Barry Barringer Movies

Cowboy star Kermit Maynard's rope-twirling skills are seen to good advantage in Song of the Trail. Maynard is cast as a wandering rodeo performer named Jim, who settles in one place long enough to save an old pal in trouble. The fact that the old pal has a pretty daughter only serves to strengthen Jim's resolve to set things right. The biggest budgeted of Kermit Maynard's westerns for Ambassador Pictures, Song of the Trail is an excellent showcase for Maynard's athletic prowess, with the hero emulating Douglas Fairbanks throughout. Heroine Antoinette Lees later enjoyed a brief starring career at Goldwyn Studios as Andrea Leeds. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this western, cattlemen and sheepherders battle it out to see who really can make their home on the range. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The second of Kermit Maynard's "Mountie" actioners for Ambassador Pictures, Northern Frontier was a major improvement on the first (The Fighting Trooper), which in itself wasn't such a bad picture either. On behalf of the Feds, Royal Mountie McKenzie (Maynard) joins a gang of counterfeiters. The story becomes a bit hard to believe at this point, since McKenzie is so clean-cut and heroic that it's a wonder the villains aren't tipped off to his true identity from the get-go. Magnificently photographed in Northern California, Northern Frontier was ostensibly based on a story by James Oliver Curwood (whose name was automatically attached to practically every Mountie movie ever made!) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

What's Your Racket? was another aimless crime drama from low-budget Mayfair Productions, albeit with a more alluring title than usual (most Mayfair efforts bore such yawn-provoking names as Her Forgotten Past and Sister to Judas). The story opens as heroine Mae Cosgrove (Noel Francis) robs the home of gangster Jimmie Dean (a miscast Creighton Hale). Mae's not really a bad girl; she's just fallen into bad company. She alters her course in life when she falls in love with rookie cop Bert Miller (Regis Toomey), who doesn't suspect that Mae is tied in with chief villain Dick Graves (J. Carroll Naish) The "surprise" revelation of Mae's true identity -- she's the daughter of a banker framed for robbery by Dean and Graves -- comes out of nowhere, suggesting that the producers showed up on the set one day and exclaimed "Say, we gotta wrap this film up some time!" What's Your Racket? was directed by Fred Guiol, who once piloted the comedies of Laurel & Hardy at Hal Roach Studios. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This comedy, set during the Prohibition, chronicles the exploits of two disparate sisters. The older sister is a jaded gold-digger. The younger one is a naive country girl. The older tries to shelter the younger from the sophisticated men of the city. Unfortunately, she gets in trouble when her newest love swipes a thousand bucks to assist her. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Like the previous years' Ten Nights in a Bar-room, The Face on the Barroom Floor resurrects a corny old title to illustrate the dangers of alcohol abuse. Bramwell Fletcher stars as Bill Bronson, a down-and-out drunkard who is the object of everyone's derision. It was not always thus: once he was a successful banker, with a beautiful wife (Dulcie Cooper) and a rosy future. But when Bronson tries to wean his father-in-law from the influence of an evil bootlegger, and when his own wife insists that he must drink occasionally to "be sociable," our hero succumbs to the family curse of alcoholism. One sip of booze leads to another, and before long Bronson has literally drunk away his entire life. Though it leans towards caricature and overexaggeration at times, Face on the Barroom Floor is in many ways as powerful as such later anti-liquor epics as The Lost Weekend and Come Fill the Cup. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A judge investigating two Wall Street brokers accused of stock manipulations learns of a mysterious invention, a "DXL Accumulator" with which its inventor, Prof. Farrington, plans to harness solar power. The judge decides to visit the professor at his mountain hideaway. When he arrives, he finds that the professor's daughter and her boyfriend are there, along with the professor's mysterious housekeeper, her creepy son and a strange couple the daughter and her boyfriend brought along. As the judge is questioning the professor, someone turns off the lights, and when the daughter and her boyfriend rush into the room, the judge is found murdered and the professor has disappeared! Mischa Auer and Martha Mattox, the twin menaces in the "classic" horror cheapie The Monster Walks, play approximately the same roles here. The sputtering laboratory equipment and the electronic special effects were the handiwork of Kenneth Strickfaden, of Frankenstein fame. ~ Brian Gusse, All Movie Guide

In this drama, the owner of a railroad gives his lazy son the boot. The young fellow, wanting to redeem himself, uses an alias and begins working at his father's railroad yard. When an escaped convict frees a freight car and sends it careening wildly down the tracks, the young man jumps the crook and then manages to stop the runaway car. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide