitude to a 19th century Tripoli potentate (Albert Dekker). Two-fisted American diplomat George Brent, accompanied by brawling sailors Broderick Crawford and Andy Devine, has been sent by his government to negotiate the release of hostages captured by the potentate. When negotiations break down, DeCarlo agrees to help Brent free the prisoners through more direct means, provided he takes her away with him. If Slave Girl was supposed to have been taken with a straight face, Universal would never have included brief cutaways to a wisecracking camel (!), whose name is "Humpy" and whose voice is provided by Buddy Hackett. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Director Frank Borzage and star Ginger Rogers both came acropper in the lavish but dull historical biopic Magnificent Doll. The usually ebullient Rogers seems encased in wax as Dolly Madison, first lady of the United States in the early 19th century. The story begins as young Washington socialite Dolly Payne, previously and unhappily wed to one John Todd (Horace McNally), can't make up her mind romantically between idealistic politician James Madison (Burgess Meredith) and firebrand Aaron Burr (David Niven). Burr solves that problem when he flees the country after killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel, leaving the field clear for Madison. What should have been the film's highlight, Dolly's rescue of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution during the 1812 burning of Washington, is treated as a throwaway. Told in flashback, the film ends just before Madison's ascendancy to the White House, with Dolly chastely charming the current chief executive Thomas Jefferson (Grandon Rhodes). Magnificent Doll is anything but . ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide