Poverty Row - The Best

The life of Al Roberts, a pianist in a New York nightclub, turns into a nightmare when he decides to hitchhike to Los Angeles to visit his girlfriend.

John Dillinger begins his life of crime as a petty thief, meets his future gang in prison and eventually masterminds a series of daring robberies.

Ice revue owner promotes peanut vendor to manager. Vendor gets too close to owner's wife. Owner suspects vendor wants wife and business. Complications ensue amidst professional and personal entanglements.

Shubunka (Barry Sulivan) is a cynical gangster who controls the Neptune Beach waterfront. He runs a numbers racket with the local soda shop owner. The police are in his pocket and the local hoods are on his payroll.

In Paris, an artist hires portrait models, and after he finishes their portraits, he strangles them.

A mortally-wounded female gangster recounts how she and her gang revived an executed killer from the gas chamber to try to find out where he buried a fortune in cash.

Dragging along her spineless boyfriend Johnny, hare-brained secretary Kitty O'Day is unstoppable as she tries to determine her boss's murderer. In her exuberance she and Johnny keep running into more corpses, as well as the unbelievabley inept team of Inspector Clancy and his sergeant, Mike. Their luck seems to run out, though, as they deliver themselves right into the hands of the murderer.

Young Dr. Paul Joseph Göbbels, an unsuccessful playwright, is forced, in order to support himself, to take a position as tutor in the household of Herr Quandt. His first attempt to force himself upon women comes when he becomes interested in a young actress, Maria Brandt, daughter of Colonel Brandt at whose home he is lodging. He is driven from the house by Colonel Brandt. That night, acting as an usher for a meeting of the new German Socialist Party, Göbbels hears Hitler speak, and becomes an ardent follower. He is made propaganda head, becomes known as the "Scoundrel of Berlin", and his machinations strike terror into the hearts of innocent girls. Maria Brandt, who is working as a bit player in a theater in Hannover, again meets Göbbels. Through his efforts, although unknown to her, Maria is made an overnight star. He then procures a contract for her at the famous UFA studios of Berlin. Maria, who has become interested in a young doctor, Hans Traeger, shuns the attention on Göbbels.

A naive small-town girl comes to New York City to meet her husband and discovers that he may be a murderer.

When a girl and her boyfriend are suspected of murdering her employer, they have to clear their names and find the real killer.

Kindly soup kitchen operator and professor of criminology Bela Lugosi uses his soup kitchen as a front for a criminal gang who commit a series of daring robberies and murders.

A honeymoon couple in New York for one night of wedded bliss before he's to join the army, become involved with gangsters after they find a cadaver under their bed.

The Phantom Robber gets a fortune in jewels and some valuable papers from a robbery on the crack train "The Midnight Limited" and Val Lennon and his pretty assistant, Joan Marshall, are on his trail. But the Phantom strikes three more times and adds murder to his list. Val decides to use himself as bait, although Chief Harrigan and Joan beg him not to risk his life. But Val, disguised as a wealthy Canadian, boards the train for a rendezvous with a killer.

Stockbroker Joe Downey (Warren Douglas), mistaken in the dark for gangster "Slats" Slattery (Robert Osterloh), is brutally beaten by a rival gangster, "Knuckles" Morgan (Meyer Grace), and Downey winds up in jail on a drunk charge. His sweetheart, Marion Roberts (Jane Frazee), and friend, Bill (Harry Lauter), obtain his release, and then the three set out to find and warn the intended-victim. This pulls them into some violent incidents, including a hijacking and a murder.

The police find the body of hostess Helen Howard (Wanda McKay), disposed of by petty racketeer Nick Mantee (Kane Richmond) after she was shot in his Bluejay night club by Benny Nordick (John Gallaudet) because she knew too much about Mantee's rackets. Police Lieutenant Williams (Conrad Nagel) and police Sergeant Tom Ramey (Ralph Byrd) inform the dead girl's parents and sister Nancy (Audrey Long) of the run-away's death. Nancy, inpatient waiting for the police to get a solid case together, signs with the Mercer Agency operated by Nordick, training girls for an excessive sum which they work off as hostesses at the Bluejay Club. Nancy becomes a hostess at the club and after a party for Latin-American night club owner Barda (Anthony Warde), she uncovers evidence that places Helen at the club. She accuses Nick and Benny of the murder and the two mobsters realize they must do away with her.

A dancer is pinned for murder after his shoe prints are found at the scene of the crime. His wife follows the trail of clues to the genuine killer.

