"Mountie" films are a curious sub-genre of the Western, dating back to the silent era. Kermit Maynard made a number of them in the mid-30s which are very good, and then starting in 1937 came the best-known series, Sgt. Renfrew of the Royal Mounted. James Newill starred in nine of these between 1937 and 1940. The series began at Grand National and moved to Monogram when GN went under. This film is the 8th of the 9 in the series and has all the elements needed for a fine entry in the series. Newill had a good operatic voice (we must remember, that Nelson Eddy influenced this kind of singing much more than Gene Autry!!!), he was a convincing action star, and he could play the comic banter with sidekick Dave O' Brien well too. In fact, after this series was over, the two of them moved to PRC where they made 14 films as "The Texas Rangers" with the edition of lanky cowpoke Guy Wilkerson as the comic relief. I have always LOVED those films and feel they are much underrated (for the 44-45 season the TExas Rangers films, Newill departed and Tex Ritter took over for another 8 films). The faux-Canadian settings of the mountie films (Probably a four hour drive or so to Northern California for location filming), the RCMP outfits, some minor characters with bogus French accents, these elements were a nice change of pace from the standard western, which probably accounted for the small-scale success of the two Mountie series. Add to that the appeal of Jack London's and Robert Service's writings, and you've got a whole "northwest" mystique that the films could play off of. This one also has a wonderful supporting cast--Al St. John as a drunk, Polly Ann (sister of Loretta) Young as the female lead, Chief Thundercloud, Karl Hackett trotting out the classic old "deaf person who mishears everything you say and redirects the conversation" routine, Snub Pollard, and even Kenne Duncan. Direction is handled by Louis Gasnier, probably most familiar nowadays from REEFER MADNESS. In fact, Gasnier is reunited here with REEFER MADNESS star Dave O'Brien. Who can forget O'Brien's incredible turn as Ralph ("bring me some reefer!!!")the psycho in R.M. Gasnier was directing films in france as early as 1905, and appeared in the 1914 serial Perils of Pauline. He also was a pioneer in spanish language filmmaking in Hollywood. This would be his second-to-last feature as a director. The best-known entry in the Sgt. Renfrew series is probably SKY BANDITS because of its strange sci-fi plot and the presence of horror icon Dwight Frye in the cast. That's excellent too, but Murder In The Yukon is also a fine and representative entry in the series for those who want to explore the "mountie" film sub-genre.
Review of Murder on the Yukon
