Best Action Movies of 1939

When a tough western town needs taming, the mild-mannered son of a hard-nosed sheriff gets the job.

A corrupt D.A. with governatorial ambitions is annoyed by an investigative reporter's criticism of his criminal activities and decides to frame the reporter for manslaughter in order to silence him.

In this epic Western, Wade Hatton, a wagon master turned sheriff, tames a cow town at the end of a railroad line.

Gulliver washes ashore on Lilliput and attempts to prevent war between that tiny kingdom and its equally-miniscule rival, Blefiscu, as well as smooth the way for the romance between the Princess and Prince of the opposing lands. In this he is alternately aided and hampered by the Lilliputian town crier and general fussbudget, Gabby. A life-threatening situation develops when the bumbling trio of Blefiscu spies, Sneak, Snoop, and Snitch, manage to steal Gulliver's pistol.

A young couple die in a plane crash in the jungle. Their son is found by Tarzan and Jane who name him Boy and raise him as their own. Five years later a search party comes to find the young heir to millions of dollars. Jane agrees, against Tarzan's will, to lead them to civilization.

In the wake of the Spanish-American war, military doctor Bill Canavan (Cooper) arrives at a war-torn Filipino outpost. Infested with cholera and under attack from a vicious local Moro chieftain, the troops are terrified and their commanding officer has all but given up hope. Outnumbered and out of supplies, Canavan decides to trade his scalpel for a rifle and rally the few remaining troops into one last stand before the outpost and everyone inside becomes just another footnote in history.

A Japanese man claiming to be Mr. Moto, of the International Police, is abducted and murdered soon after disembarking from a ship at Port Said in Egypt. The real Mr. Moto is already in Port Said, investigating a conspiracy against the British and French governments.

South western Pennsylvania area of colonial America, 1760s. Colonial distaste and disapproval of the British government is starting to surface. Many local colonists have been killed by American Indians who are armed with rifles supplied by white traders.

In Puerto Rico to investigate a glut of contraband diamonds that are flooding the world's jewel market, Mr. Moto and his sidekick, a wrestler, find themselves involved in murders by thrown daggers, the frame-up of an overstressed Army colonel, and a pirate gang led by an unknown boss who has inside knowledge of the ensuing investigation.

All work and no play makes Mr. Moto a busy detective! Mr. Moto heads to Egypt to thwart a criminal mastermind determined to steal the priceless crown of the Queen of Sheba. But the action heats up and the suspense soars when the precious treasure begins its perilous journey to America and Mr. Moto must race against time to unmask a cunning thief who will stop at nothing—not even murder—to get what he wants!

Dr. MacAuley, a kindly, beloved country doctor, is sent to Fillmore Prison. His crime was for removing a bullet from a young man who was escaping from the police.

Roy and Gabby return to Gabby's Texas ranch, after fighting with the Confederate military during the American Civil War, to find that a blustery Union Colonel whom they have previously hassled is now their district commander. Unbeknownst to the Colonel, however, is that the soldiers he believes have been sent to assist him are actually Union Army rejects who have come to loot the civilian populace under the guise of reinstituting normalcy to the former Confederate district.

The night before his grandson, Tommy Grayson, a mechanic at the Midland Aircraft Corporation, is to marry Gail, a former showgirl, Major Matt Grayson, a war veteran and watchman at the plant, catches two men breaking into the machine shop. The men run, but the major shoots one of them.....

A tugboat captain serves under his rival as a U-boat chaser in World War I.

The mysterious Don Del Oro ("Lord of Gold"), an idol of the Yaqui Indians, plans to take over the gold and become Emperor. Francisco was put in charge of a legion to combat the Yaqui tribe and protect the land, but when attacked Zorro came to his rescue. Francisco's partner recognized Zorro as the hidalgo Don Diego Vega, then ask him to take over the fighting legion as his alter-ego Zorro.

Mandrake and his team attempt to prevent "The Wasp" from stealing and using a new Radium invention.

A weary dance-hall girl in a Panama saloon is given the choice of jail or going with a rough-and-tumble oil driller's jungle oil-field in order to pay him back for being slipped a mickey and robbed.

Gene Autry and his sidekick Frog look into a phony oil scam being perpetrated on a mission orphanage.

Hugh “Bulldog” Drummond is on the precipice of matrimony to his beloved Phyllis -- but a bank robbery and a daring escape is going to get in their way before they reach the altar.

A hard-living dockworker finds religion until his brother is murdered.

Torchy conducts a one woman campaign against a corrupt mayor and crime boss, and when the reform candidate is murdered, she takes up the banner.

Torchy Blane joins her police-detective fiance to solve a series of murders involving a set of Chinese grave tablets taken and sold to a collector and death-threats written in Chinese characters.

A parodic remake of the story of the young Gascon D'Artagnan, who arrives in Paris, his heart set on joining the king's Musketeers. He is taken under the wings of three of the most respected and feared Musketeers, Porthos, Aramis, and Athos. Together they fight to save France and the honor of a lady from the machinations of the powerful Cardinal Richelieu.

Torchy Blane and Steve McBride try to nab a gangster by tracking his moll.

The otherwise standard Ken Maynard western Death Rides the Range is distinguished somewhat by a topical slant. The plot concerns a group of spies from an unnamed foreign country (gee, they sure sound German) who head westward to undermine American morale. Into this malaise wanders Maynard, supposedly a rootless cowpoke but in reality an FBI agent. Things begin to heat up when the villains lay claim to a helium well on the property owned by heroine Fay McKenzie. The film's silliest moment occurs in mid-stream, when chief villain Charlie King begins beating up everyone within arm's length, with nary a scratch on his own person.

Brass Bancroft and his sidekick Gabby Watters are recruited onto the secret service and go undercover to crack a ruthless gang that smuggles illegal aliens.

