Joe Kirk Movies

It seems that Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi), in league with a beautiful but diabolical lady scientist (Lenore Aubert), needs a "simple, pliable" brain with which to reactivate Frankenstein's creature (Glenn Strange). The "ideal" brain belongs to the hapless Lou Costello, whom the lady doctor woos to gain his confidence and lure him to the operating table. Lawrence Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.), better known as the Wolf Man, arrives on the scene to warn Costello and his pal Bud Abbott of Dracula's nefarious schemes. Throughout the film, the timorous Costello witnesses the nocturnal rituals of Dracula and the Monster, but can't convince the ever-doubting Abbott--until the wild climax in Dracula's castle, where the comedians are pursued by all three of the film's monstrosities. As a bonus, the Invisible Man (voiced by an unbilled Vincent Price) shows up for "all the excitement." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Blonde Ransom revives a plot that dates back at least to Broadway's David Belasco era. Virginia Grey plays Vicki, the niece of irascible old scoundrel Uncle William (George Barbier). When Vicki's boyfriend Duke (Donald Cook), owner of a Broadway nightclub, needs $63000 in a hurry, Vicki fakes her own kidnapping to raise the ransom money from her uncle. Things get sticky when the phony abduction turns real, but nothing really bad ever happens in a Universal musical comedy. TV buffs might get a kick out of comedy relief Pinky Lee, performing several of his tried-and-true burlesque routines. As proof that everything old is new again, the storyline of Blonde Ransom was reworked as late as 1997 for the Alicia Silverstone vehicle Excess Baggage. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this adventure, set in Algiers, a French cabaret singer tries to expose the identity of an Arab leader who is conspiring to attack the French. She hopes that by cozying up to him in his palace that she will be able to steal his plans and thwart the conspiracy. Unfortunately, she is soon unmasked and must be rescued by her real lover, a soldier in the French Foreign Legion. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

At 88 minutes, Here Come the Co-Eds is one of the longest of Abbott & Costello's Universal starring vehicles, and though not necessarily the best, it manages to sustain a high comic content throughout. The scene is a financially strapped girl's college, where professional dancer Molly (Martha O'Driscoll) lands a scholarship. Molly's manager-brother Slat (Bud Abbott) has arranged this as a means to publicize his sister's showbiz career, which angers the college's chairman of the board (Charles Dingle), who threatens to foreclose on the school. To keep tabs on Molly and also find ways of raising the mortgage money, Slats and his pal Oliver (Lou Costello) takes jobs as school caretakers, immediately running afoul of ill-tempered groundskeeper Johnson (Lon Chaney Jr.) One of Slats' schemes involves a championship basketball game, in which Oliver, hypnotized into thinking that he's petite female student "Daisy Dimple", effortlessly sinks one basket after another (Costello, a top high school athlete, performed these scenes without the aid of a double). What ultimately saves the college is a concert by Phil Spitalny and his all-girl orchestra, featuring "Evelyn and Her Magic Violin." While the obligatory chase scene in Here Come the Coeds (this time involving a sailboat on wheels!) is a disappointment, several of Abbott & Costello's comic setpieces are hilarious, notably the time-honored "Jonah and the Whale" routine and the "oyster in the chowder" bit. Funniest line: while performing a musical duet with costar Peggy Ryan, Costello sighs "I feel just like Donald O'Connor." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this crime drama, two ex-hoods find their attempts to straighten up and fly right are foiled by a blackmailing gangster who threatens to expose their past who forces them to rob the department store they work at. Outwardly, the crooks go along with the scam, but they have also devised a scam of their own. In the end, the extortionist is killed by a cop and the two reluctant robbers turn themselves in. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

