THE ROGUES' TAVERN (1936)

Director: Robert F. Hill (as Bob Hill)

Writer: Al Martin

Producer: Sam Katzman

Cast: Wallace Ford, Barbara Pepper, Joan Woodbury, Clara Kimball Young, John Elliot, Jack Mulhall, Ed Cassidy, John Cowell, Arthur Loft, Earl Dwire, Ivo Henderson, Silver Wolf (the dog) 

Jimmy Kelly (Wallace Ford) and Marjorie Burns (Barbara Pepper) are an eager-to-marry traveling couple. They head just over the US border into Canada to meet up with the nearest justice of the peace at the Red Rock Tavern. The remote country inn is full up with an assortment of recently arrived guests. Those guests are soon being killed one by one and found with animal bites on their throats. Since Jimmy is a police detective and his fiancée Marjorie used to be a department store detective, they take it upon themselves to try solving this weird case. 

The Flashback Fanatic movie review 

The Rogues’ Tavern is a lighthearted example of an old stage and movie staple: the old-dark-house thriller. Many horror films of the 1920s and 1930s relied on the atmospheric setting of an isolated mansion full of family and guests stranded there during foul weather. That usually meant that bridges and roads would be washed out and telephone lines would be down. Often, it was villainous hands intentionally disabling those phone lines. That kept a killer’s potential victims close at hand and unable to summon help. Over the years, many more films followed this deadly logic. 1980’s Friday the 13th actually swapped out the old, dark house for its remote campground setting. 

Director Robert F. Hill knew his way around these creepy contrivances. He had assisted in the script adaptation of the stage play The Cat and the Canary for the 1927 Universal Pictures silent film that was a classic template for movies of this sort. Here, as in most thrillers of this type, the gloom and danger mingle with eccentric characters and snappy banter. 

Wallace Ford was a vaudeville performer and Broadway actor during the 1920s. He embarked on a long and prolific film-acting career in 1931. He usually displayed a common man’s streetwise brashness and humor. Horror fans remember him in such productions as Freaks (1932), One Frightened Night (1935), The Mummy’s Hand (1940), The Mummy’s Tomb (1943), and The Ape Man (1943). As detective Jimmy Kelly, Ford cracks wise throughout The Rogues’ Tavern. 

Most of Ford’s quips are directed at his super-cute co-star Barbara Pepper as his fiancée Marjorie Burns. It is the kidding and exasperation between these two that enlivens the tavern-bound proceedings. Pepper is best known for her late-career role as Doris Ziffel from 1965 to 1968 on the Green Acres CBS television series (1965-71). 

Gorgeous Joan Woodbury is a sultry and hysterical presence as Gloria Robloff. At first, she seems like a mystic sage with her cards portending doom for another Red Rock Tavern guest. The camera moves in to her close-up as she stares back at us with seemingly unflappable, sinister wisdom. Before long, however, her demeanor does a complete 180, as if her fatalism has reached the saturation point, and she is drenched in a cold sweat of morbid panic throughout the rest of the picture. Instability be damned. In that provocative dress, Joan Woodbury can get away with murder, as far as I’m concerned. 

The rest of the Red Rock Tavern guests are a pretty colorless bunch. They all seem to be somehow acquainted with each other, despite all arriving from different cities in the United States. We soon learn that they have all been summoned to the inn for an unknown purpose. Once their well-gnawed bodies start turning up, that purpose becomes clear. 

Clara Kimball Young and John Elliot play the middle-aged Jamison couple who own the Red Rock Tavern. These two characters probably set the world record for the most furtive and wary sidelong glances in a film. Of course, since Mr. Jamison is an invalid, that makes him immediately suspect. In the murder mystery genre, the handicapped character seemingly the least able to commit murder is often the most scrutinized as a possible faker. Then again, that makes him too obvious a suspect as the one who should not be guilty, so he couldn’t be the killer, right? But what if the filmmakers are trying to outsmart our cynicism by making the obvious red herring actually be the killer? Geez, it’s enough to drive this armchair detective to drink. Actually, what I find to be the most impenetrable mystery at the Red Rock Tavern is that there isn’t a drop of booze to be found in the joint. Maybe Mrs. Jamison spikes the coffee. 

Apart from the Ford-Pepper banter and Joan Woodbury’s pulchritude, what distinguishes The Rogues’ Tavern is the weird menace angle. Chewed up throats is a strange and nasty way to off people. Of course, the part-wolf dog (Silver Wolf) hanging around the Red Rock Tavern is an obvious suspect. Dog lover that I am, I’d have to see the pooch mangling victims with my own two Woodbury-oglers before I could accuse man’s best friend. 

The Rogues’ Tavern is a fun example of the short, low-budget thrillers that were churned out in the 1930s and are largely forgotten today. Their attitude is quite unlike what anyone bothers to attempt anymore when making movies. Most of these quickies were just meant to be a light entertainment mixing humor, horror, mystery, and romance. Sometimes they are the perfect change of pace from today’s overblown and cynical mainstream product.