Mike Mazurki

A marathon manhunt through athousand miles of the rugged terrain of the Alaskan wilderness.

In an ideal society on a picturesque South Seas isle, diverse people live in harmony until an outsider disrupts the balance. In an ideal society on a picturesque South Sea island, people of several races and backgrounds live together in harmony. John Wayne is a WWII hero, who worked hard to own a shipping company and finds his true love. She is as strong a woman as he is a man. An adventure and love story. 'Guns' Donovan prefers carousing with his pals Doc Dedham and 'Boats' Gilhooley, until Dedham's high-society daughter Amelia shows up in their South Seas paradise. —Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net>

Zack Thomas is a tough guy who hooks up with Joe Jarrett to open a casino. Sharpshooters Zack Thomas and Joe Jarrett are in a Texan stage-coach and manage to fight off Matson's robber gang, so afterward they can fight over the $100,000 cash carried by a railroad official. Both make it to Galveston, where each, including vexed Matson, meets up with respective accomplices in various dirty schemes. The money keeps changing hands and the scene shifts to a river boat, which should multiply the winnings as a casino, but the crooks and bullets follow. —KGF Vissers Stranded in the Wild West with $100,000 in cash and gold coins, Zack Thomas and Joe Jarrett form an uneasy alliance after surviving a deadly ambush by notorious bandit Matson and his gang. However, as they arrive in the bustling town of Galveston, they both set their sights on taking over the same run-down riverside casino owned by Maxine Richter, an alluring widow. Now, with Zack's statuesque girlfriend Elya urging him to stay out of trouble and the conniving banker Harvey Burden scheming in the background, the stage is set for a showdown. And the burning question looms. Is Galveston big enough for both Joe and Zack? —Nick Riganas

A locksmith gets caught up in a bank robbery. There's $200,000 in a Los Angeles safety-deposit box that mobster Willis Trent would like to have, so he gets two-timing, double-dealing Flo Randall to get the box number for him. He offers locksmith Tommy Dancer $5,000 to make the key but Tommy refuses. Trent threatens to harm Tommy's girl friend, Betty Turner, and Tommy gives in and goes to the bank. In a few nerve-racking minutes, Tommy makes the key and pockets the $200,000 for himself. Trent sends word that he has kidnapped Betty and the ransom is $200,000. —Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net> The mobster Willis Trent is informed by one of his gangsters that the locksmith Tommy Dancer is efficient and fast in his work. Willis befriends Tommy in a bowling alley and invites him to open a trunk at his home. Tommy accepts the job and is then also invited to Willis' party, where he meets the wealthy Betty Turner. Later Tommy and Betty go back to his place and Betty forgets her fur stole when she goes home. The next morning, Tommy returns the fur to Betty and they go on another date that night. Willis offers five thousand dollars to Tommy to make the keys of the safe deposit box no. 315 in the Hollywood Bank that belongs to the rival criminal and head of gambling Paul De Camp and has two hundred thousand dollars of illegal money. Tommy turns down the offer, but Willis threatens to harm Betty's face to achieve his goal. —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Common efforts of the U.S. government and the Comanche nation to negotiate a peace treaty are sabotaged by renegade Indians and by the short-sighted Indian Commissioner (Lowell Gilmore). Indian scout Jim Read (Dana Andrews) is picked by his commander (John Litel) to set up a meeting between Comanche Chief Quanah Parker (Kent Smith) and a representative from Washington (Lowell Gilmore) to negotiate a peace treaty. People from the Comanche tribe as well as the U.S. Calvary have reason to prevent the meeting from ever taking place. Romance, betrayal and fighting ensue. —stevestar

Captain Tom Wilder (John Wayne), an American Merchant Mariner, is taken prisoner after his ship is seized by the Chinese Communists. After two years in prison, he is helped to escape with both bribery and by disguising himself as a Soviet army officer. A large Chinese man Big Han (Mike Mazurki) transports Wilder to Chiku Shan village without divulging why he was broken out of prison. The village leader, Mr. Tso (Paul Fix), tells Wilder he has been recruited to transport nearly 200 Chiku Shan residents out of Red China to freedom in the British port of Hong Kong. For the task, Captain Wilder must pilot a stolen, wood-burning, flat-bottomed 19th Century stern-wheel riverboat. He will need to utilize his detailed memory of the China coast to draw a chart and navigate using an unreliable magnetic compass, and without a chronometer. Finally, he must rely upon the villagers' determination and resources to escape. The villagers have been planning their escape for more than a year, gradually raising the harbor channel's bottom with stones in order to trap the local Red Chinese patrol boat once it has been lured inside. Sinking sampans loaded with rocks at the channel mouth will cause the patrol boat to run aground while the village escapes. The villagers have also been secretly accumulating arms, ranging from Browning machine guns to Mosin-Nagant rifles and Nagant revolvers. Their plan is complicated by having to bring along the large Communist Feng family so they will not be blamed for allowing the mass escape. The villagers include the riverboat's Chief Engineer, a U.S. Navy-trained marine engineer named Tack (Henry Nakamura), who helps steal the steamboat. Tack and Wilder bring the stern wheeler to Chiku Shan village where it is loaded with furnace firewood, boiler water, and all their provisions; it is re-christened with the village's name. Wilder meets and is attracted to a tough and determined American woman named Cathy Grainger (Lauren Bacall), whose father is a medical missionary in the village. Dr. Grainger was recently executed by the Red Chinese following unsuccessful surgery on a political commissar. To prevent her staying behind, Wilder tells Cathy about her father's death just before the villagers leave Chiku Shan, though she refuses to believe him. Following their plan, the villagers lure the patrol boat into the harbor and trap it there. They flee down the coast in the stolen ferryboat, bluffing their way past a People's Liberation Army Navy destroyer. They disappear into a fog bank, hiding by day in shoreline reed marshes and sailing south only at night. The Fengs attempt to sabotage the escape, first by poisoning the food and water supply, then attempting and failing to take over Chiku Shan during a heavy storm. Cathy eventually comes to terms with her attraction to the gruff Captain Wilder. A shortage of firewood, drinking water, and boiler water compels the Chiku Shan to pull into the Graveyard of Ships at Honghai Bay. Captain Wilder orders the wrecks stripped of wood and water siphoned from various depressions and abandoned tanks for both the boiler and for drinking water. A loose heavy timber suddenly plows through the stern wheel while mooring the steamboat, snapping two of the paddle blades. Wilder is forced to stay in the Graveyard longer than planned in order to make repairs. At the same time, Cathy goes ashore and returns after learning of her father's fate. The Fengs are put ashore, only to be taken back aboard when the pursuing Red Chinese destroyer begins shelling the Graveyard from a distance. It launches power boats to search for the ferry in the shallow harbor. Chiku Shan makes a run for it into a marshy estuary, and disappears. Because smoke would reveal their position, the villagers both pole and tow the riverboat through miles of marshlands until reaching the open sea beyond the destroyer's search area. Tack fires up the boiler, and the steamboat proceeds to Hong Kong with the refugees. Their triumphant arrival is hailed by the steam whistles and ship sirens of every vessel in the harbor.

Frankie Madison leaves prison expecting a share from his ex-partner. But Prohibition bootlegging didn't prepare Frankie for Big Business. Frankie Madison returns to New York after 14 years in prison. Noll Turner, Frankie's former partner in bootlegging, is now a wealthy nightclub manager, and Frankie is expecting him to honor a verbal '50:50' agreement they made when he was caught and Noll got away. Fat chance! Can Frankie, who knows only the strong-arm methods of Prohibition, win out against Big Business? It'll be tough...even with the unlikely alliance of torch singer Kay (Noll's ex-girlfriend). —Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu> After fourteen years in prison for bootlegging, Frankie Madison is released and returns To New York to meet his friend and partner Noll "Dink" Turner. Madison has an agreement with Dink, who is the manager of a successful nightclub, to share half of his business since he did not rat him when he was caught by the police. Dink uses his mistress Kay Lawrence to learn what Madison's real intention are and his friend Dave to explain that he has the right of less than US$ 3,000,00. Madison is not convinced and when Dink decides to get married to Mrs. Alexis Richardson - Kristine Miller, Kay teams up with Madison to retrieve his share. —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Frankie Madison has just been released from prison after serving fourteen years for bootlegging, his conviction at the time of prohibition. When he was caught, he and his partner, Noll Turner - nicknamed Dink - knew that in the police pursuit one or both of them may be caught, they having made a deal right then and there to split whatever proceeds 50/50 made by a free one if and when the other was in prison. As Noll never once visited Frankie in prison, he only sending a carton of cigarettes a month, Frankie believes Noll will try to renege on their verbal deal, especially as Noll now operates a thriving nightclub. Frankie is correct especially as Noll has maneuvered behind the scenes to structure the business so that much is not in his own name, and as he has amassed a phalanx of thugs to carry out his more violent urges, some of those heavies who know and like Frankie from the old days, but who have their allegiance to Noll. What ensues is a battle between the "new ways" and the "old ways", Frankie who has no idea of the former, while Noll may have lost sight of the latter. Caught in the middle are: Dave, Noll's business manager who Frankie considers the only person from the old days in Noll's pocket that he can trust; and Kay Lawrence, the singer/pianist at the club who also happens to be Noll's girl. While Noll asked Kay to be friendly to Frankie to obtain information, she not sure about what and unaware of Frankie's recent incarceration, she ends up falling for Frankie, easier on her mind as she is aware that Noll has another woman on the side who can help him further the business, wealthy Alexis Richardson, already a "Mrs." to someone else. —Huggo

In 1871 Dakota, two crooked businessmen oppose the local wheat farmers and the railroad development to control the town of Fargo. In 1871, professional gambler John Devlin elopes with Sandra "Sandy" Poli, daughter of Marko Poli, an immigrant who has risen to railroad tycoon. Sandy, knowing that the railroad is to be extended into Dakota, plans to use their $20,000 nest egg to buy land options to sell to the railroad at a profit. On the stage trip to Ft. Abercrombie, their fellow passengers are Jim Bender and Bigtree Collins, who practically own the town of Fargo, and Devlin is aware that they are prepared to protect the little empire: trying to drive out the farmers by burning their property, destroying their wheat, and blaming the devastation on the Indians. Continuing their journey north on the river aboard the "River Bird', Sandy and John meet irascible old seafarer Captain Bounce. Two of Bender's henchmen, Slagin and Carp, board the boat and relieve John of his $20,000 at gunpoint. Captain Bounce, chasing the robber's dinghy, wrecks his boat on a sandbar. At Fargo, the land wars begin and John teams with the wheat farmers against the Bender gang. Several attempts are made on his life and Collins tries to frame him for murder. —Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net> John Devlin helps Dakota wheat farmers save their land from swindling entrepeneurs who hope to make a fortune selling it to the railroad for its right-of-way. —Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net>