Sky Bandits
Tags: murder

Plot synopsis:
Sergeant Renfrew (James Newill) of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Constable Kelly (Dave O'Brien) fly in search of a missing aircraft flown by Buzz Murphy (Eddie Featherston). Murphy was carrying a shipment of gold from the Yukon Mine Company. Local radio announcer Uncle Dimwittie (Dewey Robinson), has bugged the mine office, and is secretly transmitting information about gold shipments, in the guise of reading children's stories on the air.
The messages are picked up by a gang led by a crook named Morgan (William Pawley). They have forced Professor Lewis (Joe De Stefani) to work on a powerful ray gun invented by a scientist named Speavy (Dwight Frye). The radio beam the weapon sends out disables aircraft engines. Speavy is worried that his invention is being used by the crooks, and tries to warn Renfrew, but the scientist is killed by Morgan.
Madeleine (Louise Stanley), the daughter of Professor Lewis, tries to help Renfrew who finds a laboratory that Morgan is operating but it is destroyed. When no one on the force believes he has discovered the secret of the lost aircraft, Renfrew volunteers to fly the next gold shipment. Madeleine stows away on board the aircraft Renfrew is piloting. Morgan and his gang are also in the air, and while the professor can bring down Renfrew with the ray gun, but he turns it, instead on Morgan's aircraft. Constable Kelly then rides to Morgan's hideout and, with the professor's help, arrests the rest of the gang.

Review: Well used plot is given new life and plenty of laughs as the Mounties battle gold hijackers. One of the last Renfrew of the Mounties films starring James Newill is a fun Mounties meet sci-fi mix.The plot concerns a gang of hijackers shooting down gold planes in the great wilds of Canada. Renfrew and his buddy Constable Kelly have been assigned to try and find out what is happening to the planes which are disappearing with no trace. Renfrew's boss suspects that the pilots are stealing the shipments and flying them over the border. Renfrew thinks that something more sinister is transpiring. Renfrew is of course right and soon he has locked horns with the gang of bad guys who have moved from using bullets to bring the planes down, to using a ray that burns out the plane's engine.This is grand Saturday afternoon style adventure. Nominally a western without the cowboys this film is an action packed romp from start to finish as horses are often used to get from place to place. Actually the western connection is even closer with this being the second remake of Tim McCoys Ghost Patrol (Its also far superior to that earlier film).This is a great movie with many things going for it.I like that everyone in this film is a character of some sort and manages to make an impression on you as being an individual at some point in the film. The wise cracks are funny. The action is well done. Its also great to see Dwight Frye playing the extremely tightly wound inventor of the engine stopping ray.If the film has any real flaw is that Renfrew bursts into song about three times too often. The songs actually aren't bad, they are good in a corny sort of way, they just stop the action from moving for the two or three minutes that they are sung. Keep the remote handy and you'll be okay.Definitely worth a bag of popcorn and an hour of your time.