So you might be asking yourself what would possess a film company like Grand National to come out with a picture about a singing Mountie. Actually, Mountie films in the mid to late 1930's were quite popular, and the singing cowboy craze was pretty much in full swing with the likes of Gene Autry. James Newill himself performed as a big band singer, and even though a lot of his career remains unknown, he did appear in a series of these films which began with "Renfrew of the Royal Mounted".
Quite honestly, you probably won't find another Western type genre film with a similar plot element. In this one, smugglers are moving hot money on ice, that is to say, a counterfeiting ring goes to the trouble of smuggling forged bills inside the body cavities of rainbow trout that are frozen in blocks of ice! Yes, you read that right. You'll have to see it to believe it, but once the story got going, I had to give the writers some credit for the ingenuity shown here. Of course, if this ever happened for real I don't know, but it seems to me that counterfeit money traveling inside fish would have been difficult to pass the smell test, let alone whether determining if the bills were real or not.
It might not seem on the face of it that this story would be remotely entertaining, but James Newill does give a spirited rendition of the Barbecue Bill song in the early going. It seems that he's a top contender for the best barbecue sauce in Canada contest, and wouldn't you know it, his number one competitor is the mastermind of the counterfeiting ring, George Poulis (William Royle). It's better not to try to understand all this stuff, just go with the flow of the story.
Renfrew winds up with a romantic interest in the picture, Virginia Bronson (Carol Hughes), who's father is one of the counterfeiters but is attempting to go straight. I find it interesting that Hughes was also the leading lady in Roy Rogers' first starring film the following year, in "Under Western Stars" for Republic Studios.
Also on hand as a henchman for the bad guys is Chief Thundercloud, who's earliest claim to fame might have been as the original screen Tonto in the 1938 serial "The Lone Ranger". The Chief would team up with James Newill's Renfrew once more in 1940's "Murder on the Yukon". I haven't seen that one yet, but I can just imagine.
Quite honestly, you probably won't find another Western type genre film with a similar plot element. In this one, smugglers are moving hot money on ice, that is to say, a counterfeiting ring goes to the trouble of smuggling forged bills inside the body cavities of rainbow trout that are frozen in blocks of ice! Yes, you read that right. You'll have to see it to believe it, but once the story got going, I had to give the writers some credit for the ingenuity shown here. Of course, if this ever happened for real I don't know, but it seems to me that counterfeit money traveling inside fish would have been difficult to pass the smell test, let alone whether determining if the bills were real or not.
It might not seem on the face of it that this story would be remotely entertaining, but James Newill does give a spirited rendition of the Barbecue Bill song in the early going. It seems that he's a top contender for the best barbecue sauce in Canada contest, and wouldn't you know it, his number one competitor is the mastermind of the counterfeiting ring, George Poulis (William Royle). It's better not to try to understand all this stuff, just go with the flow of the story.
Renfrew winds up with a romantic interest in the picture, Virginia Bronson (Carol Hughes), who's father is one of the counterfeiters but is attempting to go straight. I find it interesting that Hughes was also the leading lady in Roy Rogers' first starring film the following year, in "Under Western Stars" for Republic Studios.
Also on hand as a henchman for the bad guys is Chief Thundercloud, who's earliest claim to fame might have been as the original screen Tonto in the 1938 serial "The Lone Ranger". The Chief would team up with James Newill's Renfrew once more in 1940's "Murder on the Yukon". I haven't seen that one yet, but I can just imagine.