Best Action Movies of 1942

Three ex-cons buy a luggage shop to tunnel into the bank vault next door. But despite all they can do, the shop prospers...

Broadway gamblers stumble across a plan by Nazi saboteurs to blow up an American battleship.

When notorious pirate Henry Morgan is made governor of Jamaica, he enlists the help of some of his former partners in ridding the Caribbean of buccaneers. When one of them apparently abducts the previous governor's pretty daughter and joins up with the rebels, things are set for a fight.

During the Allied Bombing offensive of World War II the public was often informed that "A raid took place last night over ..., One (or often more) of Our Aircraft Is Missing". Behind these sombre words hid tales of death, destruction and derring-do. This is the story of one such bomber crew who were shot down and the brave Dutch patriots who helped them home.

During WWII, when an allied bomber is shot down over Germany, the five surviving crew are captured but cleverly escape detention after learning German secret information and knocking out a Nazi major. With the angry major in hot pursuit, aided by military personnel, Gestapo agents and Hitler-loyal citizens, the five wend their way across perilous Germany, intent on reaching the UK with the secrets they have learned.

Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book is given the full treatment in this lavish retelling filled with huge sets, exotic animals, a large cast and the incomparable Sabu, starring as Mowgli, the young orphan boy raised by wolves. Curious to reconnect with his human village, Mowgli returns only to find disappointment in the greed and treachery of man. Over time, Mowgli and the village members do grow to trust one another, but not before the village finds itself under siege. It's up to Mowgli and his jungle friends to save the day.

Inspired by Churchill's Dunkirk speech, brash, undisciplined Canadian bush pilot Brian MacLean and three friends enlist in the RCAF.

Circus owner Buck Rand kidnaps Boy to perform in his show. He forces a pilot to fly him, Boy and his animal trainer out of the jungle. Tarzan and Jane follow them to New York.

Jim Gordon commands a unit of the famed Flying Tigers, the American Volunteer Group which fought the Japanese in China before America's entry into World War II. Gordon must send his outnumbered band of fighter pilots out against overwhelming odds while juggling the disparate personalities and problems of his fellow flyers.

In the midst of World War II, Sherlock Holmes rescues the Swiss inventor of a new bomb-sight from the Gestapo and brings him to England, where he shortly falls into the clutches of Professor Moriarty.

Two half brothers battle each other for the power of the throne and the love of sensual, gorgeous dancing girl Scheherazade.

In late 1941, with no hope of relief or re-supply, a small band of United States Marines tries to keep the Japanese Navy from capturing their island base.

Lil becomes a dealer in a gambling casino in order to get the information she needs to clear her father of a murder charge. She also falls in love with lawyer Brewster.

Dusty Gardner, and other Texas ranchers, are driving a herd of cattle to Abilene, Kansas along the Chisholm Trail. Desperate need of water takes them to the Turner ranch, where Belle Turner demands exorbitant prices for the water. Dusty learns that Belle is also trying to oust Mary Lee and Montana Smith from the trading post Mary operates. The sheriff sides with Belle following a fight between the two women. Belle knows there is artesian springs under the land the trading post occupies and intends to get the property by any means.

Boston pharmacist Tom Craig comes to Sacramento, where he runs afoul of local political boss Britt Dawson, who exacts protection payment from the citizenry. Dawson frames Craig with poisoned medicine, but Craig redeems himself during a Gold Rush epidemic.

Robbers target a special train carrying a billion dollars worth of gold, and the only one who can stop them is Superman!

Sergeant MacLane of the Mounties investigates the disruptive activities of a bunch of troublemakers.

Steve Bell, Tommy, Pig, Ape, and String are run of town. Steve, while hopping a freight card and trying to avoid the brakeman, is killed. The boys meet Steve's mother, Alice Bell and Tommy is given a job in the storage garage which she owns jointly with Mack Steward. Steve's brother Don Bell is working with some gangsters by tipping them off on valuable merchandise that can be hijacked. Pig, Ape and String overhear Don's plans to use Tommy as the fall guy in the next hijacking.

A scientist uses an earthquake machine to threaten the city, and only Superman can stop his extortion plan!

Criminals with rocket powered car loot and extort the city, and only Superman can stop them!

U. S. Navy Lieutenant Gregg Masterman, of The Harvard and Boston Back Bay Mastermans, learned about the sea while winning silver cups sailing his yacht. He climbs swiftly in rank, and is now Junior Aide to Rear Admiral Stephen Thomas.

Superman's reputation is tarnished when a crook begins committing crimes in a Superman costume.

A seemingly charitable soup kitchen operator (who moonlights as a criminology professor) uses his Bowery mission as a front for his criminal gang. Police attempt to close in on the gang as they commit a series of robberies, murders and bizarre experiments on corpses.

Superman has to thwart wartime saboteurs tampering with things at the Metropolis Munitions Plant...who have captured Lois Lane and loaded her into a torpedo!

An English refugee and a street thug go to military school together.

Prior to the United States' involvement in World War II, the masked vigilante Spy Smasher fights Nazi agents operating within the US, led by the treacherous sabotage leader codenamed The Mask.

When a prisoner on Death Row is "accidentally" killed just before his execution, a reporter smells something fishy...

Using Clark Kent as a cover, Superman travels to Japan as a saboteur during the war.

Someone has absconded with $4,000,000 worth of diamonds, and that someone may very well be a passenger on the Bombay Clipper.

Bad guys plot to trick a newly arrived Eastern girl out of a ranch which belongs to her infant ward. Roy, of course, saves the ranch for the girl. Songs include "I'm Headin's for the Home Corral," "He's a No Good Son of a Gun," "Sandman Lullaby," "Song of the San Joaquin," and "I'm a Cowboy Rockefeller."

Judge Kirby is being blackmailed and forced to let outlaws go free. He was once the partner of Roy's father and when Roy reads in the paper that he is in trouble he heads out to help him. Arriving, Roy quickly realizes he has been mistaken for one of the outlaws and is not wanted in town. However he stays, and now posing as that outlaw, hopes to learn who is causing all the problems.

A superhero known as The Black Commando battles Nazi agents who use explosive gases and artificial lightning to sabotage the war effort.

The city's District Attorney is murdered, and a newspaper reporter investigates. He starts finding out that everything wasn't quite as cut and dried as it appeared to be.

Follows a crew as they work under a deadline set by their boss to complete the demolition of a building. Touches on the lives of several of the crew in their lives away from the job and shows rhe comraderie of the crew in their work and even away from work.

A fake general sends two sailors on a wild-goose chase for buried treasure.

Saved from a lynching party by a pair of young women, an itinerant cowpuncher signs on as a stagecoach guard to protect a shipment of gold.

A group of children put on a show in order to prove that a down and out musician was the real composer of a Broadway show's songs.

Quality was seldom a consideration in the low-budget films of PRC Studios; still, the company was a welcome harbor for character actors who aspired to occasional leading roles. In Boss of Big Town, veteran supporting player John Litel is top-billed as crusading city market official Michael Lynn. When a criminal gang muscles in on the local food distribution markets, Lynn vows to throw the rascals out. First, however, he pretends to join the villains as a paid government stooge, the better to find out the identity of the "Mister Big" behind the distribution racket. The exposure of the "mystery villain" will come as a shock to fans of the 1927 Cecil B. DeMille epic The King of Kings--but not to dyed-in-the-wool movie buffs.

The film tells the story of Chinese guerrillas fighting for the Allied cause in Burma during Early in World War II, Chungking schoolteacher Lin Yang is recruited to help with the dangerous mission of protecting the Allied supply line from Burma into China. In spite of the danger involved, her determination to help is strengthened when one of her young students is killed in a Japanese air raid. Some time later, she is part of a group of Allied representatives departing from Lashio, on a bus traveling the Burma Road back to China. A bridge outage forces them to spend the night in a monastery along the way, and during the night they watch in horror as a supply convoy of trucks is bombed by Japanese planes. The timing and accuracy of the raid brings them to realize that either one of their group, or perhaps the priest in the monastery, is really an enemy agent

Private detective Michael Shayne is on the case again, but this time he's stuck on a jury for a murder trial. So, what does he do? Why, he skips out on sequestration in order to solve the case himself!

Tom Kenyon and his sidekick Pierre La Farge are hired by rancher Mike O'Day who, with his daughters Toni and Sugar, provides wild horses for the government remount station.

A girl reporter is trying to tack down the lady-in-the-title, as a key witness in a graft trial, which involves three murder and that many failed attempts. A prosecuting attorney in the district attorneys office is aiding her in solving the mystery of the missing lady.

In the midst of some friendly horseplay on their "Flying R" ranch, the Range Busters, Crash Corrigan, Dusty King and Alibi Terhune, are sobered by the arrival of a buckboard bearing their old friend Larry Meadows and his niece Dorrie Willard. Meadows seeks their aid against a gang of outlaws terrorizing his town. Ernie Willard, Dorrie's brother, has been taken in by Tex Laughlin who is using the Willard ranch as an undercover for his real occupation as a member of a gang of outlaws led by Tim Douglas, a supposed friend of the Willards.

Hollywood starlet foils an Axis plot to sabotage the L.A. infrastructure.

A reporter runs from charges by a corrupt politician only to face them years later.

A Nazi spy ring is after a chemical formula that increases the power of ordinary gasoline for U.S. Army aviation use. Two U.S. chemical companies are developing the formula, with each working on half for security purposes. The spies get half the formula and know that either of two chemists, Robert Norton or Tom Fielding, knows the rest. They capture Fielding, through a ruse by gang member Linda Pavlo, and threaten the life of his sister Nancy and his mother if he does not give them the formula. To protect his friend Fielding, who does know the formula and is engaged to Nancy, Tom pretends to know the secret and boards the Dawn Express plane with the spy leader and his gang.

When his father is accused of graft, a former boxer returns home to clear his name.

Prospector Henry Tolliver disappears and his son "Wild Bill" Tolliver comes looking for him.