User Reviews

I'd say that it was good to see Charles Starrett in a flick that wasn't a Western, but when all is said and done, this one pretty much follows the script of that genre. Starting out as a disgraced bank teller who failed to prevent a sixteen thousand dollar robbery, Robert Hunter (Starrett) winds up in the service of The Dominion as a Royal Mountie. You have to admit he fills out the uniform nicely, and with his good looks and broad smile, it's not a fluke that he wound up a big time matinée idol for young boys and girls alike as the Durango Kid in the Forties and Fifties.

This far back though, Starrett's acting, as well as everyone else in the picture, is pretty wooden. The dialog clunks along, and any number of scenes look like the characters are merely reading their lines instead of interacting with each other. But talking pictures were still a relatively new medium in the early Thirties, and I imagine just about every film felt like an experiment.

I'll say this though, commercial advertisers certainly got an early jump on things. Keep an eye on the owner of Winton's Hardware Store as he walks by to open up the shop. There in prominent view is a well placed sign for Coca-Cola!

Back to the story, Starrett's character winds up in an altercation with a fellow Mountie, revealed later as a ruse to have him go under cover to smoke out the bad guys, a gang of bank robbers masterminded by a smarmy looking Kenne Duncan. He's the 'Chief' referred to by Madigan (Eric Clavering) in that cabin meeting, passing the classic heel test by attempting to rob his own father's store. Constable Hunter not only makes the save, but gets the girl as well, the shop owner's daughter Betty (Adrienne Dore).

Say, I wonder, you think after they got hitched, Bob and Betty ever went back to use up that nine dollar rent money?

Director: SAM NEWFIELD. Story: Kenne Duncan. Screenplay: Murison Dunne. Photography: Sam Leavitt. Film editor: Alex Meyers. Art director: Robert Hall. Production manager and assistant director: Jack Chisholm. Sound recording: Harry Belock. Producer: J.R. Booth. Associate producer: Arthur Gottlieb. A Booth Dominions picture, produced on location in Ontario, with interiors at the Ravena Rink, Toronto. Not copyrighted or theatrically released in the U.S.A. Released in Canada by Dominion Motion Pictures Ltd in 1935 and in the U.K. by M-G-M in January, 1936. 60 minutes.

SYNOPSIS: A bank clerk is disgraced for failing to foil a hold-up. He joins the Mounties and tracks down the bandits.

NOTES: The first of Starrett's 132 westerns.

COMMENT: Supported by M-G-M and designed for the British quota market, this was the second of a planned twelve Canadian "B" features to be co-produced by Arthur Gottlieb. Only this one and The King's Plate (1935), a racing melodrama starring Kenne Duncan and Toby Wing, also directed by Newfield, were actually made.

According to the Monthly Film Bulletin, both films suffered from naive, clumsy direction and dialogue. Though better than "The King's Plate", acting here in "Undercover" was "barely competent". However, the magazine's critic did more or less commend the "he-man action."

Hardly a brilliant start to what must be the most prolific career of any "B" western star. By comparison, Gene Autry, for instance, made only 92 features and one serial. Only 93! Hopalong Cassidy made a mere 66 pictures, whilst Roy Rogers starred in just 84.

Unlike some of the other minor western stars, Charles Starrett was just as popular in Australia as in the States. In England, however, he was never a great favorite. Some of his later Columbia westerns were not released overseas at all. Many had title changes - often purposely designed to disguise the fact that they were westerns!

Undercover Men is an entertaining modern Mountie picture that plays like a B-western in disguise. Charles Starrett plays a Canadian bank clerk. When gangsters rob the bank, he is unable to fight back because his girlfriend is in the line of fire. Accused of cowardice, he leaves town and joins the Mounties. Back home, the gang is causing a reign of terror. Inspector Wheeler Oakman leads a contingent of Mounties back to the city to smash them. When a gangster assassinates one of the Mounties' undercover men, Starrett replaces him by using the old 'drummed off the force' trick. He tracks some heavy ammunition sales to a hunting lodge owned by the town's skinflint banker. His no-good son, Kenne Duncan, is the brains behind the mob. When they try to rob a payroll shipment, the gang is captured. Duncan is nabbed trying to make his getaway and Starrett gets the girl. Working from a good script by Murison Dunn, director Sam Newfield delivers a nicely constructed low budget melodrama. He puts together several effective sequences including a long subjective camera shot to mask the identity of the big boss. While Starrett's acting ability is limited; he is big, good looking and has a million dollar smile. Oakman is very good as the stern Inspector and Kenne Duncan is a surprise as the flashy villain. Shot in Brampton, Ontario; Dominion Pictures released Undercover Men in Canada and MGM handled the U.K. distribution.

Charles Starrett is the hero of this crime film. He's not to be confused with Joe Starrett, the plain-spoken and God-fearing farmer in Shane. Also present are Adrienne Dore, not to be confused with her son, who became an artist of little repute and adopted the pretentious name of Gustave Doré. And, somewhere near the bottom of the cast list, is Farnham Barter, whose name should never be spoonerized. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who are called "Mounties" in this film, are now known as the "RCMP." If you keep all that in mind, you can sit back and enjoy this modest one-hour-long story, and perhaps get a kick out of seeing Starrett in something other than traditional 1930s cowboy garb.

Bank teller Starrett is unjustly accused of cowardice during a bank robbery by the Madigan gang. He's fired by the pinch-faced owner of the bank for letting the bandits get off with sixteen thousand dollars, a figure he keeps bleating at the trial, while never mentioning that an innocent bystander had been killed. This is 1934, you understand, and these Midwestern gangs were a sensation at the time. Bonnie and Clyde were shot the same year the film was shot, and bankers could be portrayed as voracious money mongers.

The tale gets a bit complicated. It takes Starrett into the Mounties and has him go under cover as part of a team effort to nail the Madigan gang.

The movie is clumsily shot and edited. The camera lingers on a constable as he slowly removes his Sam Brown belt, a cord around his neck, his regular belt, his pistol, and one or two other accessories. It takes a full minute of screen time, while we wonder what's going on -- besides a Mountie getting more comfortable. But nothing else is going on.

But there IS one startling scene at about the halfway point. The Madigan gang are holed up in a woodland cabin, drinking and bitching about the lack of "action." A knock on the door. Madigan opens it and his manner turns fawning. But we don't see who the Big Boy is because the camera has adopted the first-person point of view. Madigan offers the camera a drink. The camera lights up a cigarette and sits down, never saying a word. Clearly, this is supposed to keep us from knowing who the Big Boy is but, if we've followed the story at all, it ironically reveals his identity at once. We KNOW it's a character we've already met, otherwise why hide his face? And we know who it is.

There is a bit of gun play in the movie but not much. The firearms go off with curious little pops.