After a couple of times, you would think they would be waiting for him with guns ready. Every chapter the Trooper breaks the same window, and every chapter apparently the window is repaired. They pick up the rock, and read the note telling what happened before. It is much more entertaining than most of the 30's independent serials, and I found it easier to watch than THE CLUTCHING HAND, THE BLACK COIN, CUSTER'S LAST STAND, QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE, and the never popular YOUNG EAGLES.One silly bit of business is after the chapter title card, to introduce the forward card, the trooper rides up to McHaffey and Barton's cabin, throws a rock with a note attached through their window. While in no way a good serial, for me it almost qualifies as a "guilty pleasure" because it is better than I expected for a very low budget independent serial. I thought this a fairly interesting serial pulled down by a very weak and talky last chapter in which most of the time is spent explaining the plot confusions.īottom line-only for confirmed serial buffs.Ī good and accurate review. The serial deserves credit for going outside the screaming savage stereotype common in films of that era. The Indian chief who raised the heroine and her brother after they were orphaned is played, I think, by a white guy in copperface, but is portrayed as a dignified and kindly man who is a loving father. The mystery of who he is is not intriguing and I figured it out early. The title comes from a mysterious figure who hovers about the action intervening to help the good guys and calling in the mounties now and then via radio. Frazer gives his all in the action and fight scenes, and his very clumsiness adds a touch of realism . All this makes him appealingly human to me. In fact he loses it and becomes hysterical when he thinks she has been badly hurt, and later panics during one of the cliffhangers. He falls for the heroine and shows himself rather emotional. He certainly is not the usual macho, stoic serial hero. Robert Frazer is an unusual hero and I found him an asset. McHaffey deserves credit for doing the scene in which she does seem to be actually in bed with the bear. Heroine Blanche McHaffey and Buzz Barton as her brother seem uncomfortable with dialogue although both are at home in the action sequences. The reliable Charles King provides his usual solid bad guy turn, but Al Ferguson sinks under an awful attempt at a French accent. Unfortunately the human cast does not match the animals. The bear later returns for a second cliffhanger in which it attacks the hero and the stallion has its own striking cliffhanger when it is attacked by Ferguson's pack of killer wolfdogs. There is also a wild stallion (described as wild, although both the heroine and her brother can ride it) which outwits the evil King in one scene and drives him over a cliff where he has to literally hang onto a shrub for dear life. The bear actually crawls onto the bed and begins pawing the heroine, who understandably awakens screaming. The bear pushes open the unlocked door (look your doors, girls) and lumbers over to the bed. While the hero and the villains are having a slobberknocky fight a short distance away, a large bear ambles up to the cabin in which the heroine is sleeping. Some well-trained animals give the serial a big lift and provide a number of good cliffhangers, including in chapter two the single best cliffhanger I have ever seen. Good points-The movie was filmed in striking locations which at least look like it could be Canada. I have tried to give a coherent outline of the basic plot, but if I failed it is somewhat due to this being the usual early thirties "where is the map and whose got the map" repetitious plotting which soon becomes more than a little tedious and hard to follow. The bulk of the plot has the gang trying to get the other half of the map away from Frazer. Gangster Charles King fails to steal the half map from Frazer but follows him to Canada, where King falls in with French-Canadian Al Ferguson and his gang who manage to steal the other half of the map from the heroine and her brother, the children of the other prospecter, who were taken in by a kindly Indian chief after their father was killed. Years later, in the present (1931) Robert Frazer, the nephew of one of the prospecters, comes into possession of one half of a map showing the location of the mine. The plot opens with a years ago intro in which two prospecters have found a gold mine in the Canadian rockies but fall into a fight which leads to an accidental explosion and a mine cave-in. It did have its good points and I found it passably entertaining if watched in the recommended one chapter at a sitting mode. I expected this to be a creaky early talkie serial and it was. *I am going to review obscure serials when I watch them to hopefully stimulate feedback and discussion
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