During World War II, a small plane somewhere over the Caribbean runs low on fuel and is blown off course by a storm. Guided by a faint radio signal, they crash-land on an island. The passenger, his manservant and the pilot take refuge in a mansion owned by a doctor. The quick-witted yet easily-frightened manservant soon becomes convinced the mansion is haunted by zombies and ghosts.
A young man asks a hat check girl to pose as his fiancée in order to make his dying father's last moments happy. However, the old man's health takes a turn for the better and now his son doesn't know how to break the news that he's engaged to someone else, especially since his father is so taken with the impostor.
In a dilapidated rural mansion, the last generation of the degenerate, inbred Merrye family lives with the inherited curse of a disease that causes them to mentally regress from the age of 10 or so on as they physically develop. The family chauffeur looks out for them and covers up their indiscretions. Trouble comes when greedy distant relatives and their lawyer arrive to dispossess the family of its home.
A racist insurance agent lives in a typical suburban neighborhood, but his bigoted world of taunting and harassing black people on and off the job is turned upside down when his skin inexplicably turns dark overnight.
Conceited World Champion boxer Tommy Lundy decides to test his popularity in a Broadway show. Tommy always has an eye for the ladies and he starts paying attention to beautiful chorus girl Pat Lambert. Pat's boyfriend Bill Smith isn't impressed with Tommy even though Tommy gets him a boxing part in the show. When Tommy finds out that Pat and Bill were secretly together the night before the show opens, he angrily plans to turn the boxing scene with Bill into a real bout.
An ex-cop is suspected of murder after he is found with a dead woman. The private detective is on the run -- attempting to prove his innocence.
Charlie Chan is an agent of the US government working in Washington DC and he is assigned to investigate the murder of the inventor of a highly advanced torpedo. Aiding Chan is his overeager but dull-witted son Tommy and his daughter Iris.
To solve the murder of a man shot in a locked room, Chan must wade through a Fun House, the writings of an unscrupulous author, and chess pieces.
Chinese detective Charlie Chan solves a murder linked to the occult.
Someone is attempting to steal radium stored in a bank. Death by cobra venom connects a number of murders. Charlie Chan investigates.
Chinese sleuth Charlie Chan discovers a scheme for the theft of government radar plans while investigating several murders.
The latest assignment for respected detective Charlie Chan has come directly from the government and involves the disappearance of a scientist named Harper, who was working on an extremely important serum. When the scientist is killed, Chan must sort through all very likely suspects, including the man's sister and his butler.
In San Francisco's Chinatown, Charlie helps two different people search for their missing relatives and uncovers a murder for insurance scheme.
After three men are convicted of bank robberies, Charlie becomes suspicious. After some investigation Charlie finds the men are innocent and that the fingerprint evidence used to convict them had been forged. Charlie then proceeds to find the true bank robbers.
When a troupe of showgirls with their impresario and press agent vacation at a Malibu Beach resort, two of them are garroted. Charlie takes on the case assisted by Number Two Son Jimmy and faithful chauffeur Birmingham Brown.
Private eye Mike Shayne encounters a large amount of trouble while attempting to guard a murder witness.
Detective Charlie Chan springs into action when top officials of a New Orleans chemical company begin dropping like flies.
Soon after a Chinese princess comes to the US to buy planes for her people, she is murdered by a poison dart fired by an air rifle.
Charlie attempts to solve a triple murder in which a dead man's finger prints show up at all three murder sites, and all three victims were connected with the conviction and execution of an evidently innocent man.
In order to learn the location of a fabled Aztec treasure, a professor kidnaps his colleague, the only man able to read the ancient Aztec script that is supposed to reveal the location of the treasure. Charlie Chan and his #1 and #2 sons journey to the jungles of Mexico to find the victim and bring the kidnapper and his gang to justice.
Blind detective Duncan Maclain gets mixed up with enemy agents and murder when he tries to help an old friend with a rebellious stepdaughter.
A gold mine in Arizona, that was formerly losing a lot of money, suddenly turns into a veritable money-making machine. However, the owner, instead of being happy about his now profitable business, insists to Charlie that something is fishy and that someone is out to murder him. Charlie and his "crew" travel to the mine, pretending to be tourists staying at a nearby dude ranch so as not to arouse suspicion, and discover that the owner may well be right--it looks like the mine is being used as a cover for criminal activities, and that someone is indeed out to murder him.
Private eye Jerry Church is hired by a criminal defense lawyer after five mobsters he has gotten acquitted are apparently strangled by a serial killer.
