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As the other writer said, this is a "borderline Old House" film, but I feel that he under-rated it. The business about a "mad dog" doing all the killing is very unusual. Despite what he says, the "closeups of Joan Woodbury" are only done ONCE or TWICE. She is the "mystic" who is constantly predicting death to all present, and the closeups of her eyes are supposed to lend to the eeriness of the film. A VERY intersting film, if a bit melodramatic in parts! Check it out!

Norm

A nice film for a dark and stormy night. If of course you are willing to squeeze and eye or two shut regarding some shortcomings.

The premises is simple- a young couple about to get married arrive at an isolated hotel. There they find various other people who for some reason or another have also gotten there just recently. One by one however people start getting killed and an almost wed detective takes up the case to solve the mystery before he too becomes a victim.

This is a classic mystery well suited for a dark and stormy evening or another similar occasion. There is mystery, there is horror and there are thrills and the concept of the film is excellent. However it is the dated execution that hinders this film from reaching the heights it could have reached. The acting is quite wooden and things that are supposed to be said secretly and discreetly are presented loud and with excellent articulation as if in a theater. The plot could have been a little better developed and have played more on the "whodunit" angle.

However if you are willing to overlook these shortcomings, then this is still a rather enjoyable film.

A hard to find movie that was originally distributed by Puritan Pictures. This is a borderline Old Dark House movie. It takes place at the Red Rock Tavern, which is an old dark hotel; there's a thunderstorm & three murders, & the lights do go out, but no secret passageways. Nice humorous touches, especially in the interchanges between Wallace Ford's character & his fiancee, played by Barbara Pepper (who has her Mae West expressions down pat). Joan Woodbury plays a strange character with many premonitions; the director seems fascinated by Joan, & the camera often isolates her in unusual closeups that lose sight of the rest of the cast & the backdrops. A watchable film, especially for Old Dark House fans, but not a great one by any means. I rate it 4/10.

A honeymooning couple arrive at a tavern only to become embroiled in a series of murders involving a group of very suspicious guests. It seems as if the killings are being committed by a vicious dog.

Rogue's Tavern is yet another in the cycle of Poverty Row whodunits. There were an awful lot of these in the 30's. Like most of these films, this one involves events set exclusively in an old dark house. To be fair, this is one of the slightly better one's I have seen. Its mystery is reasonable enough; while it's climatic reveal scene was actually pretty good. For such a limited movie sub-genre you really have to make the most of any plus points. And at the very least this one more-or-less works and doesn't bog things down with much lame humour, which others seemed to do. All-in-all, not bad for this kind of thing.

"A collection of travelers has gathered at the 'Red Rock Tavern', an old hotel, during a thunderstorm. All arriving for different reasons, the group is suddenly drawn together by the murder of one of the guests. Two store detectives staying at the hotel try to solve the case as other bodies turn up and the terror increases with each passing moment," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.

An eclectic cast makes this "old dark house" variation fairly entertaining, albeit structurally flawed. The leading man and woman are "store detectives" Wallace Ford (as Jimmy Kelly) and Barbara Pepper (as Marjorie Burns). But, the real treat is seeing former silent film superstar Clara Kimball Young (as Mrs. Jamison), in one of her more meaty later year roles. The matronly Ms. Young was one of the biggest stars in films during 1913-1919, and she still has her way with the camera.

***** The Rogues Tavern (1936) Robert F. Hill ~ Wallace Ford, Barbara Pepper, Clara Kimball Young

Wallace Ford and Barbara Pepper are a pair of eloping store detectives and Ford is most proud of the fact that he does have the title of detective. When they check into an out of season inn waiting for a justice of the peace to arrive three murders occur among the guests and Ford decides to investigate. The rest take it on face value that he's law enforcement.

This is not too bad a film for a poverty row product. The cheapness of the sets even adds some value to the atmosphere the director wanted to create.

As it turns out Ford and Pepper are the outsiders in more ways than one. All the guests have been summoned to this place the way Agatha Christie summoned her victims in Ten Little Indians.

I can't reveal the murderer by praising the cast member's performance by name, but I will say the scene where all is revealed is one for the books. What a piece of scenery chewing.

Cheap though Rogues Tavern is I think you'll enjoy it.

Here we are again. In an old dark house (hotel, tavern, inn), where a group of jewel robbers are hiding out. A detective and his not-so-dumb blond fiancée show up to meet a justice of the peace. Meanwhile a murder is committed. A throat torn out, supposedly by a wolf-dog, who generally is tethered outside the tavern. There is a lot of byplay, with even an invalid man coming under suspicion. Others begin to get bumped off as well. People come and go. Suspicious characters and policemen and a cast of several investigate. Make sure you think of everyone as a suspect. There is pretty good humor and a little slapstick. The detective is so dense, it makes you wonder if he could find his hat in a closet. He doesn't listen to anyone, but at times seems pretty lucid. Anyway, there is nothing new or remarkable about this film, but it is fun and the conclusion is worth the wait.

Contrary to the majority of the reviews which currently appear now and take a condescending view of this film, this reviewer believes "The Rogues' Tavern" is an entertaining little film. Wallace Ford and Barbara Pepper perform very well in the leading roles. One reviewer remarks "that guy who plays Bert at the hotel is about the worst actor I've ever seen." Granted, Vincent Dennis, who plays the role, is not very good, but then in another review of "The Amazing Exploits of the Clutching Hand," Jack Mulhall was singled out as a "terrible actor," and he is in this film, yet emerges seemingly unscathed. A reviewer also writes "by the way, Barbara Pepper later came to fame playing Mrs. Zipfel on "Green Acres." This is a sad note to Barbara Pepper's career; at the very end of it, she did play Doris Ziffel from 1965 to 1968, until health ailments forced her to leave the role. She died of a coronary thrombosis at age 54 in 1969.

Dancing around the code a couple of Store detectives shop up at a tavern on a dark and stormy night looking for a justice of the peace to marry them. Unfortunately for them the Justice hasn't arrived but a hotel full of people have, as has a murderer.

This is a good is a tiny bit slow (Due more to lack of music than plotting)thriller. This is a movie that for a while operates like Ten Little Indians as several of the guests are killed by a wolf dog, or so we are to believe.

The mystery is thick and its not entirely fair however the dialog is snappy and a joy to listen to. There are sliding panels and weird happenings and everything you could want from an old dark house mystery.

No its not perfect but it is fun.

If you get the chance watch it, preferably on a dark and stormy night....when the wolves are howling outside....

If good publicity is when they spell your name right, why didn't Sam Katzman take credit for this? It has a pretty good cast for a Poverty Row production, including Wallace Ford and Barbara Pepper as a couple of hotel detectives looking to get married to each other, Joan Woodbury and Clara Kimball Young. It takes place at a hotel across the state line where the couple can get married without delay, but there is a series of murders, which seem to be committed by a police dog.

This being a Sam Katzman production, there are problems. Director Robert Hill seems to be unhappy with sound; all the actors speak very loudly and clearly in group shots, as if they are in a cavernous theater. The dialogue is moderately dopey. The editing by Dan Milner is moderately brisk; he would work as an editor into the 1960s and even direct a few movies, including FROM HELL IT CAME, which is probably best remembered for the review "And to hell it can go."

The Rogues Tavern starts out promisingly: an opening scene features a nearly silent, deliberately-paced panning shot of the hotel commons area and its various guests, all sitting quietly. The camera pauses on each face or silent group, finally closing in on Joan Woodbury reading cards and delivering a fortune to a fellow guest—a reading that ends suddenly when she turns up the ace of spades, the card of death! It's a wonderfully atmospheric setup that promises a spooky tale of hidden motives and secretive characters, possibly with a touch of the supernatural mixed in.

