This third entry in Columbia’s “Inspector Trent” series is cleverly (and economically) set in a movie studio. A malevolent leading lady is murdered while filming a scene, whereupon the nervous studio head calls in Inspector Trent. Since everybody on the lot despised the victim, there’s a surplus of suspects.
Category: Pre Code
After Smoke wins the Blake ranch in a poker game, Blake commits suicide and Smoke deeds the ranch to Blake’s young daughter. But the Sheriff is after the ranch and has Smoke arrested for the murder of Blake and then brings in an impostor to pose as the girl’s relative.
“Lightnin'” Bill Jones and Mrs. Jones are co-owners of a hotel built right on the borderline between California and Nevada, used as the temporary home of divorcing wives so that they may pretend to be in the “California” half of the hotel while establishing residency in the “Nevada” half. Lightnin’ befriends lawyer John Marvin at present residing in the California half to avoid arrest on a trumped-charge. When Lightnin’ refuses to sell his share of the hotel to a gang of stock crooks headed by Raymond Thomas, Mary is coerced into divorcing her husband so that she can sign over the deed herself.
In this comedy, a Yiddish fellow cannot keep from kibitzing into other people’s lives. Trouble ensues when he is mistakenly given a huge fortune in stocks that he can spend any way he pleases. At the same time, his daughter has fallen in love with an impoverished, but good hearted boy.
A free-spirited bartender on a tropical island has a reputation as a “pagan lady”, who hops from man to man and bed to bed. The young son of the island’s fire-and-brimstone evangelist arrives on the island, falls in love with her and proposes marriage. The proposal affects her in a way she hadn’t planned on.
A New York fashion model finds herself being pursued by a poor but honest garage mechanic and a rich philanderer.
The Conquering Horde is a remake of the 1924 western epic North of 36, using generous amounts of stock footage from the original. The story takes place in post-Civil War Texas, where the local cattlemen are suffering from their inability to get their livestock to market. Dan McMasters, a Yankee war hero, is sent from Washington to help set up a safe and efficient passageway for the cattle drovers — thereby earning himself the enmity of the local land barons who’ve been charging the cattlemen exorbitant fees to trek across their land. A romantic subplot involves McMasters and Yank-hating rancher Taizie Lockhart.