a5c7b9f00b Counterfeit bills are being printed in Canada and shipped across the border hidden in blocks of ice. When the counterfeiters force engraver Bronson to make a new plate, he inscribes a tiny help message on it. Renfrew catches a henchman who has one of the new bills. A magnifying glass lets him read the message and he heads out alone to round up the counterfeiters. Sergeant Renfrew and his dog Lightning hunt down a gang of currency smugglers, counterfeiters and the killer of a Mountie. All trails seem to lead to the Totem Pole Lodge resort, where Renfrew&#39;s culinary rival is cooking up a heap of trouble. 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&#39;s were quite popular, and the singing cowboy craze was pretty much in full swing with the likes of Gene Autry. James Newill himself performeda 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 &quot;Renfrew of the Royal Mounted&quot;.<br/><br/>Quite honestly, you probably won&#39;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&#39;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&#39;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.<br/><br/>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&#39;s a top contender for the best barbecue sauce in Canada contest, and wouldn&#39;t you know it, his number one competitor is the mastermind of the counterfeiting ring, George Poulis (William Royle). It&#39;s better not to try to understand all this stuff, just go with the flow of the story.<br/><br/>Renfrew winds up with a romantic interest in the picture, Virginia Bronson (Carol Hughes), who&#39;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&#39; first starring film the following year, in &quot;Under Western Stars&quot; for Republic Studios.<br/><br/>Also on handa henchman for the bad guys is Chief Thundercloud, who&#39;s earliest claim to fame might have beenthe original screen Tonto in the 1938 serial &quot;The Lone Ranger&quot;. The Chief would team up with James Newill&#39;s Renfrew once more in 1940&#39;s &quot;Murder on the Yukon&quot;. I haven&#39;t seen that one yet, but I can just imagine. When Nelson Eddy sang Rudolf Friml songs to win the heart of Jeanette MacDonald in Rose Marie he forever got his signature rolethe singing Mountie. In his nightclub act toward the end of his life Eddy would come out in tuxedo and Mountie hat.<br/><br/>Grand National Pictures decided a singing Mountie series was apparently what they needed and they hired James Newill, a good operatic baritone, but a guy whose acting skills made Nelson look like Spencer Tracy. But he looked good in a Mountie uniform and sat the saddle well. <br/><br/>In the first film of the series Renfrew Of The Royal Mounted, there are certain elements similar to Rose Marie. There&#39;s an American counterfeiting outfit operating in the Canadian woods and they have a really ingenious way of smuggling their bogus currency into the USA. Won&#39;t reveal it, but the title gives some clues.<br/><br/>Anyway a Mountie is murdered and that makes it personal for the RCMP and Renfrew. Also an American engraver just released from prison is forced to work with the gang under threats of killing his daughter who is played by Carol Hughes.<br/><br/>Newill and Hughes aren&#39;t exactly MacDonald and Eddy mainly because she sings not a note. And the songs Newill sings aren&#39;t top drawer material like the score from Rose Marie.<br/><br/>But the series was shot on location at Big Bear Lake so that makes it a cut above most B studio series of the time. And the story isn&#39;t a bad one.
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