ThiefHott Too much of everything

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

grainstorms "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..

Chase_Witherspoon 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.

mark.waltz First of all, this seems like a film from 1930, not 1936. It is creakier than the floors of those abandoned houses in the country I used to explore as a kid. It also has a plot that had been done better even in the creakiest of silents and with much better scripts. Even the Tod Slaughter grand guignole melodramas of the British cinema were far more interesting than this. The cast isn't bad, but the material they are given is preposterous. Joan Woodbury is interesting as a card reader, while Barbara Pepper (best known as Mrs. Ziffel on "Green Acres") comes off alright, although at times the changes in photographic angles makes her look like a different character. Poor Clara Kimball Young has probably one of the hammiest moments in films like this; She went all of a sudden from subtlety to acting that reminded me of Dwight Frye in "Dracula". There are more red herrings in this film than any other that aren't even remotely intelligent. The appearance of the inventor in the spooky glasses at the end is one of them that just comes out of left field. Remember Truman Capote's tirade in "Murder By Death" about the characteristics of the famous mystery writer's books that he hated? Well, they are all here. In the film's credit, there are some great angles here and there of the camera looking down on the characters showing their horror of their impending fate, but it's not enough to hide the ridiculousness of the methods the killer uses and its revelation. For the actual killer to utilize the method of killing used, it would take a great deal more strength than that person has. Otherwise, it's more of a Shari Lewis puppet show. You'll see what I mean if you watch this film, which is fortunately short enough to get through. Stick with "The Old Dark House" and a few others (like "The Cat and the Canary", and even PRC's "Fog Island") which are much more interesting than this.

Norm-30 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