I've seen the public domain film, "Topper Returns", many times and have pretty much memorized all of the plot twists and dialog in that creepy last chapter of that short-lived screwball ghostly comedy series. Immediately upon beginning to watch this Republic mystery comedy, released just a few years later, I began to notice the similarities. A car breaks down on the way to a spooky mansion where mayhem is about to occur, the heroine (here Lorna Gray) deals with the wise-cracking mechanic (Peter Cookson) with whom romance is about to blossom, and once they get there, they find out that they actually were not invited, but other guests have shown up out of the blue as well. Several people are murdered, and the search for uranium on the distant property (disconnected from the mainland and only accessible by a Key Largo bridge like causeway) leads to further mystery. Like Eddie "Rochester" Anderson in "Topper Returns", there is a scaredy cat black servant (here Willie Best), and like the outcome of "Topper Returns", there is a clever way of trapping the killer. There are also secret panels and surprising clues and even twin sisters (Veda Ann Borg) who obviously hate each other. This is a surprisingly entertaining, if completely unoriginal, who-done-it, grasping the viewer in and not letting go until the final comes just an hour later. The spark between Gray and Cookson makes it all the more entertaining, and Borg gets to display two sides to her usual brash personality to make for an interesting characterization. In spite of the humiliating type of role Best plays, he is very funny, which speaks highly of his talents as a comic, even if it is a shame that he had to endure the types of parts he was cast in during his long career.

Okay, you've likely seen the format before—a creepy isolated house, a series of murders, an attractive cast that includes the murderer, and an amateur sleuth. But also throw in a batch of radium a full year before the A-bomb, plus a purported ghost, for good measure. Surprisingly, the rather murky whodunit is not uppermost, instead it's the characters and atmosphere. What it all adds up to is a decent little programmer for wartime audiences and even for later folks taking a break from the computer.You just know from the outset that despite appearances Blair (Cookson) can't be the bad guy, he's just too good-looking. Besides, the winsome Ann (Gray) takes a shine to him, and you know how Hollywood is in that regard. It's an attractive cast of vets and up and comers, but I did get confused at times with the similar names and appearances. Plus, the reveal scene was much too brief, like someone's contract had suddenly run out. Nonetheless, that one ghost scene was truly spooky, along with the usual secret passages, shadowy rooms, and stormy nights. Come to think of it, I miss old b&w for the effects that color simply cannot duplicate—new Hollywood should loosen up! Anyway, it's a fun little hour with a gang of Hollywood pro's and an old dark house. So how can you lose.

"The Girl Who Dared" sounds more like a Western adventure instead of a B old-dark-house mystery, but the latter is what it is. This fast (under an hour), breezy film is something of a variation of "And Then There Were None," and actually beat the film version of the Agatha Christie novel to the screens by a year! It leaves no convention unexplored and no cliché unplumbed, and the identity of the killer is more random than motive-inspired. But it is competently done, with some interesting camera work for such a cheapie, and a couple decent plot twists. The trapping of the killer is unique, too. The cast performs competently, and some of the actors play against their usual types, particularly Roy Barcroft, normally a Western and Serial heavy who here plays the hotheaded, jealous ex-husband of one of the key characters, and Kirk "Superman" Alyn, as the equally hot-headed brother of the "Girl" of the title. John "Perry White" Hamilton also enjoys a larger and different kind of role than he was normally given. If only the filmmakers had been so generous with Willie Best, who once again shuffles around as a pop-eyed, comic relief servant who is afraid of his own shadow. All in all, it's worth an hour of a movie buff's time.

Girl Who Dared, The (1944)** 1/2 (out of 4) Decent "B" flick from Republic has a group of people invited to a party at a creepy house where legend has it a ghost appears once a year. It turns out this group doesn't know who invited them and sure enough it doesn't take long before one by one they start dropping dead. The "old dark house" genre was more than fifteen-years-old by the time this one here was released to theaters so needless to say there's really nothing new or original here. The more of these films I watch the more I realize that they were all for the most part cheaply made and I'm really not sure what the point of so many of them were unless they simply made a lot of money on small budgets. This one here certainly isn't a masterpiece but at just 52-minutes the thing is short enough to be fairly entertaining. I think the best thing the film has going for it is the nice cast, which includes Peter Cookson as a mysterious mechanic, Lorna Gray as the main female, Willie Best as the nervous servant and Grant Withers as one of the many possible murderers. Each person turns in a fine performance with Best once again doing that scary-cat act like no other. The story itself isn't all that bad and I actually enjoyed the backstory dealing with a pirate ship that crashed a hundred years earlier and this is where the ghost comes from. We also have a subplot dealing with radiation and the impact it might have on the person who comes in contact with it. There's some fairly good atmosphere but there's no question that they weren't meaning for this to be anything other than cheap entertainment. Fans of the genre who must see everything will certainly want to check it out but others will probably be squirming in their seats. This certainly isn't the type of movie for everyone but fans of the genre should find it entertaining.