Nat Pendleton

Quote:
This film tries to blend comedy with drama, and the result is an uneasy tossed salad rather than a smooth pudding. Lyle Talbot is so stalwart and large it is difficult to feature him as a TV inventor — but he more than makes up for this in the fight scene, where, with his usual technique, he just beats the dickens out of the other actors for five or ten minutes. Nat Pendelton is wonderful as the dim-witted bill collector turned science hobbyist. Mary Astor, playing closer to her “Thin Man” arch smile than to her “Maltese Falcon” dramatic style, is a scheming but lovable promoter of potato peelers who decides to back this newfangled thing called television. All in all, this makes a better comedy than a drama, but the direction pulls it both ways, and thus it fails to satisfy either audience altogether.Read More »

Plot Synopsis:
For a studio specializing in glossy soap operas, costume pictures and musicals, MGM made an inordinate number of “B”-grade crime thrillers in 1937. The first on the docket that year was Under Cover of Night, starring Edmund Lowe as intrepid sleuth Christopher Cross. This time the killer is an overachieving psychopath who strikes only at night, and is unaware that he is a murderer. Thus, the question here is not “who done it,” but rather — when will Christopher Cross catch on to what the audience knows almost from the beginning. The best performance is rendered by Henry Daniell as the respectable college professor who literally moonlights as the killer. MGM would resurrect the “Christopher Cross” character as a female private eye (played by Joyce Compton) in 1939’s Sky Murder. by Hal EricksonRead More »

Synopsis:
A mad scientist is forced to leave San Francisco when his experiments become known. He lands on a tropical island, takes control and terrorizes the local populace. The survivor of a shipwreck washes ashore on the island, sees what is happening and determines to free the natives from his rule.Read More »