From the 1928 novel. London’s motorized police break up a criminal gang.

The Clue of the New Pin. British Lion (British), 1929. Benita Hume, Kim Peacock, Donald Calthrop, John Gielgud. Directed by Maude. From the 1923 novel. A rich recluse is murdered in an absolutely sealed room.

The Squeaker. British Lion (British), 1930. Percy Marmont, Anne Grey, Gordon Harker. Screenplay and direction by Wallace. The first all-talking British Wallace film, based on the 1927 novel. London’s jewelry thieves are at the mercy of a superfence (actually the head of a benevolent society).

The Menace. Columbia, 1932. H.B. Warner, Bette Davis, Walter Bryon. Directed by Roy William Neill. Based on The Feathered Serpent (1927). A man, sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of his father, is certain that his stepmother is actually guilty. He escapes.

The Frightened Lady. Gainsborough- British Lion (British), 1932. Norman McKinnell, Cathleen Nesbitt, Emlyn Williams. Directed by T. Hayes Hunter. Wallace also used this material in a play, The Case of the Frightened Lady (U.S. title: Criminal at Large). A titled window nervously consults the police, fearing that someone in her secret-passage-filled manor, Mark’s Priory, is trying to strangle the fiancée of her mad young son (Williams).

King Kong. RKO, 1933. Fay Wray, Bruce Cabot, Robert Armstrong. Directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack and Merian C.