Alas, along come Wallace Ford and Barbara Pepper as a pair of runaway department store detectives who have apparently eloped with no better plan than to run off into the night hoping vaguely to find a justice of the peace and a hotel room (or, as Ford's character notes, if the justice doesn't show up, then they'll need two rooms).

The rest of the show isn't bad; it just doesn't move fast enough or create enough suspense to keep me from noticing that...well, for example, that Joan Woodbury is wasted for the rest of the movie. Instead of developing her character as a sort of mystic (real or phony), she is given nothing to do but just wring her hands a lot and say thing like, "We're all doomed!" Or from noticing that Wallace Ford is too confident by half in his detecting skills, and heroine Barbara Pepper is too polite to him by more than half. (Why doesn't she smack him when she's got an important clue and he tells her to leave him alone and won't listen?)

Still, there is some atmosphere to be enjoyed here. And it's not every mystery criminal who frames a friendly dog for murder. The murderer also gets in some fun evil cackles in the climactic scene when preparing to finish off the remaining guests in one fell swoop. Yes—fans of evil cackles should not miss this one.

"Rogue's Tavern" was made on a shoe-string budget almost three-quarters of a century ago. It's a standard mystery, the kind that was ground out like questionable sausage as the bottom-half of a double feature during the Great Depression, to give the 25% of the population who were unemployed somewhere to go for a few empty hours.

The producers spared no expense to make the movie look like a bad play filmed in a run- down theater. The sets are cobbled together and look even cheaper than the painted backdrops seen in two-reeler silent comedies where Fatty Arbuckle or Harry Langdon might have appeared as rather creepy chubby baby-faced clerks in pancake makeup and lipstick making lewd gestures. Here the setting is a neglected country hotel that badly needs a cleaning from top to bottom, the few sticks of furniture rescued from a stack of kindling wood. Think of "Fawlty Towers" set, say, in a desperately impoverished, war-ravished Albanian village, ca. 1948.

Picking their way around the bargain basement chairs and tables and mouthing dialog that barely advances the story is a collection of rather cheerless performers, clearly grateful to be working at all in this Depression year. The hero, Wallace Ford, is supposed to be the boyfriend of a cute Barbara Pepper, a sharp-tongued Ginger Rogers-like heroine who has the best of some really silly lines, but Ford, looking almost as old and neglected as the furniture, would seem to be at least 20 years her senior. Even for 1936, their banter and badinage seems pretty strained and dated; though in the next generation it would become the tiresome fodder of a million sitcoms. Most of the other male performers are also out- of-condition middle-aged Rotarians in three-piece suits, so respectable that in one unintentionally hilarious scene, where murder and mayhem are the order of business in the next room, all the shirt-sleeved men first don their vests and suit jackets before venturing out to do battle with evil.

The women look a little healthier, but they don't fare much better. Starring is platinum blonde Barbara Pepper, who rattles off her funny though sadly dated material with the assured rapid-fire delivery of a Jean Arthur or Lucille Ball. The cameraman's favorite, though, is Joan Woodbury, a tall exotic-looking beauty, who is unfortunately given some of the movie's worse lines, on the order of "I sense death!"" The splendidly named Clara Kimball Young, at one time, an important star (her movie appearances went back to 1909!), here appears in a lesser role, one of the increasingly negligible jobs that came her way during her long decline. However, she easily dominates any scene she's in with a natural personality that just knocks the rest of the cast out of the box.

The director, Robert Hill, an old B-movie hand usually engaged in turning out low-budget Westerns and Tarzan pix for the Saturday afternoon kiddie trade, manages to damp down any vestigial zeal or enthusiasm the cast may have had, with the exception of the four- legged "Silver Wolf," whose menacing appearance is seriously damaged by his habit of playfully wagging his tail..

"The Rogues' Tavern" is a B-movie and like most Bs, it features a lot of second-tier actors. However, even for a B, some of the acting is simply god-awful. Now the leads (Wallace Ford and Barbara Pepper) are just fine...but that guy who plays Bert at the hotel is about the worst actor I've ever seen. And, a few of the others aren't a whole lot better!!

Jimmy and Marjorie (Ford and Pepper) are out looking for a Justice of the Peace, as they want to get married. When they stumble upon a weird and spooky(?) old hotel, suddenly folks start dying and it's all blamed upon a wild dog! Obviously the doggy didn't do it...not unless it can cut phone lines and kills without biting anyone! But still, a few of the folks think that if they kill the dog, their problems will be solved. But it soon becomes apparent that SOMEONE has invited the folks there to kill them all...and Jimmy is going to investigate.

This is a bad film and aside from bad acting the story often doesn't make sense. A dog is blamed for the deaths and a killer is using a dog costume of sorts! This makes no sense at all. What also makes no sense is the camerawork early in the film where there is an out of focus and out of frame closeup of Joan Woodbury. It looks amateurish and should have been redone....but reshoots often weren't done with cheap B-movies. The wind sound effects are also amateurish--either being too loud and too invasive to the story or non-existent. What's funny is that although the wind sounds as if they are in a hurricane at times, folks go outside and it's not windy at all!! Overall, a terrible film that is poorly made is practically every possible way.

By the way, Barbara Pepper later came to fame playing Mrs. Zipfel on "Green Acres".

When a young couple wants to get married, they decide to stay overnight in a hotel. But before they go to bed, people start getting knocked off! And it seems to be a dog doing it. Or is it? Good combination of humor and suspense, in spite of the dead bodies. The script wouldn't win any awards, and lots of sloppy continuity issues, but the chemistry between the actors is quite good! Some twists and turns in here. Near the end, someone can't stop the silly, evil laugh. That didn't need to go on so long. Stars wallace ford; he was rarely the lead, but certainly appeared in some great films! Check out his list of work. Directed by bob hill. He worked in silent film for years before the talkies. Story by al martin. He and hill made eight films together!

THE ROGUE'S TAVERN (1936)

4 out of 10 stars Time to Read: 1:21 min

BASIC PLOT: A group of people end up at a crowded inn on a stormy night. They've all been sent telegrams to lure them here, and they're being killed off, by what they first think is a wild dog, but what's really a taxidermied canine.

Also present are a police detective, Jimmy Kelly, and his fianceé, Marjorie Burns, who have stopped here to get married, and are eagerly waiting for the justice of the peace to arrive.

The hotel owners, Mr. & Mrs. Jamison (John Elliott & Clara Kimball Young) are here as well, and are on the suspect list. So is a strange, lurking man, in thick glasses, who is listening behind every door.

But who sent the telegrams, and can Jimmy (Wallace Ford) & Marjorie (Barbara Pepper) figure it out before anyone else dies?

WHAT WORKS: *CREEPY ATMOSPHERIC It's a dark and stormy night, and the beginning really sets the stage.

*FUN SCOOBY DOO TYPE MYSTERY This is just silly fun, don't expect anything serious.

*LOTS OF SUSPECTS There's lots of suspects, and even more come later (who's the mysterious stranger, in the thick glasses, who's hiding in the shadows?), which makes for an entertaining whodunnit.

*JOAN WOODBURY IS GREAT AS THE FORTUNE TELLER Joan Woodbury is excellent as the weird fortune teller, Gloria Robloff.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: *ENGAGED COUPLE IS A BIT SILLY Jimmy Kelly (Wallace Ford) & Marjorie Burns (Barbara Pepper) are pretty silly as the engaged, bickering couple. But they do work well together, and she is as smart as he is, so that makes it a bit less annoying.

TO RECOMMEND, OR NOT TO RECOMMEND, THAT IS THE QUESTION: *If you're in the mood for some old, silly fun, give this a try. It's light, not a serious mystery at all, but if you enjoy that type of thing, it's not bad.

