O Segredo de um Morto

This was one of James Oliver Curwood's best stories, and I was greatly and positively surprised that Warner Brothers had made a film on it. Naturally the action is much altered, they always do that in America, but the main intrigue is there and made convincing enough. You miss the Chinaman though, who plays a most important part in the novel, and who is here replaced by more ordinary standard crooks. But the film is well made, there are quite a few breath-taking chases by cart and on horseback and a wonderful extensive saloon fight breaking all the premises down to cinders, as Hollywood is prone to do with a vengeance, the actors are also rather ordinary, but there is nothing wrong with the action and the tempo - you will never be able to relax. They could have made a better film on such a terrific intrigue, but maybe someone else will do that later on, discovering the potentials of the book more thoroughly.

Calling this a mystery is a stretch as the only mystery is when the incredibly credulous townsfolk of River's End, Alberta, will figure out that Dennis Morgan is actually an escaped convict and NOT the Canadian Mountie sent in pursuit of him. Yes, it's the old chestnut about the two fellows who look exactly alike and switch identities in order to right the wrongs of an imperfect judicial system. If you can accept the premise, you'll enjoy this speck of fluff. Victor Jory offers the only interesting performance as a relatively likeable bad guy.

No review here as such, but this enjoyable little semi-Western puzzled me a bit, for the female star (playing one of the Dennis Morgan characters' sister), is given as Elizabeth Earl, a name used in only a couple of late films instead of her real one, Elizabeth Ingles, used more often earlier. Since I could not remember encountering her under either name before, and she was a really comely lass (the character is Scottish), a good actress, and reasonably charismatic, I was amazed that she would be in a good-sized production like this and disappear more or less totally from future view, so I looked her up in the actor biography section provided by IMDb (just hit her name in the cast listing and you are there) and found out that she left the screen shortly after for marriage and that Elizabeth Earl/Elizabeth Ingles is the mother of Sigourney Weaver(!). How about that? The screen lost a pretty good actress when she left, but she produced a sci-fi film legend to compensate. She could have done worse! In fact, cinematically-speaking, she almost did in this film, for she is surely the only actress in film history who would have chosen to marry Victor Jory instead of Dennis Morgan; one must assume she hadn't met Henry Daniell yet!

This film from Warner Brothers B picture unit has Dennis Morgan as a criminal on the run from a date with the hangman and the Mountie that is looking to get his man. But it's the Mountie who gets himself lost and sick with exposure to the cold. When the fleeing felon takes him in and they talk the Mountie realizes this guy may just be innocent.

But when Morgan the felon shaves off his beard the dying Mountie realizes these guys could be twins. So he assumes the Mountie's identity and starts his own investigation. He's after Victor Jory who he feels framed him.

What's a bit hard is when Elizabeth Ingles as the Mountie's sister seems to accept him as her brother. I can't believe she wouldn't know her own brother no matter how much they look alike. Worse is that Jory is courting her, the fiend.

Good comic relief is provided by George Tobias who played many an ethnic role at Warner Brothers at the time and did a few as a French Canadian.

But you got to believe Ingles would know her own brother.

George Tobias could just play any part, although his accent does come and go in this one. Here, he's a supporting character "Dijon", helping our main character to escape. Our lead man is Dennis Morgan, playing both a convicted man (John Keith)and the County Mountie (Connison) assigned to chase him down. While it is a shortie, it is quite well played. There is some comedy in this "Canadian Western"... every couple minutes, Dijon's girlfriend comes running into the picture to make a big scene, even though Dijon promised to keep a low profile. He even starts a bar-room brawl as a pretense to get one of the bad guys in jail. Of course, there are a couple of chase scenes, and even a fist fight on the edge of a cliff. Victor Jory is Talbot, the "foil" in the story.

Directed by Ray Enright, who had worked his way up in the business in the early days of Hollywood. Based on the story by James Curwood, a prolific writer who seems to have written numerous novels about the outdoors, and the wild west. Fun film to watch. It starts as a serious drama, but seems to turn into a lighter comedy/drama about halfway through.