Edward Halperin Movies

In this adventure, the final entry in the "Renfrew of the Mounties" series, the intrepid RCMP officer and his girl friend head for the Yukon to look for stolen planes carrying gold shipments. There they find themselves faced with a death ray that has been invented by a scientist who has been convinced by the criminals behind the thefts that he is working for the government. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Renfrew of the Royal Mounted rides again in the Criterion/Monogram "northern" Danger Ahead. There's not a whole lot of plot to speak of, as Renfrew (James Newill) gets involved with a crooked banker (John Dilson) and his raffish henchman (Dick Rich). One of the film's plusses is the presence of comedienne Dorothea Kent as the heroine. Refusing to take herself or the plotline seriously, Kent is a breath of fresh air in the otherwise formula-bound proceedings. Also good for laughs is Al Shaw, formerly of the Shaw & Lee vaudeville team, as a wisecracking janitor. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Produced by the Halperin Brothers, the folks responsible for the early-talkie horror classic White Zombie, Nation Aflame is one of several 1930s exposés of such hate groups as the KKK, the Silver Shirts and the Black Legion. The bigoted aggregation depicted in this film, a fictional group called the Avenging Angels, is shown to be just another racket, controlled by big-city mobsters for their own financial gain. The principal villain is gangster Sandino (Noel Madison), who has the state's governor (Harry Holman) in his pocket, along with several other political leaders. When the governor rebels against his corrupt colleagues, Sandino orders his assassination, prompting the governor's daughter Wynne (Norma Trelvar) to team with her former fiance, crusading DA Burtis (Roger Williams) to arrange a frame to discredit Sandino and his ilk. She lures the crooks into a drunken orgy, whereupon Burtis' lieutenants break down the doors and arrest everyone in the joint. The DA destroys the Avenging Angels and their hooligans once and for all, which proves immensely beneficial to his career. Alas, poor Wynne cannot share the fruits of his victory -- she is, after all, a "fallen woman" (remember that this was 1937, not 1997!) Incredibly, Nation Aflame was ostensibly based on a story by Thomas Dixon, the virulently racist author of such pro-KKK, anti-black literature as The Clansman and The Leopard's Spots; if the film was indeed a faithful adaptation of a Dixon original, it would have represented a complete 180-degree shift in his own political beliefs. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

After several years' faithful service in RKO Radio's short-subject department, director George Stevens was rewarded with his first feature-length assignment, the innocuous comedy Bachelor Bait. Stu Erwin plays Wilbur Fess, the busy owner of a matrimonial agency called Romance, Inc. So dedicated is Fess to his job that he fails to notice how much his girlfriend Linda (Rochelle Hudson) loves him. As consequence, he very nearly marries Linda off to someone else, but at the last moment he is saved from this boo-boo by good-time girl Alice (Pert Kelton). The title Bachelor Bait was later used by RKO for the British release of the 1949 Shirley Temple vehicle Adventure in Baltimore. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this haunting low-budgeter, Bela Lugosi stars as Murder Legendre, a shadowy character who exercises supernatural powers over the natives in his Haitian domain. Coveting Madge Bellamy as his bride, wealthy Robert Frazier enters into an unholy agreement with Lugosi, whereby Madge will die, then be resurrected as a zombie. ~ Iotis Erlewine, Rovi

In spite of its unbelievable storyline, She Goes to War manages to sustain interest from first reel to last. During WWI, spoiled socialite Joan Morant (Eleanor Boardman) heads to France, hoping to be reunited with her soldier sweetheart Reggie (Edmund Burns). Her presence is resented by Reggie's CO, Lieutenant Tom Pike (John Holland), who endeavors to prove to the heroine that social standing means nothing in the face of war. When Reggie turns coward and refuses to march into battle, the newly-responsible Joan, hoping to save Reggie's honor, dons a uniform and marches off in his place! Through a bizarre turn of events, Joan ends up saving the lives of everyone else in the regiment. Currently available from several public-domain videocassette sources, She Goes to War is worth seeing if only for its brief talkie sequences, in which the voice of actress Alma Rubens (cast as ukelele-plucking Rosie Cohen) was heard for the first and only time; within two years, Rubens would be dead, having lost her ongoing battle with drug addiction. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi