Tonight's Movie: Riders of the Northwest Mounted (1943)

NOTE: This post is my contribution to the fourth O Canada Blogathon hosted by Kristina of Speakeasy and Ruth of Silver Screeningsfrom February 9-11, 2018. This blogathon is always fun and informative! Please click on the blogathon link and enjoy the many interesting posts on a wide variety of Canadian-related movie subjects, written by a significant number of classic film bloggers.

Each year my contribution to the O Canada Blogathon has been written about a Western, and three of the four films have been "Mountie" movies. There's just something about those men in red uniforms in the beautiful "wild north" of our continent...even if they're actually filmed in the U.S.!

RIDERS OF THE NORTHWEST MOUNTED (1943) is a modest 57-minute Columbia Pictures "B" film. Russell Hayden, who went by "Lucky" in many of his Westerns, here plays Mountie Lucky Lawson. You can read a nice profile of Hayden at The Old Corral.

Lucky goes up against a mean-spirited trader named Victor Renaud (Dick Curtis) who cheats trappers out of what they're rightfully due for their furs. Matters are complicated when Renaud's legal ward, his niece Gabrielle (Adele Mara), comes home from her convent school, ready to take over the trading business left to her by her father. Uncle Victor has to figure out a way to swindle Gabrielle along with the trappers!

Unfortunately Lucky's methods of dealing with problems aren't always apppreciated by his superiors, including Captain Blair (Vernon Steele), and Lucky finds himself kicked out of the Mounties for insubordination. This scene, with his uniform torn off, followed by a whipping, is rather disturbing. Of course, this doesn't really mean we've seen the last of Lucky...

One of the fun things about the movie is the approach to portraying the Mounties -- Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys all play Mounties, so they made Bob a Texas native who joined the Mounties! That angle cracked me up. The music is the best thing about the movie; it doesn't add much to the plot, but it does give the film great atmosphere. I love Western music, so it was fine with me that at times the movie felt more like a concert than a Western! The songs included "When You're a Mountie," "Song of the Rippling Stream," "Bluebonnet Lane," and "The Last Goodbye."

Character actor Dub Taylor is the comic relief. As is usually the case with these kinds of roles, a little of him goes a long way. It makes me wonder why the tradition of a grizzled comedian supporting the lead persisted so long but it was certainly the "done thing" in many "B" Westerns, including actors like Smiley Burnette, Gabby Hayes, and Fuzzy Knight. At least the postwar Tim Holt Westerns broke the mold with the handsome and charming "Chito" (Richard Martin) as Tim's sidekick!

RIDERS OF THE NORTHWEST MOUNTED was filmed in beautiful Big Bear Lake and Cedar Lake in Southern California. I recently saw Cedar Lake also standing in for Canada in the Technicolor film UNTAMED (1940), which made me rather wish this little "B" film had been in color too, the better to show off the sparkling lakes and the red Mountie uniforms.

The movie was directed by William Berke and filmed by Benjamin Kline.

As far as I can tell, this movie isn't available on DVD or VHS. I recorded it some time ago from the Encore Westerns Channel.

Previous O Canada Blogathon Entries: PONY SOLDIER (1952), CANADIAN PACIFIC (1949), and TRAIL OF THE YUKON (1949).