Leonard Penn Movies

This serial is set during the American Civil War and is based on the Jules Verne story. A Union Army captain is captured by the Confederates and imprisoned in Richmond, Virginia. He and four other men escape in a balloon, but a hurricane blows them off course and they land on an uncharted island. There they encounter a tribe known as the Volcano People, are menaced by a wild savage, and run into a female alien from outer space bent on world domination. ~ Brian Gusse, All Movie Guide

Western star Tim Holt and director Lesley Selander continued their collaboration with Law of the Badlands. Holt and his cohort Chico Rafferty (Richard Martin) are lawmen who pose as desperadoes. The plan is to infiltrate a vicious gang of counterfeiters who've been flooding the frontier with funny money. But when Holt's former girl friend Joan Dixon shows up in town, the jig is up. Law of the Badlands was the least expensive Tim Holt western since the mid-1940s, but thanks to postwar inflation the film lost money--as did most of Holt's subsequent RKO B pictures. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Gunfire stars bantam-weight western favorite Don Barry as legendary outlaw Frank James. Actually, Frank is an ex-outlaw when the film begins; in fact, he's sworn never to use his guns again. But when somebody begins posing as Frank and pulling off a series of robberies....well, what's a man to do? Helping Frank prove his innocence is sympathetic marshal Kelly (Robert Lowery), who gives James plenty of leeway to capture the genuine miscreants. Though produced and directed on a shoestring budget, Gunfire delivers the action goods to everyone's satisfaction. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Woman From Headquarters is female rookie-cop Joyce (Virginia Huston). For reasons that seem amazing unless one actually sees the film, Joyce decides to take on a narcotics ring single-handed. Even more amazing -- especially for a 1950 film -- is the fact that she doesn't seem to need much help from her male colleagues. She does, however, find time for an intramural romance with officer Gates (Robert Rockwell). She also works overtime to reform a good-girl-gone-bad (Barbara Fuller). Featured in the cast are real-life policewoman Frances Charles, stalwart supporting actor Jack Kruschen, and, at the bottom of the cast list, Leonard Penn, the father of 1990s film faves Sean and Christopher Penn. Made with the full cooperation of the Los Angeles Police Department, Woman From Headquarters overcomes its occasional lapses of logic, painting a fairly realistic picture of crime-fighting in the Big City. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Nelson Leigh assumes the role of Jesus Christ in this drama that depicts such historical events as the Sermon on the Mount and the Last Supper while portraying the period in which Christ roamed the countryside preaching the gospel. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Eliot Ness may have gotten lots of publicity (especially long after the fact) for breaking the Capone mob, but as Joseph H. Lewis' The Undercover Man reminds us, it was the accountants and the numbers-crunchers that brought down Capone and his mob. Frank Warren (Glenn Ford) started out as an accountant, but now serves as an investigator for the Treasury Department. His job has frequently required him to go undercover, masquerading as a criminal to get the goods on the top-level tax-law violators that his unit targets. But now his assignment is to gather evidence on the operations of the nation's number-one crime boss and get proof of the income that he and his lieutenants are not declaring, and this proves not only frustrating but dangerous. Potential stoolies are murdered and witnesses intimidated, and when one otherwise "respectable" lawyer (Barry Kelley) starts mentioning Warren's wife (Nina Foch) in casual conversation, he takes the hint. He's ready to quit until the mother (Esther Minciotti) of a witness-turned-victim tells him about what life was like in Italy under the Black Hand, and why she came to America to raise her sons. Warren and his men (James Whitmore, David Wolfe) make one last attempt to get the proof they need, tracing signatures and handwriting to get evidence implicating a small man in the operation, using it to turn him and going for bigger fish. Finally, even the shyster lawyer who has been dogging Warren every step of the way ends up in the sights of the feds, and the mob turns its attention to getting rid of this new "liability" and taking care of Warren as well. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Monogram's four-year-old Jimmy Wakely western series began to wind down with Courtin' Trouble. As was customary, Jimmy does more singin' than fightin' or shootin' in this leisurely entry. The plot concerns an ongoing feud between cattlemen and frontier merchants. Adding fuel to the fire is an outlaw gang, masterminded by saloon owner Leonard Penn (the real-life father of actors Sean and Christopher Penn). Virginia Belmont plays a lady attorney who is determined to bring things to a peaceful conclusion, while Dub "Cannonball" Taylor is the all-around comedy relief. Star Wakely manages to squeeze three musical numbers into the film's 56-minute timespan. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Last Chance Inn, the main locality in this latter-day Hopalong Cassidy Western, certainly lives up to its name. A prospector has mysteriously disappeared after spending a night there and now Lucky Jenkins' (Rand Brooks) prospective "uncle-in-law," another guest, has vanished as well. Hopalong Cassidy (William Boyd) locates the missing man's body in a mine but when he returns with the sheriff, the dead man has performed yet another disappearing act. Just before retiring, in the same room previously occupied by the victims, Sheriff Thompson (Forbes Murray) reveals the name of his prime suspect: Larry Potter (Bob Gabriel), the outlaw brother of the inn's wheelchair-bound proprietor (John Parrish). But will the sheriff survive the night or disappear just like the previous occupants? Like so many of the Hopalong Cassidy Westerns, the oddly titled Dead Men Don't Dream was filmed on location at Lone Pine, CA. Leading lady Mary Tucker had previously acted under the moniker of Mary Ware. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, 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

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

This was the second entry in Pine-Thomas' film series based on the popular radio show Big Town. Philip Reed and Hillary Brooke return respectively as Steve Kilgore, crusading editor of the Illustrated Daily Press, and Steve's plucky Gal Friday Lorelei Kilbourne. In this one, Steve suspects that hard-luck Harry Hilton (Frank Wilcox) has been framed on a murder rap. Investigating on his own, our hero uncovers a conspiracy to bring financial ruin to a construction firm. He also discovers that the person behind it all is the actual murderer. A few scattered laughs are provided when Lorelei faces male chauvinism upon taking over the responsibilities of the Daily Press' police-beat reporter. To avoid confusion with the television version of Big Town, I Cover Big Town was retitled I Cover the Underworld for TV. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

High School Hero is all about a high school hero (what else?), played by Monogram musical star Freddy Stewart. A student at Whitney High, Freddy agonizes when the Big Football Game approaches with the school's principal rival, who have emerged victorious in all previous gridiron clashes. Director Arthur Dreifuss makes things easy for the audience by dressing the "good" football players in white and the "bad" ones in black, which is perhaps the film's comic highlight. To amplify the budget, the film is rife with "product placement" advertising plugs, a practice that would reach its nirvana in 1949's Love Happy (and would be revived, with a vengeance, in the 1980s). In addition to Freddy Stewart's perennial leading lady June Preisser, High School Hero costars Noel Neill, later to achieve TV fame as Lois Lane on Superman. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide