1940

The Fighting 69th 1940 DVD
The Fighting 69th (1940) is an American war film starring James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, and George Brent. The plot is based upon the actual exploits of New York's 69th Infantry Regiment during the First World War. The regiment was first given that nickname by opposing General Robert E. Lee during the American Civil War.
The plot centers on misfit Jerry Plunkett, played by Cagney, and his inability to fit into the unit due to a mixture of bravado and cowardice. O'Brien plays Father Francis P. Duffy, a military chaplain who attempts to reform Plunkett. "Wild Bill" Donovan, played by Brent, is the regimental commander, who ultimately orders Plunkett to be court-martialed. One of the characters portrayed in this film is Sgt Joyce Kilmer, the poet. Alan Hale, Sr. plays Sgt Wynn, who loses both his brothers due to Cagney's blunders. While Jerry Plunkett was a fictional character, Father Duffy, Colonel Donovan and Joyce Kilmer were all part of the actual regiment.



City for Conquest 1940 DVD
City for Conquest is a 1940 drama-film noir starring James Cagney, Ann Sheridan, and Arthur Kennedy, based on the novel of the same name by Aben Kandel. Cagney plays a truck driver named Danny Kenny, who starts as a New York boxing contender. Ann Sheridan plays his girlfriend, Peggy. Being successful as a boxer, Danny decides to financially help his brother Eddie (Arthur Kennedy) to become a professional musician. Peggy on the other hand, loses her heart to Murray Burns (Anthony Quinn), a professional dancer, and she turns down Danny's proposal in order to go for a dancing career. Embittered by Peggy's refusal, Danny continues to work as a boxer and eventually gets blinded by his opponent during a fight, who has placed some rosin dust onto his gloves. Now partly blind, Danny works as a newspaper stand operator, while Peggy is seized with remorse after her career as a dancer had not come true. The movie ends with Eddie being a successful composer who dedicates his first major symphony at Carnegie Hall to his brother, who is listening to the concert on the radio from his newsstand.

BEFORE I HANG 1940 DVD
A physician (Boris Karloff) on death row for a mercy killing is allowed to experiment on a serum using a criminals' blood, but secretly tests it on himself. He gets a pardon, but finds out he's become a Jekyll-&-Hyde.




BLACK FRIDAY 1940 DVD
When his friend Professor Kingsely (Ridges) is at deaths door, brain surgeon Dr. Sovac (Karloff) saves his life by means of an illegal operation that transplants part of injured gangster Red Cannon's brain. Unfortunately, the operation has a disasterous Jeckll and Hyde side effect and under certain conditions the persona of Cannon emerges. Sovac soon learns of the duel personality and of half a million dollars the gangster has hidden away. He attempts to find the money through the manipulation of his friend, an attempt that brings Kingsley closer to madness as he alternates between a meek professor of english and a brutal gangster out for murderous revenge on those who tried to kill him.



The Fatal Hour 1940 DVD
Starring Boris Karloff. When Captain Street's best friend Dan O'Grady is murdered, Street enlists the help of Chinese detective James Lee Wong. Mr. Wong uncovers a smuggling ring on the waterfront of San Francisco and unmasks the killer, though not until several more murders occur.


Doomed to Die 1940 DVD
Starring Boris Karloff. Only the possibility of avoiding a Tong War, plus persuasion by reporter Bobbie Logan leads the famous detective James Lee Wong to enter the Wentworth case. A million and a half dollars in bonds was taken from one of Cyrus P. Wentworth's ship before it was mysteriously sunk and, shortly afterward, Wentworth was found murdered. The police, led by Detective Captain Bill Street, suspect Dick Fleming, fiancée of Wentworth's daughter Cynthia. Wong clears Dick but has difficulty in finding the trail of the mysterious killer.



Phantom of Chinatown 1940 DVD
In the middle of a pictorial lecture on his recent expedition to the Mongolian Desert, Dr. John Benton (Charles Miller) the famous explorer, drinks from the water bottle on his lecture table, collapses and dies. His last words "Eternal Fire" are the only clue Chinese detective Jimmy Wong (Keye Luke) and Captain Street (Grant Withers) of the police department have to work on. Win Len (Lotus Long), Benton's secretary, reveals the doctor's dying words refer to a scroll which tells the location of rich oil deposits. Wong and Street then begin the search for the killer among Benton's associates.


The Door with Seven Locks (AKA Chamber of Horrors) 1940 DVD
Screwball horror yarn loosely based on Edgar Wallace's novel 'The Door With Seven Locks', it was the second Wallace adaptation by producer John Argyle following The Dark Eyes of London (1939). This low-budget B-Picture is dripping in atmosphere, adding all our favourite trappings - fog, torture chambers, rats, coffins and more into a good old-fashioned murder mystery.

The Devil Bat 1940 DVD
Starring Bela Lugosi. Dr. Carruthers feels bitter at being betrayed by his employers, Heath and Morton, when they became rich as a result of a product he devised. He gains revenge by electrically enlarging bats and sending them out to kill his employers' family members by instilling in the bats a hatred for a particular perfume he has discovered, which he gets his victims to apply before going outdoors. Johnny Layton, a reporter, finally figures out Carruthers is the killer and, after putting the perfume on himself, douses it on Carruthers in the hopes it will get him to give himself away. One of the two is attacked as the giant bat makes one of its screaming, swooping power dives.



The Ape 1940 DVD
Horror film made for Monogram Pictures, co-written by Curt Siodmak and starring Boris Karloff. Dr. Bernard Adrian is a kindly mad scientist who seeks to cure a young woman's polio. He needs spinal fluid from a human to complete the formula for his experimental serum. Meanwhile, a vicious circus ape has broken out of its cage, and is terrorizing towns people.

British Intelligence 1940 DVD
Starring Boris Karloff. During WWI pretty German master spy Helene von Lorbeer is sent undercover to London to live with the family of a high-placed British official where she is to rendezvous with the butler Valdar, also a spy, and help him transmit secret war plans back to Germany.

The Mummy's Hand 1940 DVD
A couple of comical, out-of-work archaeologists (Dick Foran and Wallace Ford) in Egypt discover evidence of the burial place of the ancient Egyptian princess Ananka. After receiving funding from an eccentric magician (Cecil Kellaway) and his beautiful daughter (Peggy Moran), they set out into the desert only to be terrorized by a sinister high priest (George Zucco) and the living mummy Kharis (Tom Tyler) who are the guardians of Ananka's tomb.



The Invisible Man returns 1940 DVD
Geoffrey Radcliffe, the wealthy owner of a coal mining operation, is running out of time. In two hours, he is set to be executed for the murder of his brother, a murder he did not commit. His fiancée, Helen Manson, is frantic. Geoffrey's cousin, Richard Cobb, tells her that he has done everything he can. Geoffrey's only hope is his friend, Dr. Frank Griffin. Griffin's late brother once discovered a secret drug that makes a human being invisible. The only trouble is, it also turns its subject mad. But now Geoffrey, Helen and Dr. Griffin have no other choice. Griffin visits Geoffrey at the prison and administers the drug. Soon Geoffrey, made invisible, is able to escape. As the wily Inspector Sampson of Scotland Yard searches for the escaped convict, Griffin frantically searches for an antidote and Geoffrey frantically searches for the real killer. Time is short. Geoffrey is slowly but surely going insane.


The Invisible Woman 1940 DVD
The eccentric Professor Gibbs puts an ad in the newspaper: "WANTED: A human being willing to become invisible. No remuneration. Box P19." But Gibbs is no crackpot. He really did invent an invisibility machine, and he really does need his first human guinea pig. He's rather surprised when the K. Carroll who answers his ad turns out to be a woman: Kitty Carroll, a dress model with an oppressive boss. And that boss is the real reason she wants to be invisible. The beleaguered model wants to revenge herself on him and thus win one for the working girl. Meanwhile, the loony scientist's patron, the wealthy playboy Richard Russell, learns he has just squandered every penny of the family fortune on girls who sue. His long suffering manservant keeps threatening to resign. But if that invisibility machine works, Richard will have it made - again. Unfortunately, the machine has attracted the interest of some thugs whose boss is stuck in Mexico unable to cross the border. Invisibility is just what he needs to get past the checkpoint.


Torrid Zone 1940 DVD
Torrid Zone is a 1940 adventure film starring James Cagney, Ann Sheridan and Pat O'Brien. Steve Case (Pat O'Brien) has to deal with trouble at his tropical fruit company's Central American banana plantation. A revolutionary, Rosario La Mata (George Tobias), is stirring up unrest among the workers, and the only man who can handle the situation, foreman Nick Butler (James Cagney), has just quit. Steve manages to persuade Nick to stick around (for a big bonus). Adding to the complications is Lee Donley (Ann Sheridan), a woman who Steve has ordered out of the region for causing a different kind of trouble among the men.