The Black Raven (1943)

A night of neverending rain, a shadow-filled tavern, a pack of unsavory characters, a bag stuffed with $50,000 in cash, a corpse, a plot full of contrivances and George Zucco. Sounds like a half-decent 1940s PRC B-movie mystery to me. Running time: a big, mean sixty-one minutes. Ask me in a week who killed who and what was happening in this flick and I probably won’t remember. In fact, my memory is already slipping. It was fun while it was on, though. It lays on the whistling wind and overacting with all the grace of a rodeo clown, which is perfect. The cast of glowering and familiar character-actor faces helps things along. Role call: Byron Foulger as his usual ticking-time-bomb weasel weakling, Charles “Ming the Merciless” Middleton as the lawman and Glenn Strange as… I don’t know, some guy. Low-budget factory man Sam Newfield directs.