A fast-moving automobile fails to make a sharp turn of the highway from Malibu to Los Angeles. It overturns and its occupants, Tim Slade, Newspaper man turned private investigator, and Hugh Fresney, managing editor of the Los Angeles Currier, are pinned underneath. Both are seriously injured and are unable to move. As they wait for the tide to come in and cover them, Fresney recounts that his boss, Clint VAughn has been killed, presumably by gangsters in the pay of Nick Dyke, who Fresney has fought against through his newspaper columns. Slade had been hired to avenge Fresney if Dyke's gang killed him in retaliation, Slade, one-time sweetheart of Vaughn's dipsomaniac wife Julie Vaughn, believed she still loved him, but he had fallen for Dana Jons, Vaughn's beautiful secretary. Police Detective O'Haffey investigated Vaughn's death and unearthed several suspects, including Slade, Julie, Dykes and Dana, but Slade was not satisfied and looked elsewhere.

Eduardo Belmonte overhears his new step-mother, Maria, and her lover, Don Ricardo Gonzales plotting to take over the Belmonte rancho on the night of the fiesta given by her husband, Don Carlos Belmonte. Eduardo offers Maria money if she will depart the hacienda premises, but she refuses and then accuses Eduardo of making love to her. The old Don doesn't take kindly to his son hitting on his step-mother and attacks him in a rage. The lights go out, the father is killed and Maria blames Eduardo, who escapes from the house, chased by Ricardo's men. The Cisco Kid and Pancho rescue Eduardo, who has been shot, and hide him while they investigate. Cisco discovers that bullets from Maria's gun, a handy little derringer, are the same type that killed Don Carlos. But the Alcalde arrests Cisco and Pancho, and Cisco is "supposedly" executed by a firing squad, but IS NOT shot and escapes by a trick. And now Maria and Ricardo are in real trouble with Cisco on the loose.

Undercover reporter Ann Mason infiltrates a neo-fascist group that recruits disgruntled veterans, but amnesia prevents her from exposing them.

Two guys sharing an apartment meet twin girls (both Bonita Granville). One's sweet, the other a major piece of bad news. The nice one is murdered and her boyfriend is accused of the crime. The wrong man/wrong victim plot strikes again.

Tom Cochrane (Leo Penn'), full of dope (cocaine) and covered with blood, is picked up by the police and then questioned by detectives Shannon (Douglas Fowley) and Taylor (Harry Strang), but manages to escape. His girl friend Lois Walter (Teala Loring) , against the wishes of her guardian, Jim Grosset (Charles Arnt), assists Tom and his police-officer brother-in-law Mac McLane (Robert Armstrong) in trying to clear Tom of a possible murder charge. Tom only recalls meeting a man in a bar and going to a party. Tom and Mac find the man, Joe (Elisha Cook Jr.), who takes them to the party scene, the apartment of the Sindells. They find the body of a murdered girl in the apartment above.

Career-slipping movie star Carole Raymond (Kay Francis) buys in as a real estate partner of Jeff Caldwell (Paul Cavanagh). As it happens, through his secretary Nola Reed (Veda Ann Borg), Caldwell runs a matrimonial bureau, and aided by his associate Lee Kirby (John Gallaudet), they defraud and blackmail a large group of lonely people. Carole is unknowingly used as bait for one of their victims, Walter Desmond (Barton Yarborough), who apparently commits suicide. Reporter William Tyler (Robert Shayne) thinks otherwise, and posing as a rich rancher, he contacts Miss Raymond. The latter, now being blackmailed by Caldwell, is forced to persuade Tyler to invest in a fraudulent oil deal. In her own attempt to break the racket, Carole uncovers Mildred Hayes (Teala Loring), another innocent victim of the Desmond case. Despite leading each other on for their own purposes, Carole and Tyler fall in love and combine their efforts.

A jade statue, "The Missing Lady", is stolen and its owner killed. Lamont Cranston, alias the Shadow, sets out to catch the killer but is blamed for the murders himself as each time he investigates some facet of the case another suspect is killed.

A veteran, Joe Hilton (Warren Douglas), returns from the war to find that his brother Jeffrey Hilton (George Meeker), a gangster, has been killed. His quest for revenge leads him to take over his brother's illegal operations but his sweetheart, Lynn Turner (Ramsay Ames), persuades him to change his ways and return to the straight and narrow.

Two card sharks, pretending to be brother and sister, clean out a small-town banker, then take over a crooked gambling joint.