Founded in 1915 (as the Arrow Film Corporation,) Monogram studios was a source of low budget B movies from the silent era through the depression and WW II.  They specialized in westerns, but also released a series of East Side Kids films, mysteries, comedies, and several movies staring Bela Lugosi that are now referred to as the Monogram Nine.  Like other studios trying to eek a living out in the shadows of the big producers, Monogram cranked out a lot of product.  Quick short films that they could sell as the bottom half of a double bill is how they made their money.  Now Retromedia has released three of these B-film on one DVD under the title of the Poverty Row Theater Collection.

Detective Kitty O'Day (59½  min vs 61 min reported on the IMDB):

Kitty O'Day (Jean Parker) is a secretary for the powerful businessman Mr. Wentworth (Edward Earle.)  When he asks her to come to his house one evening to take a letter, she complies and arrives on time only to find her boss murdered.  By the time the police arrive, the couple of clues that she discovered, a lighter and a typed note, have disappeared.

Kitty is sure that Wentworth's young wife is the murderer and she's quite upset when the police don't see things her way.  She convinces her boyfriend, Johnny Jones (Peter Cookson) to help her investigate the murder.  As luck would have it, every time the pair go anywhere looking for clues, another dead body turns up.

This is a typical B-movie.  There are several huge plot holes, and almost no attention paid to details.  Someone will enter a building in the middle of the day, and fifteen minutes later it will be pitch black outside.  That is to be expected though in poverty row films.  The movie is filled with bumbling police inspectors whose incompetence is only exceeded by the officers under them.  The movie is billed as a comedy/mystery but the jokes were lame and the mystery wasn't really engaging.  There weren't any clues that were being followed, just people going from scene to scene without any rhyme or reason.  The mystery isn't really solved as the bad guy decides to reveal everything.

Still, with all of these flaws, the movie was a good way to kill an hour.  It had a certain charm that most of these war time movies had.  The idea of a secretary and her boyfriend investigating a murder with nothing to go on but the girl's wild speculation is rather quaint.  Not to mention the fact that the aggravated police would put up with their interference.  The film recalls a simpler time, and it's worth watching just for that.

Club Paradise (1945 61½-minutes which is the correct length) :

Every so often you run across a pretty good film that was made at one of the budget studios, and this is one of those.  It was a nicely paced drama that kept my interest through the whole film and even managed to surprise me at a the end.

Julie Rogers is a young girl who works in a factory and lives at home with her brutish father, timid mother, loutish brother and his pregnant wife.  She's sort of dating Ray who also works in the factory but has dreams of making it big with his band.  One evening Julie meets Danny Burke, a charismatic guy who she falls for instantly.  He takes her to the Paradise Club, a fancy establishment she'd never go to on her own, and shows her a good time.

The next evening Julie and Ray go out, and he's feeling lucky.   They end up at an illegal gambling establishment where Ray loses all of his money before the police raid the place.  Julie gets arrested, and when her father hears of it he kicks her out of the house.  Having no where to go, she looks for Danny at the Paradise Club and discovers that he's left town.  Getting desperate, and having lost her job at the factory, Julie starts dancing at the club.

Danny turns up again after too long.  It turns out that Danny's a wheeler and dealer who owes a lot of money to a mobster.  He hits up his old girl friends for the money and strikes out, but the mobster takes a fancy to Julie.  With a little sweet talking Julie agree to "see" the man in exchange for him giving Danny more time to raise the cash without breaking his legs.  As a fallen woman, Julie thinks she's now worthless.  When Ray finally makes it with his band and wants Julie to be their singer, she declines.  She feels that she belongs with the other tramps at the Paradise Club.   This sets up the action for the last act, which didn't turn out the way I was expecting.

This film was directed by W. Christy Cabanne, a man that Kevin Brownlow described as the dullest director of the silent age.  He seems to have improved in the years since, as there were several good scenes in the film that made it more interesting that it normally would have been.  The scene were Julie's father tells her that she's not welcome at home anymore was very effective.  Her father hands her a suitcase with her things and then walks down the hall towards the camera.  The camera pulls back as he approaches so that he stays the same size in the frame as Julie shrinks in the background.  Another nice effect was when Julie was going on stage for the first time.  The dancing girls were waiting for their cue looking very unenthusiastic.  As each one walk towards the camera and steps out on stage their low faces are replaced by fake smiles that they plaster on.  Without many words this effectively shows not only how the girls feel about their job, but also the toll it takes on them.  Though it won't win any awards, this was a much better than average B-movie.

Private Snuffy Smith (1942 - 63 min vs. 67 listed on the IMDB):

This film was based on one of the stars of the Barney Google comic strip, Snuffy Smith.  Snuffy (Bud Duncan) is a lazy hillbilly who's only interesting in making moonshine and evading the Revenuers.  There's one Federal Agent that's been causing Smith a lot of problems, Ed Cooper (Edgar Kennedy.)  After talking to a local boy who's joined the army, Snuffy figures that three square meals a day, fancy clothes, and $30 a month plus a place to sleep is a great deal so he goes to join up.  Unfortunately after he signs up, Snuffy finds out that his commanding sergeant is none other than the Ed Cooper!
 
This wasn't the greatest film.  A lot of the humor came from making fun of hillbilly's and their ignorance of the world.  In one scene Snuffy's wife thinks that planes are giant hawks and is about to run and get the chickens into the hen house when her husband informs her that they are actually "giant army flyin' machines."  This sort of joke fills the film, and gets old quickly.

The one thing that this movie has going for it is Edgar Kennedy.  He is most famous for being the lemonade vendor who gets into a fight with Harpo in the Marx Brother's film Duck Soup.  He gives a great performance blowing up at Snuffy and his underlings whenever they goof up.  The movie is worth seeing for him, if nothing else.

These three movies come on a double sided disc.  Detective Kitty O'Day is on one side, with the other two films on the flip side.

Audio:

All of these movies are presented with a two channel mono soundtrack.  The audio quality is about average for films of this age.  The sound was a little flat, but that's to be expected. The louder parts had a bit of distortion and there was a little bit of hiss in the background, but overall they weren't too bad.

Video:

All of these movies are presented in their original full frame aspect ratio, and looked pretty good when taking their age and public domain status into account.  Detective Kitty O'Day was the worst looking in the lot, but it wasn't too bad.  The image was very soft, and there were many missing frames scattered through out the film.  On the plus side, the image was clear and easy on the eyes.

They found a good print for Club Paradise.  The transfer looks very good, with a nice amount of detail and good contrast.  A few scenes are a little bright, and there are a couple of torn frames, but no major defects.  The image was fairly sharp too.  Overall this looked better than I was expecting for a public domain film.
 
Private Snuffy Smith was the best looking picture on this disc, unfortunately it is also the one most effected by missing frames.  There are several sections where the film has broken and been spliced together several times and this makes it hard to follow the conversation..  During the single song number there are so many missing sections which makes the song jump that it's really hard to listen to it.  Other than that, the film had a good amount of detail and contrast.

Extras:

There were no extras on this disc unfortunately.  I was hoping for some trailers at least.  There is a reproduction of a Monogram stock certificate enclosed as an insert.

Final Thoughts:

Club Paradise was a good film, and one that I thought worked very well for what it was.  The other two weren't horrible, but they weren't stand outs either.  A pleasant way to kill an hour, but nothing more.  Though I enjoyed watching all of these films, I can't see watching any of them again.  This would be a good rental.