Joseph O'Donnell Movies

Brendan Behan, the quixotic, eternally sloshed Irish poet/playwright, peppered his play The Quare Fellow with plenty of "gallows humor." The film version dispenses with most the play's morbid jests, leaving us with a grim, straightforward account of a Dublin death-row prison guard (Patrick McGoohan) and his growing empathy with two condemned prisoners. One could understand the removal of the play's comic elements had the film been made in timorous Hollywood. But since Quare Fellow was financed and produced in Ireland, it seems a inappropriately glum tribute to one of the country's boldest and most brilliant talents. Quare Fellow was directed by American "B" specialist Arthur Dreifuss, who also adapted Behan's play for the screen. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The "badmen" of the title in this average western from Monogram are Waller (I. Stanford Jolley), a greedy express agent and Banker Jensen (Bill Kennedy, who conspire to separate Bob Bannon (Kenne Duncan) from the gold found on his property. Bob's brother Jim (Jim Bannon) and his two pals Whip Wilson and Texas (Fuzzy Knight) arrive too late to save Bob from the bad guys. Hoping to flush out the killer, Whip arranges to auction off the property. The ruse works and the hidden mine is handed over to Bob's lovely daughter, and heir, Carol (Phyllis Coates). ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

In Prairie Roundup, Fred F. Sears' direction brings a welcome jolt of vitality to Columbia's aging "Durango Kid" western series. Once again, Charles Starrett stars as Steve Carson, a lawman who is forced to assume the identity of masked do-gooder Durango. Framed for murder, Carson escapes to locate the real killer. It turns out that he was set up by cattle baron Buck Prescott (Frank Fenton), who eliminates competition by stealing livestock from other ranchers. Before Prescott is brought to justice (there's seldom much suspense in one of these westerns), Starrett's sidekick Smiley Burnette sings a couple of comic ballads. Reviewers were quick to comment upon director Sears' clever camera compositions and his skill at maintaining a respectable level of tension. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Return of the Lash exists primarily to display the bullwhip-wielding prowess of cowboy star Al "Lash" LaRue. The plot is set in motion when six wanted outlaws are rounded up and captured by The Cheyenne Kid (LaRue). Collecting the reward money, Cheyenne instructs his sidekick Fuzzy Q. Jones (Al St. John) to give the money to a group of financially strapped ranchers. Alas, Fuzzy falls off his horse, loses his memory, and forgets what became of the money. Fortunately, he snaps out of his amnesia during a climactic fistic set-to with secondary villain Kirby (George Cheseboro). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

British character actor Lionel Atwill, in his final performance, appeared as a power-mad Englishman attempting to rule the world in this 13 chapter Universal serial. Sir Eric Hazarias (Atwill) is searching the mountains of Himalaya for Metorium 245, the only known antidote to the Bomb. Sir Eric is opposed by United Peace Foundation investigator Rod Stanton (Russell Hayden of Hopalong Cassidy fame); scientist daughter Marjorie Elmore (Jane Adams, who had been so memorable as the hunchbacked nurse in House of Dracula); and a local guide, Tal Shen (Keye Luke, Charlie Chan's number one son). Midway through the serial, the British megalomaniac steps in the background in favor of the even more nefarious Malborn (John Mylong), "the power in back of Sir Eric." The sad reason for this sudden change of direction was the fact that Atwill was dying of bronchial cancer (he died April 22, 1946). Bits of dialogue filmed earlier were inserted, and actor George Sorel doubled Atwill in several scenes, Sir Eric's trademark Panama hat pulled well down over his face. In an economy move, The Lost City of the Jungle used stock footage from Columbia's earlier Lost Horizon, the 1943 Maria Montez vehicle White Savage, and even Leni Riefenstahl's legendary White Hell of Pitz Palu. Leading lady Adams, who later professed to have had a great time filming this serial, was the only Universal contract actor in the cast. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Serial killers are on the loose in this "Lone Rider" entry from PRC reportedly based on the exploits of a real-life 1870s roadhouse operator. A couple of crooks, Ben Gowdey (Ray Bennett) and Grogan (I. Stanford Jolley) have repeatedly sold the Circle C Ranch to unsuspecting buyers, whom they summarily rob and kill before signing the papers. Enter Fuzzy Jones (Al St. John), whose cousin Luke was one of the unlucky would-be ranchers, and Rocky Cameron, alias "The Lone Rider," who goes undercover as a fellow outlaw to catch the murderers. In other words: the usual. Busy B-Western heroine Joan Barclay was for unknown reasons billed Nica Doret for this film only. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

