Renfrew of the Royal Mounted: Murder on the Yukon (DVD)

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sergeant Renfrew and Constable Kelly ride out to an otherwise quiet trading outpost to investigate the murder of trapper Jim Smithers. At the scene of the crime, the Mounties find the body of Jim's brother Bill, along with a suicide note confessing to the killing. Using state-of-the-art forensics, they determine that both men were killed with the same weapon - a long-barrel rifle, highly unlikely to be used in a suicide. Armed with this evidence, Renfrew and Kelly discover that a ruthless band of counterfeiters are behind the slayings, but the mounties will have to work quickly to catch the culprits before they escape into the wilderness.

James Newill's operatic training was put to good use in this 1940 installment of the popular Renfrew "singing cowboy" film series. The films were based on ten novels featuring the heroic Mountie written by Laurie York Erskine. These stories were also the basis for a radio series, which ran concurrently with Newill's movies and featured House Jamison as Renfrew. French-born director Louis Gasnier helmed nearly 100 silent and sound films from 1905 to 1941, but is best known today as the man who made the notoriously campy exploitation film, Reefer Madness (1936).

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