The Face Of Marble (1946)

Starring John Carradine, Claudia Drake, Robert Shayne, Maris Wrixon, Willie Best
Directed by William Beaudine
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A scientist and his assistant are on the verge of success in bringing the dead back to life, but their experiments have unintended side effects, exploited by their voodoo-practicing housekeeper.

An interesting cast and unusual story, if derivative of a great many other films, make this low budget effort stand out.  Carradine is excellent as the kindly but unethical scientist and it's good to see Shayne (of TV's Adventures Of Superman) as his more principled assistant.  Drake and Wrixon, primarily known for their poverty row productions, are good enough, and although Willie Best again plays his usual stereotypical manservant, he surprisingly isn't turned to for comic relief, and is largely inoffensive this time around.  With limited sets, mostly interiors of the scientist's house, and a meandering script, the picture does drag quite a bit.  However, it's special effects are a bit more advanced than I expected, with plenty of Strickfadden-like equipment in the lab, and creatures with the ability to walk through walls.  Overall I'd say, especially since this movie has been hard to see over the years, it's worth checking out, but it doesn't elevate itself to much more than any typical Poverty Row production.  The film's title comes from the appearance of the scientist's subjects' skin after being resurrected, although it's pretty hard to make out in black and white.

White Pongo (1945)

Starring Richard Fraser, Maris Wrixon, Lionel Royce, Al Eben, Gordon Richards
Directed by Sam Newfield
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

When a giant white gorilla is sighted in the African jungle, perhaps the missing link between apes and men, an expedition is launched to bring the beast back to civilization.

Low-budget "Poverty Row" studio PRC delivers a jungle adventure, and despite its shortcomings, there's items of interest, including some surprising parallels to Creature From The Black Lagoon, released almost a decade later.  I appreciated how Raymond Schrock's screenplay allowed Wrixon's character to pursue Fraser's, rather than the other way around, as well as Ray Corrigan's performance in ape suit as the titular gorilla, underplaying the part instead of engaging in overly savage theatrics.  The film is rather slow-moving, stock jungle footage isn't integrated well, and the romantic triangle doesn't offer anything we haven't seen before.  However, Newfield delivers a fairly good-looking product with some entertainment value on a low budget.

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.

The Case Of The Black Parrot (1941)

Starring William Lundigan, Maris Wrixon, Eddie Foy, Jr., Paul Cavanagh, Luli Deste
Directed by Noel M. Smith
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A young reporter tries to get to the bottom of a mystery concerning a valuable cabinet bought by his fiancee's father which was designed by a master criminal.

A fun B-movie mystery from Warner Brothers, with a young Lundigan very engaging in the lead, this film has a few twists that are obvious and some that caught me by surprise.  Although small in scale, with only a few settings, it benefits from Warner's production values and studio polish.  Only issue I had was that Cavanagh overdoes his French accent a bit, to an almost comical extreme, but that's a minor complaint, and I had a good time with this entertaining whodunit.