Danger Ahead (1940) User Reviews

Mounties investigate armored car heist

[bkoganbing · 4/10 · 10 July 2013]

James Newill who got his training in grand opera plays the singing Renfrew Of The Royal Mounted again in Danger Lives. This time Newill is after the people who engineered an armored car heist where a young driver is killed. The plight of the grieving mother for her missing son resolves Newill to do his damndest.

Some rather ordinary songs are given Newill as I suspect he had in the rest of the series. Criterion Pictures couldn't exactly afford Rudolf Friml to write the score.

The series here had the advantage of some nice location scenery from Big Bear Lake and I suspect the whole series was shot there.

Newill has Dave O'Brien as his sidekick and also Dorothea Kent as the inspector's daughter who fancies herself a detective. All in all a rather ordinary film.

Once again, it's about the gold.

[mark.waltz · 4/10 · 24 August 2022]

Dorothea Kent becomes according to Sergeant Renfrew (James Nevill) the female Charlie Chan, interfering in his investigation of the disappearance of an armored truck filled with gold and the driver who was not found in the lake that it dove into. The more Renfrew objects to Kent's presence, the more she intervenes, and it becomes a battle of the sexes in his investigation, although ultimately, she proves to be a great help.

One of half a dozen Monogram programmers focusing on Renfrew of the North, it's a standard bottom of the bill programmer with lots of action yet very predictable especially when Nevill breaks into a couple of musical numbers. Kent disguises herself as a Mountie, but she doesn't fool Nevill who deliberately insults her just to put her in her place. The mixture of action and comedy makes the short film move at a quick pace, but the series rarely from its formula, making for standard family action entertainment that's easy to enjoy but easier to forget.