Night Key (1937)

Starring Boris Karloff, J. Warren Hull, Jean Rogers, Alan Baxter, Hobart Cavanaugh
Directed by Lloyd Corrigan
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

An aging inventor, after being cheated out of the chance to implement his new burglar alarm system by the man who swindled him of his previous system, plans a scheme to discredit him.

After Universal Pictures turned their back on horror films in the mid 1930s after their prior successes, Karloff was cast in this comedy/drama, which is still somewhat enjoyable in its own right, but had to be a disappointment to his fans.  Playing an elderly scientist going blind, the actor turns in a distinguished performance, but there's not much heft to the story, nor enough original material to enliven the picture.  There's a fine supporting cast with Cavanaugh memorable as a petty thief who teams up with Karloff, Baxter as a soft-spoken but villainous gangster, and Rogers of the Flash Gordon serials as Karloff's beautiful daughter, and the film was intriguingly directed by Corrigan, who became better known as a character actor in later pictures.  However, as my friend Dan Day Jr. pointed out, it's frustrating to imagine what could have been had the studio backed Karloff in another horror picture during their glory years rather than this light entertainment. 

Alias Boston Blackie (1942)

Starring Chester Morris, Adele Mara, Richard Lane, George E. Stone, Lloyd Corrigan
Directed by Lew Landers
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

Boston Blackie organizes a variety show at the prison he once did time at, unwittingly helping a young convict with revenge on his mind to escape.

One of Morris' long series of Boston Blackie films for Columbia Pictures, and it's a good one, with a nice balance of mystery and humor, and a yuletide setting, making it a perfect film to watch during the holidays.  Although the story of steering a young man from ruining his life was probably a chestnut even back when this film was made, the whodunit portion of the plot kept me guessing, and Morris is engaging as the ex-con who does enough in the movie to warrant a return to prison, but is given a wide berth by the police inspector tailing him.  Larry Parks plays the young convict on the loose but is better known for his impersonation of Al Jolson in a pair of later films.  And a young Lloyd Bridges plays a bus driver!

She-Wolf Of London (1946)

Starring Don Porter, June Lockhart, Sara Haden, Jan Wiley, Lloyd Corrigan
Directed by Jean Yarbrough
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

In 19th century London, a bride-to-be breaks her engagement when she suspects a curse on her family has turned her into a ravenous werewolf.

The last of Universal's long series of monster movies, released between 1931 and 1946, is a rather disappointing send off, turning out to not feature a monster at all.  Nevertheless the film still offers a watchable mystery, even if the ending is a rather predictable one.  The revelation of the "she-wolf" is held off until the film's final moments, as we're presented with plenty of suspects, and it's interesting to view Lockhart a few decades before playing the family matriarch on TV's Lost In Space.  Fresh off his final turn playing Inspector Lestrade to Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes, Dennis Hoey is also present to play another Scotland Yard inspector.

Captive Wild Woman (1943)

Starring Acquanetta, John Carradine, Evelyn Ankers, Milburn Stone, Lloyd Corrigan
Directed by Edward Dmytryk
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A mad scientist kidnaps a circus gorilla for his experiments and succeeds in transforming it into a human woman that savage animals still fear.

We have here one of the few female Universal monsters, the Ape Woman, a statuesque beauty played by Acquanetta who reverts into a half-human beast when her savage instincts take over in a pretty fearsome makeup.  You'll have to leave your disbelief at the door when watching this film, but if you do, it's a fun enough monster movie.  The screenplay seems written around grainy footage of animal tamer Clyde Beatty from an earlier film (1933's The Big Cage, per Wikipedia), and new scenes with Milburn Stone standing in for Beatty don't match up well with that footage, although the animal action, featuring ferocious lions and tigers is superb.  Acquanetta who stays mute throughout the film fares better here than in her later speaking roles, and John Carradine brings the appropriate intensity to the role of the distinguished but evil scientist.  The film is probably most notable for its director, Edward Dmytryk, who according to Wikipedia, later became an Oscar-nominee and was blacklisted during the 1950s.

The Bowery Boys Meet The Monsters (1954)

Starring Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bernard Gorcey, Lloyd Corrigan, John Dehner
Directed by Edward Bernds
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

The Bowery Boys visit the Gravesends, who own a vacant lot the boys want to ask permission for the local kids to use, but find out too late they're mad scientists who have designs on the boys' brains.

Although the exploits of the Bowery Boys were likely aimed at children, there were likely a number of kids in the audience who grew up with them into adulthood, after first watching their adventures in earlier film series as the Dead End Kids, The Little Tough Guys, and the East Side Kids.  So even though the plots of their films didn't become any more complex, there was likely an appreciative audience that kept coming back for more of their adventures, and this film should have been more familiar comfort food for them, with Gorcey's "Slip" Mahoney again "mangling the English language" as one character remarks, and Huntz Hall's "Sach" continuing to show his smarts, or rather lack of them.  I enjoyed it, and the boys tap into the same success Abbott & Costello did when they met their own monsters in this film, playing off a pair of mad scientists, a vampire, a savage gorilla, a man-eating plant, and a werewolf-like butler.  It's not as polished or good-looking as Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein but they probably had only a fraction of that budget, and for the kids in the audience, I'm sure it was good enough.