Detective Nick Carter is brought in to foil spies at the Radex Airplane Factory, where a new fighter plane is under manufacture.

Pilot disobeys unsafe orders and loses his job. He then starts a flying school which receives a boost when the government launches a program which it hopes will produce 20,000 pilots a year.

A rookie cop tries to prove his friend is innocent of a robbery, despite the police commissioner's objection to his use of a trained German Shepherd dog named Ace.

An Irish convict sentenced to hard labor in Australia escapes into the outback, and organizes a band of fellow escapees to fight a corrupt landlord.

T-Man Brass Bancroft goes undercover in a prison which has a secret counterfeit operation set up in the print shop.

In this mystery, a newspaper executive and three of his colleagues conspire to have the owner of the highly-respected London Sun committed to an insane asylum. The hapless publisher manages to escape. Soon after, the four collaborators begin dying one-by-one. Oddly their obituaries appear in a rival publication before they are actually killed.

American Steve Kendall, a freighter's radio officer, discovers seaman Carlson sending an unauthorized message ashore as the ship approaches his war-poised homeland. Carlson is shot in cold blood when he jumps ship and Kendall, implicated in the espionage, swims ashore to avoid arrest. A woman he meets at the dock hides him in her apartment, where he learns Carlson was her brother, and they both work in a sabotage ring. Nedra is a singer at Tio's Cafe, and she approaches Tio for help when both the saboteurs and the secret police try to capture Steve.

A Chinese-American surgeon faces a moral dilemma after operating on the mob boss in charge of vice and protection rackets in her city's Chinatown.

A spunky young bellhop investigates the murder of a hotel guest.

An ace reporter with a girlfriend nails a numbers racketeer for murders.

An outbreak of cholera threatens a luxury liner in this surprisingly low-budget melodrama from RKO. En route from Shanghai to San Francisco, chief engineer Crusher McKay (Victor McLaglen) and shipboard doctor Tony Craig (Chester Morris) become rivals for the attention of nurse Ann Grayson (Wendy Barrie). A Chinese stowaway, meanwhile, infects the stokehold with cholera and it is left to Crusher to keep the engines at full throttle until reaching harbor. But morale sinks to an all-time low when Crusher himself is stricken and the overworked men threaten with mutiny. Tony attempts to keep the stokers in check but the situation is growing more dangerous by the minute when a heroic Crusher rises from his sickbed. Leaving their previous petty squabbles behind, Tony and Crusher manage to guide the ship safely to harbor, where the doc and Ann rekindle their romance.

Ann Fenwick is a witness to a bank robbery in the U.S. and the bandits, led by Trigger (Warner Richmond) and Leon (Ted Adams) capture her and when she disappears, a warrant is issued for her arrest as a material witness. The bank robbers flee across the border into Canda where they steal a trailer in which they lock Ann and the loot. The hitch breaks and the trailer plunges into a lake. Sergeant Renfrew (James Newill) and Constable Kelly (Dave O'Brien), of the Canadian Mounties,rescue Ann and she tells them she is a hitch-hiking tourist and gives a false name. Renfrew sends Kelly for aid, Ann escapes and Kelly returns with the news that she is wanted. The leader of the gang, Cardigan (Milburn Stone), sends the gang back for Ann and the loot, which Ann has hidden in a trappers cabin, just before Trigger recaptures her. Renfrew goes to her rescue, but is also captured. But reliable Constable Kelly is somewhere in the woods.

Carmelita Fuentes is a fiery-Latin singer/dancer in Mexico City who has designs on Dennis Lindsay, an American publicity agent, for unclear reasons, while Lindsay's shiftless uncle Matthew Lindsay aids and abets her every step of the way to the marriage altar.

A mad doctor named Zanoff uses a drug to bring himself back from the dead after his execution in prison. Dick Tracy sets out to capture Zanoff before he can put his criminal gang back together again.

This 1939 drama, a reworking of the 1932 James Cagney film "The Crowd Roars", stars Pat O'Brien as a champion auto racer who unhappily learns his kid brother (John Payne) wants to enter the same profession rather than finish school.

The Man From Montreal is a lively entry in Universal's Richard Arlen-Andy Devine action series. The stars are cast respectively as fur trapper Clark Manning and constable Bones Blair, who carry on a friendly rivalry in the Canadian Northwest. Our heroes team up in the final reels to put the kibosh on a fur-smuggling racket, permitting Universal to plunge deeply into its stock-footage files. The leading ladies this time out are Anne Gwynne and Kay Sutton, their billing status indicating which one of the two ladies will land Clark Manning in the last scene. Incredibly, the Arlen-Devine series lasted for 14 films, none of them classics but all of them worthwhile Saturday-matinee fare.

An auto mechanic suspects sabotage in a recent series of fatal racecar accidents.

Secret Service agents try to solve the theft of treasury banknote plates.

Newspaper editor (Foster) will do almost anything to increase circulation. He campaigns to free a condemned man while accusing a wealthy ex-criminal of a string of murders.

Gene Autry follows a clue written on a rock by his murdered partner and discovers a fur smuggling operation near the Canadian border.

A group of pilots, because of unsavory or unearned reputations, establish an outpost squadron of their own, led by "Loop" Gillian, running charter-flights and hauling supplies in the frozen wastelands of Alaska. The operation does not go without misadventures, foul-ups, and a bit of treachery tossed in.

Escaped Prisoner 39013 impersonates the rich and influential Horace Granville, allowing him to create a variety of disasters. Fortunately, he is thwarted repeatedly by three daring circus daredevils.

Four flying G-Men protect America against enemy spies; one of the four assumes the identity of The Black Falcon, to befuddle the saboteurs even further.