Warren Hull

From original nfo file:
Another pre-war Columbia serial, made before Sam Katzman could get his grubby hands on it, and as such is pretty good. Amateur magicians wil be interested in the magic show near the beginning of Chapter One. Among the routines performed by Mandrake is the Cup and Sponge Balls. This is a very old routine, but some magicians are better than others with hand magic.
Whoever is doing the cups and balls is very good.
I have no idea who is doing the actual hand magic. Certainly not Warren Hull. You can slow it down, play it backwards, and never see him make a slip.
The rest of the magic show is pretty ho-hum.Read More »

Quote:
This is a fun one, nothing very unexpected and definitely no ‘film noir,’ but if you are into a decently acted torch-songstress adventure this is a good pick. Marquita is an up-and-comer on the Rio club scene but has to back-burner her career for a trip up to New York (where nobody’s heard of her) in order to clear her dancer brother of a murder frame-up.Read More »

The Spider Returns (1941) is a Columbia movie serial based on the pulp magazine character The Spider. It was the fourteenth of the 57 serials released by Columbia and a sequel to its 1938 serial The Spider’s Web. The first episode runs 32 minutes; the rest are about 17 minutes each.

Synopsis :
Amateur criminologist Richard Wentworth was formerly the masked vigilante, The Spider. Wentworth brings The Spider out of retirement to help his friend, police commissioner Kirk (Kirkpatrick in the pulps), fight a dangerous maniac. This new enemy is The Gargoyle, a mysterious crimelord who threatens America with sabotage and wholesale murder in an effort to wreck national defense.
(From Wikipedia)Read More »

The Spider’s Web (1938) is a Columbia Pictures movie serial based on the pulp magazine character The Spider. The 15-chapter adventure (first episode was double length) was directed by serial and western specialist Ray Taylor and comedy and serial veteran James W. Horne. It was the fifth of the 57 serials released by Columbia.
The film was wildly successful when first released; it was the most popular serial of 1938, according to a tally published in The Motion Picture Herald, and was the first serial that Columbia brought back as a reprint (in 1947). A sequel, The Spider Returns, was released in 1941; of the Spider’s Web principals, only Warren Hull and Kenne Duncan returned in their original rolesRead More »