CLOSING NOTES: *I HAVE NO CONNECTION TO THE FILM, or production in ANY way. This review was NOT written in full, or in part, by a bot. I am just an honest viewer, who wishes for more straight forward reviews (less trolls and fanboys), and better entertainment. Hope I helped you out.

Weak plot, uninspired staging coupled with erratic performances and dumb dialogue (pretty much every time Woodbury opens her mouth, no offence intended to Woodbury herself) result in a dull and dreary mystery concerning a group of shady characters lured to a remote inn by an unknown assailant who has plans to pick them off, one by one. Detective and wife-to-be duo (the likable Ford and Pepper) find themselves unwittingly part of the conspiracy, and try to piece together the who-dunnit.

Clichéd and unimaginative, it's not awful, but it lacks suspense and atmosphere, while the plot is pretty thin on detail. Ford seems assured and he has some of the better dialogue with Pepper, as is sidekick, while the sultry Woodbury as a clairvoyant unfortunately receives no such favours from her puerile doomsday prophecies ("we're all doomed, I can sense it", "I knew this would happen" etc etc) and those 'look of terror' cut-aways that are consistently about twenty-four frames too long.

It's not quite the old dark house cliché as one reviewer alluded, but there is a surprise ending and an unusual murder weapon featured. Unlikely to cause any palpitations, but it's only 68 minutes of your time, all the same.

When detective Jimmy Kelly and his fiancée, Marjorie, check into a secluded inn and stumble upon a double murder involving dead bodies covered in animal bites, they start trying to figure out who or what was behind these attacks.

The usual ingredients of an old dark house mystery are present - the eerie atmosphere, a group of people with a secret and a ghastly murder, and then add some comic moments via some banter to the mix, and you get a typical entry to the genre, however it's rather standard stuff that is just passable. Having said that, the best thing in this film is the villain doing some scene chewing at the end - melodramatics at its best - and Joan Woodbury who plays a sultry mystic who keeps reminding everyone that they are doomed.

The Rogues' Tavern (1936)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Another film in the long line of "old dark house" or "murder-mysteries" as Jimmy (Wallace Ford) and his fiancé Marjorie (Barbara Pepper) show up at an old hotel to get married but there's no Justice of the Peace. Instead they find a dead body and a bunch of suspects and soon the threat of more deaths is hanging over everyone so Jimmy must try to solve the case.

THE ROGUES' TAVERN isn't the greatest movie ever made but it's certainly interesting enough to keep you entertained throughout its 69 minute running time. If you're familiar with these types of films then you already know that it seems there were at least a hundred of them released throughout the 1930s. Everything from killer gorillas to killer madmen to wack job women were suspects and each one always featured various objects that kept them all familiar. It could be trapped doors, the whole thunder spells and usually there was a man and woman team solving them.

This film at least has a pretty good cast including Ford. He worked in a various of film genres but he makes for a good lead her as he's quite charming and manages to hold your attention. Pepper, Joan Woodbury and Clara Kimball Young are also good in their roles. The direction here isn't anything overly special but at the film moves at a nice pace and there aren't any major issues. The ending is quite nice, although I must admit that the shot of the possible victims faces before and after the killer is identified was quite funny.

Despite the title, Rogues Tavern, the movie's setting isn't a tavern -- no bartender, no beer taps, no cracked leather stools -- it's a creaky hotel somewhere out in the countryside. On the other hand, there's at least one rogue on the premises; otherwise, why would the hostelry's guests keep getting their throats clawed? Detective Wallace Ford is determined to get to the bottom of the mystery with the klutzy help of his bride-to-be, Barbara Pepper. Fortunately, he's one of the few members of the cast who has some acting ability -- although you gotta' admit that the tirade launched by Clara Kimball Young late in the movie adds a whole new dimension to the Smithfield school of dramaturgy. Suggestion -- if it's a dark and stormy night and you're looking to scare up a few scares, pass by this inn on the outskirts of poverty row and register at James Whales' "The Old Dark House."