The Ape (1940)

Starring Boris Karloff, Maris Wrixon, Gene O'Donnell, Dorothy Vaughan, Gertrude Hoffman
Directed by William Nigh
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A doctor turns to murder in the guise of an escaped circus gorilla to obtain the spinal fluid he needs to cure a young woman's paralysis.

One of Boris Karloff's films for Poverty Row studio Monogram Pictures, the movie is certainly not a favorite of many compared to his other classic films, but I'm rather fond of it.  Playing a kindly doctor who is ironically hated by the townspeople due to his mysterious experiments and untrue rumors about him, I found his performance quite noble and more than adequate.  The rest of the cast isn't as fine of course although I liked Maris Wrixon as his young patient, and Henry Hall as the folksy sheriff.  IMDB credits Ray Corrigan as the man in the gorilla costume, who certainly had a talent for playing apes, and it's a fairly convincing costume for the period.  The film stretches believability more than once, and the story wasn't always coherent, but the print I saw had a lot of jump cuts, so it may have been edited quite a bit. I enjoyed the music, and in general found the film a lot more watchable than some of Karloff's other low-budget efforts.

Before Dawn (1933)

Starring Stuart Erwin, Dorothy Wilson, Warner Oland, Dudley Digges, Gertrude Hoffman
Directed by Irving Pichel
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A detective arrests a psychic medium and her father for fraud, but he becomes convinced her abilities are real, and recruits her help in an unsolved murder.

A fun mystery with Erwin an unusually soft-spoken and compassionate detective compared to the usual hard-boiled or wisecracking leads in these films, but what really makes the picture memorable is some creepy imagery near the climax of the film, including the eerie face of a ghost and the revelation of a secret passage and staircase leading to where a fortune may be buried.  There's better written thrillers, but this is a hidden gem of a movie well worth discovering.