Watch The Rogues' Tavern For Free

Instant Favorite.

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

"Rogue's Tavern" was made on a shoe-string budget almost three-quarters of a century ago. It's a standard mystery, the kind that was ground out like questionable sausage as the bottom-half of a double feature during the Great Depression, to give the 25% of the population who were unemployed somewhere to go for a few empty hours. The producers spared no expense to make the movie look like a bad play filmed in a run- down theater. The sets are cobbled together and look even cheaper than the painted backdrops seen in two-reeler silent comedies where Fatty Arbuckle or Harry Langdon might have appeared as rather creepy chubby baby-faced clerks in pancake makeup and lipstick making lewd gestures. Here the setting is a neglected country hotel that badly needs a cleaning from top to bottom, the few sticks of furniture rescued from a stack of kindling wood. Think of "Fawlty Towers" set, say, in a desperately impoverished, war-ravished Albanian village, ca. 1948.Picking their way around the bargain basement chairs and tables and mouthing dialog that barely advances the story is a collection of rather cheerless performers, clearly grateful to be working at all in this Depression year. The hero, Wallace Ford, is supposed to be the boyfriend of a cute Barbara Pepper, a sharp-tongued Ginger Rogers-like heroine who has the best of some really silly lines, but Ford, looking almost as old and neglected as the furniture, would seem to be at least 20 years her senior. Even for 1936, their banter and badinage seems pretty strained and dated; though in the next generation it would become the tiresome fodder of a million sitcoms. Most of the other male performers are also out- of-condition middle-aged Rotarians in three-piece suits, so respectable that in one unintentionally hilarious scene, where murder and mayhem are the order of business in the next room, all the shirt-sleeved men first don their vests and suit jackets before venturing out to do battle with evil. The women look a little healthier, but they don't fare much better. Starring is platinum blonde Barbara Pepper, who rattles off her funny though sadly dated material with the assured rapid-fire delivery of a Jean Arthur or Lucille Ball. The cameraman's favorite, though, is Joan Woodbury, a tall exotic-looking beauty, who is unfortunately given some of the movie's worse lines, on the order of "I sense death!"" The splendidly named Clara Kimball Young, at one time, an important star (her movie appearances went back to 1909!), here appears in a lesser role, one of the increasingly negligible jobs that came her way during her long decline. However, she easily dominates any scene she's in with a natural personality that just knocks the rest of the cast out of the box. The director, Robert Hill, an old B-movie hand usually engaged in turning out low-budget Westerns and Tarzan pix for the Saturday afternoon kiddie trade, manages to damp down any vestigial zeal or enthusiasm the cast may have had, with the exception of the four- legged "Silver Wolf," whose menacing appearance is seriously damaged by his habit of playfully wagging his tail..

Weak plot, uninspired staging coupled with erratic performances and dumb dialogue (pretty much every time Woodbury opens her mouth, no offence intended to Woodbury herself) result in a dull and dreary mystery concerning a group of shady characters lured to a remote inn by an unknown assailant who has plans to pick them off, one by one. Detective and wife-to-be duo (the likable Ford and Pepper) find themselves unwittingly part of the conspiracy, and try to piece together the who-dunnit.Clichéd and unimaginative, it's not awful, but it lacks suspense and atmosphere, while the plot is pretty thin on detail. Ford seems assured and he has some of the better dialogue with Pepper, as is sidekick, while the sultry Woodbury as a clairvoyant unfortunately receives no such favours from her puerile doomsday prophecies ("we're all doomed, I can sense it", "I knew this would happen" etc etc) and those 'look of terror' cut-aways that are consistently about twenty-four frames too long.It's not quite the old dark house cliché as one reviewer alluded, but there is a surprise ending and an unusual murder weapon featured. Unlikely to cause any palpitations, but it's only 68 minutes of your time, all the same.

Robert F. Hill directs this poor man's Thin Man flick. A humorous little mystery that leaves a little more to be desired. Jimmy Flavin(Wallace Ford),a small-time detective, and his fiancé Marjorie(Barbara Pepper)arrive at a hostelry searching for a Justice of the Peace. The inn run by wheelchair-bound John Elliot is home to a jewelry ring and also the site of homicides. Visitors are found one by one with crushed throats and bite marks. Flavin decides to investigate the murders himself while waiting to recite nuptials. Well placed humor dots the criminal content. The cast of players include: Joan Woodbury, Arthur Loft, Clara Kimball Young and Jack Mulhall.

Dancing around the code a couple of Store detectives shop up at a tavern on a dark and stormy night looking for a justice of the peace to marry them. Unfortunately for them the Justice hasn't arrived but a hotel full of people have, as has a murderer.This is a good is a tiny bit slow (Due more to lack of music than plotting)thriller. This is a movie that for a while operates like Ten Little Indians as several of the guests are killed by a wolf dog, or so we are to believe.The mystery is thick and its not entirely fair however the dialog is snappy and a joy to listen to. There are sliding panels and weird happenings and everything you could want from an old dark house mystery.No its not perfect but it is fun.If you get the chance watch it, preferably on a dark and stormy night....when the wolves are howling outside....