An all-black horror comedy starring Mantan Moreland and sometimes partner (and straight man) F.E. Miller, Lucky Ghost is amusing low-brow fare that exploits the more base, stereotypical elements of old-time black life (chicken thievin', gamblin', runnin' from ghosteses) for laughs -- sort of like the BET of its day. Mantan and Miller win a house-cum-casino in a craps game, only to discover that the deceased former owners aren't too pleased that their old home is being used for "jitterbugging, jiving, and hullaballooing". I hate hullaballooing. The ghosts decide to scare everyone off by opening doors and windows, pulling out chairs, even playing the drums.
Circus owner Buck Rand kidnaps Boy to perform in his show. He forces a pilot to fly him, Boy and his animal trainer out of the jungle. Tarzan and Jane follow them to New York.
A none-too-popular (nor good) radio singer, Rita Wilson is murdered while singing on the air in a radio studio. Radio page boy, Frankie Ryan, and his janitor pal, Jeff, solve the mystery for the none-too-sharp police.
When compulsive gambler Little Joe Jackson dies in a drunken fight, he awakens in purgatory, where he learns that he will be sent back to Earth for six months to prove that he deserves to be in heaven. He awakens, remembering nothing and struggles to do right by his devout wife, Petunia, while an angel known as the General and the devil's son, Lucifer Jr., fight for his soul.
Jeff grows up near Basin Street in New Orleans, playing his clarinet with the dock workers. He puts together a band, the Basin Street Hot-Shots, which includes a cornet player, Memphis. They struggle to get their jazz music accepted by the cafe society of the city. Betty Lou joins their band as a singer and gets Louie to show her how to do scat singing. Memphis and Jeff both fall in love with Betty Lou.
Susan Lane is a gifted psychiatrist, grounded in self-control. Before returning by train to her practice in Chicago, she spends time back East with war veterans, building their self-esteem, but frowning on the impulsive, as represented by a favorite comic strip called "The Nixie." She bumps into Michael Kent, an officer and the comic strip's author. He likes her instantly and she dislikes him. He's headed to the Pacific, sees her on the train, gets off in Chicago, and with her father's help, pursues her and hatches a plan to marry her. Meanwhile, she has her own plan to get rid of him with the help of a blond patient. Will the Nixie get into her psyche?
Frankie Kelly is the soda jerk and embryo scientist in Midvales only drugstore. Two murders and an attempted killing suddenly swing Midvale into national prominence. Frankie and his pal, Jefferson, become involved when a wounded gangster starts to tell them where $300,000 in stolen loot is hidden, but he is murdered before he can give them all of the information. The search is on.
Gen. Ulysses S. Grant has a job for Wild Bill Hickok (George Houston) and his sidekick (Al St. John).
Well-known philanthropist and deaf-mute John G. Harrison is identified leaving the scene of several murders but evades successful prosecution as there are hundreds of witnesses who have also seen him emceeing benefits at the exact same time as the murders.
Two German shepherds and their mistress (Grace Bradley) crash-land in Canada by a fox breeder's (Michael Whalen) farm.
Cosmo Jones, a correspondence-school detective from a small town, comes to the big city to offer his services to the police. He happens by where a gangster is killed by an opposing gang. Socialite Phyllis Blake is running around with gang member Tom and the opposing gang plan on kidnapping her. Cosmo is with Sergeant Flanagan when the attempt is made in front of a night club, where a bystander is seriously wounded in the gun-battle. Police Chief Murphy blames Flanagan for the shooting and demotes him. Cosmo, with the aid of a porter, Eustace and Flanagan's fiancée, Susan, tries to find the killer. Phyllis is finally kidnapped and Cosmo decides the act was committed by one of the two gangs. He has her father place an ad in the newspaper that contact has been made with the kidnappers. Each gang thinks the other is pulling a double cross, and one gang wipes out the other.
The owner and staff of a Hollywood nightclub struggle to keep their establishment from closing.
Comedy about a bandleader with hypnotic powers.
Freckles Winslow comes home from college and the sheriff accuses him of murder, gangsters put him on the spot, and his girl friend, Jane, falls in love with a confidence man.
Two friends take jobs as truck drivers, unaware that the trucking company is being targeted by a gang of saboteurs who will stop at nothing, including murder, to stop them.
When Dr. Von Altermann's wife Lila dies mysteriously at his spooky mansion her relations suspect murder. They also suspect the doctor is turning her into a zombie, to join the army of living dead he hopes to devote to the Nazi cause. However, Lila, though dead, has developed a will of her own.
Mantan takes a job as office boy at a new TV station and gets to watch several pre-recorded musical numbers.
An elevator operator and a janitor team up to solve two murders that may be connected to an illegal gambling operation. Monogram.
Karanina "Nina" Novak, is befriended by Nifty, the leader of a four-piece orchestra, and in return, secures an engagement for them at the Little Aregal Cafe, with herself as the vocalist, by pretending she once knew the King or Aregal back in the old country. Steve shows up pretending to be the King of Aregal, and complicates the growing romance between Nina and Nifty. When Steve runs off with Opa, the real King of Aregal (also Steve) appears and complicates things again.
Heiress Nancy Crocker Fleming will only receive her inheritance if she marries a "plain American." Her late father was afraid a foreign gigolo would steal her heart and money. So Nancy pays Tony Anthony, working on a WPA road project, to marry, then divorce her. When Nancy inadvertently drives off with Tony's dog, Tony seemingly kidnaps her to retrieve the pooch, which leads to a cross-country race between the two to reach Reno and the divorce court since neither one wants to be the second to file papers.
The story of the rise of boxer Joe Thomas, which paralleled the life of Joe Louis.
A cowboy is wrongfully accused of murder. He winds up in Harlem, where he assumes the identity of a preacher-turned-gangster who looks like him. He infiltrates the gang to catch the men who framed him.
While serving time in county prison, Wallingford sees a story in the newspaper that his cellmate, Schenectady, has inherited a mansionfrom his recently deceased uncle. Hearing this, Schenectady dreams of luxury.
A spunky young bellhop investigates the murder of a hotel guest.
Glamorous Lorry Jones, the toast of a Missouri military canteen, has become "engaged" to almost every serviceman she's signed her pin-up photo for. Now she's leaving home to go into government service (not, as she fantasizes, to join the USO). On a side trip to New York, her vivid imagination leads her to True Love with naval hero Tommy Dooley; but increasingly involved Musical Comedy Complications follow.
A dancer in a girlie show plots revenge when a judge orders her show closed.
Rawley University is about to receive a star athlete who could give it the first championship rowing team it's ever had. Unfortunately, he gets drafted into the army before he's able to join the team. Two of the team's members get the bright idea of passing off a burly truck driver as the "athlete". Complications ensue.
A financially-strapped showboat captain struggles to stay in business.
Andy is about to head off to college but he's got a few things to take care of before leaving. For starters, he must try and sell his junk car for $20 to pay for a bill and he must convince his father not to go with him to college. Worst of all is that Polly wants to make up but her best friend decides to give Andy a test.
A detective's wedding is postponed when gunshots are heard nearby.
Ventriloquist and world traveler Gordon Cobb is murdered by a gang of jewel thieves. Baffled by the contradictory clues, Inspector Queen asks his son, Ellery, to help out.
This tale of two tugboats focuses upon the rivalries between two operators competing to win a major shipping contract. Meanwhile a tugboat office secretary and an ex-con who wants to go straight, fall in love. Tugboat Annie is put in charge of a child violinist. When a waterfront fire breaks out, the two warring captains join forces to put it out.
DJ Hal Jackson is the all-rhyming onstage host of this all-black musical.
A machinist's apprentice in Depression-era New York, David dreams of becoming the new Ronald Colman. Defying the wishes of his parents, David lands a nonpaying job in a seedy theatrical production directed by broken-down ham Marlowe.
The son of a strict Navy officer falls for the daughter of a musical-comedy star.
A cowboy helps a pretty young woman find lost gold. Restored by the Academy Film Archive with additional funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Two ne'er-do-wells, Washington and Jefferson, just out of prison are looking for jobs so they won't get arrested for vagrancy. They find out that the wealthy Mrs. Brown is looking to hire a butler and a maid, and Jefferson talks Washington into dressing up as a woman so they can get both jobs. They get the jobs, but they soon run into Bad News Johnson, a crook they met in prison. They find out that Johnson is planning to pull a con on Mrs. Brown and he wants them to go in on it with him. Complications ensue.
Two cut-rate private detectives are broke, hungry and down to their last nickel. They decide to hock their banjo in order to get some money for food, and while one partner is negotiating the deal, the other one falls asleep and dreams that a wealthy society matron has hired them to investigate a string of suitors.
In order to make some cash, buddies Mantan and Alex found the "Ghost Association," which will hold mock seances for the local residents. After studying the details of the locals' various deceased relatives, Alex insist that the reluctant Manta, who is afraid of ghost, play "Prince Alabastar Amsterdam" and fool people into thinking that he is in communication with their dead loved ones.
A South American in New York rents the apartment of a socialite who pretends to be his maid.
A newspaper editor turns a kidnapping into the banner headlines and exclusive story that could save his publication.
Nona Brooks, former member of a stranded theatrical troupe, earns a temporary living singing in a café in Duakwa, British Rhodesia, Africa. The café owner is secretly in league with two foreign agents with a goal of making the natives restless. American explorer Larry Mason leaves for the jungle with his servant, Jeff and a safari. Nona escapes the café into the jungle but is followed by the agents as, unknowing to her, she is carrying a report of the agent's activities. She joins the safari just as all hands are captured by a tribe of natives
The Rancho Grande, a Texas border ranch, cut off from the law by a gang of outlaws led by ranch foreman Bart Lane, who is holding the elderly owner of the ranch, Sarah Burton, a prisoner. Tex Lowery, an undercover Texas Ranger, rescues Martha Williams, a nurse sent for by the ailing Sarah, from a stagecoach holdup by Lane's henchmen. He later convinces Laner that he is a wanted outlaw named Ed Carter, and gains entry to Rancho Grande. But the real Ed Carter shows up.
A beautiful woman goes to Las Vegas in a scheme to make her husbnd jealous, but once she gets there she becomes involved with another man.
A delivery boy for a flower shop, who thinks of himself as an amateur detective, finds out that his boss is mixed up with a foreign espionage ring.
Mr. Wilson hires Mantan to travel out West and clean out an old property. Mantan runs into trouble in believing the house is haunted while a gang uses it as a hideout. A race film Western produced by the Toddy Company; made for $500 over two days. Restoration by the Academy Film Archive and Blackhawk Films with funding from the estate of David Shepard from the only surviving 35mm nitrate print donated by Giancarlo Esposito and Laurence Fishburne.
A young millionaire gets hiccups whenever he kisses a pretty woman.
A man involved in a crime (Nolan) kills his key witness by mistake and resigns himself to death. He changes his name so as not to harm his family. The law is not content with his explanation, however.
Cisco saves a stagecoach from being robbed and takes a shine to one of the passengers whose father is in cahoots with a vicious criminal who plans to murder him.
When his father is accused of graft, a former boxer returns home to clear his name.
When Hollywood film studios reject her because she's too young, an Arkansas woman sets out to build a career as an actress on her own.
God, heaven, and several Old Testament stories, including the Creation and Noah's Ark, are described supposedly using the perspective of rural, black Americans.
Frankie Kelly, pageboy at the beauty salon ran by Madam Celeste, and his helper Jefferson find the routine broken when the body of one of the operators, Florence, is found in the dumbwaiter. She had been shot just before she was to give Detective Dan Haggerty information about a blackmail gang. Since Mary Baker, Frankie's girl friend saw her last, she is suspected, and Frankie determines to clear her using his own sleuthing methods. He has hardy begun when Pierre, another member of the staff, and Florence's fiancée is found dead.
On his way to a post as special adviser of the new parachute troops of the French Foreign Legion in Morocco, Paul Dumont meets the beautiful Helene on the ship. A romance ensues, but the two decide to part when Paul learns that Helene is the fiancée of his best friend and fellow officer Raoul. Raoul is wounded during an Arab attack and the wedding is postponed, and Helene and Paul are thrown together and find it impossible to hide their feelings. The meet in the tent of Hassan, a fortune teller, not knowing the tent is a storage place for arms and ammunition belonging to Addullah, an Arab leader determined to avenge the death of his brother Ben Ali.
Helen Fielding, heir to the fortunes of the late millionaire Roger Fielding, Sr., has broken off her relationship with the unscrupulous Lew Covey to pursue a romance with reporter Bill Summers. Covey, determined to get at Helen's inheritance, vows to win her back.
A shy bookkeeper accidentally discovers that the company where he works is targeted in a series of late-night robberies.
Stan and Ollie get involved with con men, crooks, a genial magician, and two interchangeable coffins with disastrous but funny results.
After collecting his usual meager paycheck, Mantan, a part time janitor at the local courthouse, commiserates with his ne'er-do-well friend Alex, who is similarly poorly paid. Since Mayor Henry Corbit has been arrested for drunken driving and sentenced by the famous "poetical" judge, Alex comes upon the idea of having Mantan run for mayor, with Alex serving as his campaign manager.
An all-black musical featuring the talent of funnyman Mantan Moreland.
Mantan Moreland hosts a series of filmed song, dance and band numbers by various artists, mostly released previously as individual "soundies".
Mantan Moreland's comedy feature.
Mantan Moreland's comedy feature.
A priceless necklace goes missing at a plush party. Police close in on the jewel thieves but is one cop getting too close to one of the crooks?
A woman tormented by the hunting death of her husband forbids her son to have anything to do with horses. But when he falls for the daughter of his father's trainer, he defies his mother by entering the Maryland Hunt.
Texas girl goes to New York, becomes a newspaper reporter, and tries to get her gambler boyfriend to come home.
All the passengers on an airplane headed for San Francisco are drugged, and when they wake up, it is discovered that a quarter-million dollars is missing. Charlie Chan--and, of course, his #1 son--must discover the identity of the person who doped the passengers and stole the money.
An undercover police woman poses as a nighclub entertainer to catch the main man behind the racketeers going on around Harlem. Meanwhile two men are falling for her.
A young man in a small town wins $5000 in a radio contest. He goes to New York City to propose to his girlfriend, but gets mixed up with a crooked attorney and two con men...
Carmelita and Uncle Matt find themselves in a haunted house, but the "ghosts" are actually enemy agents who are trying to frighten away visitors in order to develop a nitroglycerin bomb.
Small-town soda-jerk Peggy Evans quits her dead-end job and moves to New York where she invents a new identity.
Two Bowery vaudevillians find success in producing shows on Broadway, but when one of them suddenly departs to work for a beautiful woman, a feud erupts.
A young woman marries a soldier to fulfill the conditions of a will. However, when she gets ready to divorce him, she realizes that she actually loves him, and determines to find a way to keep him.
To save their music publishing firm from bankruptcy, Bill "Brains' Watson creates a colorful life-story about his partner, Danny Lee, representing him as a descendant of Louisiana's famous Josh Lee family and rightful poet laureate of Dixieland.
Young Brad Craig enters the military school with a chip on his shoulder which upperclassmen quickly knock off. Once adjusted, Craig falls in love with a professor's beautiful daughter, only to find she is in love with his roommate.
After Flash Fulton and Weejie McCoy take pictures of a bank robbery, they're lured to the mountain resort hideout of the robbers, where they meet an old friend and his band.
In this musical short, two night watchmen hear songs performed in a haunted pawn shop.
Professional gambler The Duke (Dots Johnson) attempts to cheat Handsome Harry Hansom (Monte Hawley), who owns a successful Harlem nightclub, out of his club and his contract with his lead singer and girlfriend Tall, Tan, and Terrific (Francine Everett). This leads to a murder that is solved by club comic Mantan Moreland and club photographer Butterbeans (Barbara Bradford). But the plot takes little screen time, most of which is devoted to stage acts at the nightclub.
Journalist Marion Hargrove enters the Army intending to supplement his income by writing about his training experiences. He muddles through basic training at Fort Bragg with the self-serving help of a couple of buddies intent on cutting themselves in on that extra income.
Comedy about a bandleader with hypnotic powers.
Eccentric bellhop Stanley Belt is recruited unexpectedly by the comedy team of a recently deceased entertainer. Stanley struggles to become a song-and-dance man as the team grooms him to become a star. But as the date of a high-stakes appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show grows near, they begin to fear that the only astonishing thing about Stanley is his utter lack of talent.
Sexy young nurses administer a special kind of therapy on their daily rounds as they battle a drug ring operating outside the hospital...
Young man from Kansas goes to New York to work for his tycoon-hero. His superiors won't listen to his ideas about business, but the boss and his daughter do.
Samson Brown is a lazy and shiftless husband who lets his wife, Hannah, support the family. He is constantly insulted and annoyed by his in-laws, who live with them, and finally takes off for points unknown. At home, life goes on as usual with the exception of a former suitor who shows up to court Hannah when it is believed Samson is dead. While wandering around the desert Samson discovers a valuable radium deposit. The now-rich Samson plans to return home and sort out the family matters but first he buys a nightclub.
Kenny Harrington, the star football player of Gilmore College, leads his team to many victories, raising hopes that Gilmore will play in the "Peach Bowl," the championship playoffs of the Western conference. Unknown to Kenny, Downey, the head of a gambling syndicate, has placed a $100,000 bet against the Gilmore team.
An account of the rise and fall of a silent film comic, Billy Bright. The movie begins with his funeral, as he speaks from beyond the grave in a bitter tone about his fate, and takes us through his fame, as he ruins it with womanizing and drink, and his fall, as a lonely, bitter old man unable to reconcile his life's disappointments. The movie is based loosely on the life of Buster Keaton.