The Boogie Man Will Get You (1942)

Starring Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Maxie Rosenbloom, Larry Parks, Jeff Donnell
Directed by Lew Landers
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A young women buys a dilapidated historical tavern from an eccentric scientist, unaware that he has been performing dangerous experiments in the basement on door-to-door salesmen.

Although usually grouped with Karloff's "mad doctor" films for Columbia, this one's very different in tone and format, a dark comedy with a similar plot to Arsenic And Old Lace, which Karloff had appeared in on the Broadway stage.  Filled with bizarre characters, including Lorre's sheriff/doctor/justice of the peace who keeps a kitten in his coat pocket, Maude Eburne's daffy housekeeper, and Frank Puglia's mad bomber, it's clearly trying to emulate that comedy classic, but falls quite a bit short, and is probably too much of a retread to be valued on its own merits.  Karloff gives another memorable characterization and it's good to see him in a comedic role, one of far too few in his carrer.  Lorre and Rosenbloom have some good scenes, there is a bit of funny dialogue,    and I still found the film entertaining, but it suffers from going to the same well as Karloff's stage success.

Private Detective (1939)

Starring Jane Wyman, Dick Foran, Gloria Dickson, Maxie Rosenbloom, John Ridgely
Directed by Noel Smith
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A female private detective gives up a job working for an unscrupulous attorney to aid his client's ex-wife instead, and tries to keep one step ahead of her boyfriend, a detective for the police.

Wyman stars as the lady detective, and a good one, in a film surprisingly free of the usual stereotypes about professional women, but the plot and characters are formula to the bone, echoing hundreds of mysteries where a smart aleck reporter tries to outsmart a police detective.  Nevertheless, it's still fun, and Maxie Rosenbloom is amusing as Foran's police sidekick whose main chore is to try to break down locked doors, not always successfully.  Although modern feminists would not be fans of the film's ending, Wyman is quite good in an atypical role, and future Dick Tracy Morgan Conway gives an accomplished performance as the oily lawyer.