This PRC "Billy the Kid" western once more teams Buster Crabbe, as Billy Carson, with Al St.John, as perennial sidekick Fuzzy Q. Jones. Motivating the plot is the wholesale slaughter of two families by a gang of outlaws. Twenty years later, Billy and Fuzzy, survivors of the massacre, return to the small town where the instigator of the killings resides. Out of several suspects, our heroes narrow down the culprit by means of a twitching eye-the same device used by Hitchcock in Young and Innocent (1937). Evelyn Finley, who'd been a western ingenue since the 1930s, doesn't look a day older as the film's heroine. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The old bromide about the western town run by outlaws as a hideout for their fellow crooks makes a return appearance in Monogram's Land of the Outlaws. Since the crooks include such reliable disreputables as Charles King and John Merton, the good guys really have their work cut out for them. But not to worry! The heroes are Johnny Mack Brown and Raymond Hatton, whose B-western track record is unbeatable. Land of the Outlaws was directed by Lambert Hillyer, whose sense of rhythm and pace had saved many another inexpensive oater. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A typical war time Republic Pictures serial, G-Men vs. the Black Dragon featured the combined efforts of three allied operatives -- Rex Bennett of the USA (Rod Cameron), Vivian Marsh of the British Secret Service (Constance Worth, an Australian) and Chang Sing (Roland Got) of the Chinese counter-espionage division -- who battle the Japanese Black Dragon Society. Headed by the maniacal Oyama Harushi (Nino Pipitone, Sr.), the notorious society conducted a campaign of terror and sabotage against America until stopped by the united heroes in the 15th and final chapter, "Democracy in Action." That the Japanese master spy was played by an Italian-American was only par for the course. Much of the footage from this serial -- including a spectacular exploding submarine -- was re-used many times over, notably in the 1951 serial Flying Disc Man from Mars. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Wild Horse Rustlers was PRC's 1943 entry in the "Nazis on the prairie" western cycle. Hero Tom Cameron (Bob Livingston) discovers that his twin brother (also Bob Livingston) with a group of German spies. The villains intend to thwart the government's efforts to round up horses for military service. Fortunately, the bad twin turns good by fadeout time, and Democracy is preserved once more. Minus the propaganda angle, this is merely another cattle-rustling opus, with the standard western bad guys (Lane Chandler, Stanley Price) saying "Seig heil!" instead of "Let's get outta here!" As was usual at PRC, Al "Fuzzy"St. John provides the film's best moments. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Rod Cameron is the virile hero, and Joan Marsh the dauntless heroine; both are Allied secret agents working to outwit the Gestapo in North Africa. The acting honors go to Lionel Royce, who plays the dual role of kindly Sultan Abou Ben Ali and the sadistic German Baron Von Rommler. The baron imprisons the sultan, then takes his place, the better to swing the African Arabs to the Nazi cause. Running 15 episodes, Secret Service of Darkest Africa was directed by Spencer Gordon Bennett, who here as elsewhere indulges in his specialty: well-choreographed action sequences, with plenty of heavy objects being thrown directly at the camera. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

One of the best serials ever made, Spy Smasher has managed to find favor even among non-serial aficionados. Like his fellow masked avenger, Batman, Spy Smasher possessed no super-human powers but was a mere mortal of flesh and blood. In brief, Spy Smasher, alias Alan Armstrong (Kane Richmond, and his twin brother Jack (also Richmond) pursue a nefarious German agent known only as The Mask (Hans Schumm). Witney and screenwriters Ronald Davidson, Norman S. Hall, Joseph Poland, William Lively and Joseph O'Donnell imbued their hero with a dark uniform very similar to the one he wore in the comics, but added a fancy belt decorated with a large "V" for "Victory" and the morse code symbol for the letter, three dots and a dash. The coup de grace, so to speak, was Mort Glickman's signature score adapted from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Leading man Richmond managed to make his identical twins a little less identical than the usual routine split-screen characterizations and the character of Jack Armstrong, the All-American boy, was actively mourned when killed off in chapter eleven, "Hero's Death," in perhaps the most unique chapter ending in the history of serialdom. Kane Richmond, who had been around Hollywood's action studios since 1930 and had even appeared as a Martian in Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (1938), became a major genre icon on account of his stellar performance as the Spy Smasher. Borrowed from Columbia Pictures, flaxen-haired Howard Hughes discovery Marguerite Chapman proved one of the best purveyor's of serial pulchritude thus far as Jack Armstrong's imperiled fiancee Eve Corby, and Tristram Coffin, later a serial hero himself, was capital as Drake, The Mask's chief henchman who manage to insinuate himself as Jack's friend. The subsequent feature release Spy Smasher Returns constituted not a sequel but an edited-down version of this serial. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide