Lord Peter Views the Body, first published in 1928, is the first collection of short stories about Lord Peter Wimsey by Dorothy L. Sayers. All twelve stories were included in later complete collections.
The Great Muppet Caper is a 1981 musical heist comedy film directed by Jim Henson and the second theatrical film featuring the Muppets. The film stars Muppet performers Henson, Frank Oz, Dave Goelz, Jerry Nelson, Richard Hunt, and Steve Whitmire, as well as Charles Grodin and Diana Rigg with special cameo appearances by John Cleese, Robert Morley, Peter Ustinov, and Jack Warden. The film was produced by ITC Entertainment and The Jim Henson Company and distributed by Universal Pictures. In the plot, the Muppets are caught up in a jewel heist while investigating a robbery in London.
Poirot Investigates is a short story collection written by English author Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by The Bodley Head in March 1924. In the eleven stories, famed eccentric detective Hercule Poirot solves a variety of mysteries involving greed, jealousy, and revenge. The American version of this book, published by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1925, featured a further three stories. The UK first edition featured an illustration of Poirot on the dust jacket by W. Smithson Broadhead, reprinted from the 21 March 1923 issue of The Sketch magazine.
The Pink Panthers are an international jewel thief network responsible for a number of robberies and thefts described as some of the most audacious in the history of organized crime. The organization has roughly 800 core members, many of whom are ex-soldiers with extensive military and paramilitary backgrounds. Both women and men play an equal part in the structure of the organization. The organization's membership mostly consists of Serbian and Montenegrin citizens, who are believed to be Bosnian War veterans making use of their military experience for criminal activity. The organization was named by Interpol after The Pink Panther series of crime comedy films.
Tarzan's Greatest Adventure is a 1959 American Eastmancolor adventure film directed by John Guillermin, produced by Sy Weintraub and Harvey Hayutin, and written by Les Crutchfield, based on the character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs as the twenty-second film of the Tarzan film series that began with 1932's Tarzan the Ape Man. With a strong supporting cast that included Anthony Quayle and Sean Connery, and a focus on action and suspense, the film won critical praise as a Tarzan film that appealed to adults as well as children.
John Loder was established as a British film actor in Germany and Britain before migrating to the United States in 1928 for work in the new talkies. He worked in Hollywood for two periods, becoming an American citizen in 1947. After living also in Argentina, he became a naturalized British (Argentinian?) citizen in 1959.
Isa Miranda was an Italian actress with an international film career.
King Solomon's Mines is a 1937 British adventure film directed by Robert Stevenson and starring Paul Robeson, Cedric Hardwicke, Anna Lee, John Loder and Roland Young. A film adaptation of the 1885 novel of the same name by Henry Rider Haggard, the film was produced by the Gaumont British Picture Corporation at Lime Grove Studios in Shepherd's Bush. Sets were designed by art director Alfred Junge. Of all the novel's adaptations, this film is considered to be the most faithful to the book.
Jewel Robbery is a 1932 American pre-Code romantic comedy heist film, directed by William Dieterle and starring William Powell and Kay Francis. It is based on the 1931 Hungarian play Ékszerrablás a Váci-utcában by Ladislas Fodor and its subsequent English adaptation, Jewel Robbery by Bertram Bloch.
Desert Nights is a 1929 American synchronized sound adventure/romantic drama film starring John Gilbert, Ernest Torrence, and Mary Nolan. While the film has no audible dialog, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using both the sound-on-disc and sound-on-film process. Directed by William Nigh, the film was the last film without audible dialogue featuring John Gilbert.
The Automobile Thieves is an American crime-drama silent film directed by J. Stuart Blackton. The picture stars Blackton and Florence Lawrence. It was released on November 10, 1906 by The American Vitagraph Company; a print of the feature is preserved in the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
Whipsaw is a 1935 American crime drama film directed by Sam Wood and starring Myrna Loy and Spencer Tracy. Written by Howard Emmett Rogers, based on a story by James Edward Grant, the film is about a government agent working undercover traveling across the country with an unsuspecting woman, hoping she will lead him to her gang of jewel thieves. The film was produced by Harry Rapf for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and was released on December 18, 1935, in the United States.
I Was an Adventuress is a 1940 American drama film directed by Gregory Ratoff, starring Vera Zorina, Richard Greene, Erich von Stroheim, and Peter Lorre. An actress/ballerina works as decoy for two international con artists.
Hotel Imperial is a 1939 American dramatic film directed by Robert Florey. It stars Isa Miranda and Ray Milland.
Big Top Scooby-Doo! is a 2012 American direct-to-DVD animated comedy mystery film, the eighteenth entry in the direct-to-video series of Scooby-Doo films. The DVD was released on October 9, 2012, by Warner Home Video, and made its TV premiere on September 8, 2012, on Cartoon Network in the United States.
A Date with the Falcon is the second in a series of 16 films about the suave detective nicknamed The Falcon. The 1942 sequel features many of the same characters as the first film, The Gay Falcon (1941).
Like the Leaves is a 1935 Italian drama film directed by Mario Camerini and starring Isa Miranda, Mimì Aylmer and Nino Besozzi. It was based on a play by Giuseppe Giacosa. The film radically altered the image of Miranda from her previous film Everybody's Woman (1934) in which she had played a glamorous film star. In this case she appeared as a modest middle-class woman. Miranda was widely praised for her performance, further enhancing her status as the leading Italian actress.
Document Z-3 is a 1942 Italian spy film directed by Alfredo Guarini and starring Isa Miranda, Claudio Gora and Luis Hurtado. It was shot at the Fert Studios in Turin and on location at an airfield which later became Turin Airport. The films sets were designed by the art director Boris Bilinsky. It was one of three Miranda films directed by Guarini that helped re-establish her in Italian cinema following her return from a largely unsuccessful spell in Hollywood. Many critics were not impressed with the film, feeling that Miranda had not recovered the spontaneity of her pre-Hollywood films. This is considered the first production on which Federico Fellini worked, uncredited, as a screenwriter.
The Lie of Nina Petrovna is a 1937 French drama film directed by Viktor Tourjansky and starring Isa Miranda, Fernand Gravey and Aimé Clariond. It is a remake of the 1929 silent film The Wonderful Lies of Nina Petrovna with the setting moved from the Russian Empire to Imperial Vienna. The film's sets were designed by the art director Guy de Gastyne.
Double Danger is a 1938 American crime drama directed by Lew Landers, using a screenplay by Arthur T. Horman and J. Robert Bren based on Horman's story. The film stars Preston Foster and Whitney Bourne, with supporting roles by Donald Meek and Samuel S. Hinds. Produced by RKO Radio Pictures, it was released on January 28, 1938.