With the profits of the Abbott & Costello films in decline, Universal decided to experiment with the comedians' standard formula. In both Little Giant and The Time of Their Lives, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello play separate characters, rather than the usual smart guy/dumb guy comedy team. In Giant, Costello is cast as farm boy Benny Miller, a would-be salesman who goes to work for the Hercules Vacuum Cleaner company. Almost immediately running afoul of crooked general manager Morrison (Bud Abbott), bumbling Benny is about to be fired when he is convinced by a bunch of practical jokers that he has the power to read minds. His newfound self-confidence enables Benny to become Hercules' top salesman, which delights branch manager Tom Chandler (also Bud Abbott), Morrison's cousin and principal rival. About to receive a salesmanship award, Benny falls into a trap laid by Morrison and his wife (Jacqueline de Wit), who conspire to discredit Chandler by exposing Benny as a fraud. Thoroughly disillusioned, Benny returns home, only to discover that not only is he still Hercules' fair-haired boy, but that he's also replaced Morrison as general manager. Written by Richard Collins and Paul Jarrico, Little Giant is hardly typical Abbott and Costello fare, though the film contains several characteristic comedy setpieces, including an interpolation of Abbott & Costello's classic "Seven Goes Into Twenty-Eight Thirteen Times" routine. Perennial Marx Brothers foil Margaret Dumont shows up in one of the better slapstick scenes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Clare Booth Luce's once-timely stage comedy Margin for Error was indifferently transferred to the screen in 1943. Milton Berle stars as Moe Finkelstein, a Jewish Brooklyn policeman assigned to guard Nazi consul Karl Baumer (Otto Preminger) in pre-WW II New York. Baumer is not only an anti-Semitic brute, but he's also a crook, siphoning off German consulate funds for his own use. His perfidy is well known by his wife Sophie (Joan Bennett), who married Baumer only to save her family from a concentration camp, and by Baumer's assistant Baron von Alvenstor (Carl Esmond). Thus, when Baumer is found dead of poison, stabbing and gunshot wounds, Sophie and the Baron are immediately suspected of murder. But Finkelstein comes to the rescue by piecing together the clues and coming up with a bizarre, but credible, solution to the crime. Having previously directed himself as Karl Baumer in the Broadway version of Margin for Error, Otto Preminger felt qualified to do the same in the film version: as a result, Preminger has no one but himself to blame for his shamelessly hammy performance. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this "East Side Kids" escapade (the eighth in the series), the gang, led by Muggs McGinniss (Leo Gorcey), help a man load a barrel on a truck. Little do they know that the man is a crook; accused of trying to steal the truck, they are immediately and without due process sent to reform school. Meanwhile, a gang members' brother is framed for murder and sentenced to death (justice is dispensed with remarkable swiftness on the East Side). The imprisoned gang watch a newsreel which features the man whom they'd helped load the truck. The man was filmed picking up a lottery prize for the his boss, a supposedly dead gangster who committed the murder for which the boy mentioned a few sentences back was framed. With the flimsiest of evidence, Muggs and his boys figure that the barrel loaded on the truck contained the murderous gangster. They escape from reform school (almost as easily as they'd gotten in), track down the gangster's henchman, extract a confession and save the condemned boy at the last minute. Insanely illogical, Mr. Wise Guy is lifted ever so slightly from mediocrity by the supporting performance of Billy Gilbert as the gangster's stooge. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Forrest Tucker stars in this yeoman Republic actioner. A short-term railroad freight line is threatened with extinction by a swifter trucking service. Keith Larsen is Tucker's business opponent, as well his rival over the affections of the beauteous Barbara Britton. When the train service evinces signs of survival, the truckers start playing dirty. Night Freight was directed by western veteran Jean Yarborough, who proved that his many years in the TV-sitcom world had not diminished his ability to stage action sequences. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Engineer Scott Henderson (Alan Curtis) is at a seedy midtown Manhattan bar early one evening, drowning his sorrows over a failed marriage, when he strikes up a conversation with a woman (Fay Helm). She's well dressed, with a very ornate hat topping off her ensemble, and also seems even sadder and more lost than he is. Henderson persuades her to join him in taking advantage of the two theater tickets he has. They attend the show -- a song-and-dance showcase by a Brazilian artist (Aurora) -- and then part company without ever exchanging names. He returns home to find three detectives in his apartment and his wife strangled. Inspector Burgess (Thomas Gomez) questions Henderson and tries to verify his alibi, but no one -- not the bartender, the cabbie who hauled them to the theater, or the drummer in the band who was watching her -- admits to remembering the woman. Henderson can't prove that he was elsewhere when his wife was strangled and is convicted of murder and sentenced to death. His assistant, Carol Richman (Ella Raines), who has watched all of this happen, can't sit by while Scott is destroyed, and decides to get at the truth, joined by Inspector Burgess, who now believes Henderson to be innocent. Carol hounds the bartender (Andrew Tombes) until he seems ready to crack, but before he talks, he tries to get away from her and dies in an accident. The drummer, Cliff Milburn (Elisha Cook Jr.), proves more talkative and reveals that someone paid him 500 dollars to forget about the woman, but before Burgess can question him, he's strangled. It seems as though there's no hope left, even with the added help of Jack Marlow (Franchot Tone), Scott's best friend, newly returned from Brazil, when Carol gets a line on the unusual hat the woman was wearing. She traces the hat to its owner in a mansion on Long Island, where she is recovering from a breakdown over the death of her fiancé -- that was her trouble on the night she crossed paths with Scott Henderson. It is only on returning to New York, while awaiting Burgess' arrival, that she realizes that Jack Marlow is the murderer -- that he returned after having dinner with them, following their fight, and strangled Henderson's wife; paid off the bartender, the cab driver, and Cliff Milburn to keep them from revealing the existence of the woman that Scott was with; and killed Milburn to prevent him from talking; and he plans to kill Carol before she can talk to Burgess. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Charles Barton took a break from his Abbott and Costello assignments at Universal to direct the second-feature thriller Smooth as Silk. Kent Taylor plays a slick criminal lawyer adept at all sorts of sneaky legalistic tricks. Taylor's girl friend Virginia Grey jilts him for the more honest Milburn Stone. The lawyer hatches a plan to murder Stone, then to use his knowledge of the law to get off scot-free and implicate someone else for the crime. Though running a scant 65 minutes, Smooth as Silk packs a bigger wallop than some of Universal's more ambitious "A" melodramas of the same period. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide