Ghost Patrol (1936)

Pretty Good

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Ghost Patrol (1936) ** (out of 4)Airplanes begin falling from the sky so a Depertment of Justice worker (Tim McCoy) begins to investigate. Before long he uncovers a group of people using a death ray machine to bring the planes down.GHOST PATROL often gets credited for being in the Western genre that mixes in horror elements. There aren't any ghosts on display and the film really isn't horror but it does fall into the science fiction field as the story itself is rather ambitious or at least a lot more interesting than you typical "C" Western from this era.The film actually borrows heavily from the previous year's film AIR HAWKS from Columbia, which was about a mad scientist (Edward Van Sloan) using a ray to bring down planes. The setting here is obviously that of a Western but the story makes for a quick hour and there's no doubt that the story is interesting enough to keep you entertained.McCoy certainly has no problem playing the hero and makes it look quite easy.

Multi-talented Wyndham Gittens wrote some good scripts, but this is not one of them. Mind you, it does show promise here and there. We like the scene when our heroine positions herself on a rock and gives her face a thorough dusting, but after this wonderful introduction, she has little else of interest to say or do. The rest of the players also seem to be struggling to make something out of a movie that was so conspicuously filmed on the cheap. The introductory scenes with the plane are so obviously lensed against a process screen, they carry no weight at all. The good old process screen also comes into its own in other scenes including a long time-waster when our hero picks up our heroine in his wagon. Neither the director nor his producer make any attempts whatever to disguise these blatant meanwhile-back-in-the-studio or time-for-some-more-stock-footage effects. Oddly, Tim McCoy seems to be unfazed by all these cheap stunts. He just keeps on enunciating his lines, no matter how corny or overly fulsome they are. He also just goes on wearing his over-sized hat, although it too looks way out of place. The other players seem unperturbed by the whole ridiculous plot. Only Lloyd Ingraham has the grace to look more than a trifle embarrassed from time to time. But I must admit it's good to see Jimmy Burtis in a decent-sized role for once. The picture is almost worth seeing just for his clowning alone. And I strongly suspect that our director, his producer-brother and maybe other members of the behind-the-camera crew make up the numbers in the airplane-to-the-rescue at the climax. They all look surprisingly ill-at-ease and they sure don't act like extras from Central Casting. They don't look like G-men either, but that, as I say, is another story.

I've seen quite a few B-series westerns in recent months--and several starring Tim McCoy. Well, up until this film I liked the McCoy films and assumed his films were all pretty good. Not so fast, however,...after seeing "Ghost Patrol" I realized he COULD make a bad film...a very bad film.In his book "The 50 Worst Movies of All Time and How They Got to Be That Way", Harry Medved picks an obscure Gene Autry film as the worst B-series western. Well, I saw this film ("Twilight on the Rio Grande") and thing "Ghost Patrol" is a lot worse--and for many of the same reasons why Medved disliked the Autry film. Both were the oddest sort of westerns--ones set in modern times and featuring modern problems. In "Ghost Patrol", the cowboy McCoy investigates a ray gun that is able to knock down airplanes!! And, naturally, the government sends in a single dandy cowboy (in his prettiest cowboy clothes)---not an army of Secret Service men or soldiers!!! Who thought any of this made sense?! While there is more to the story than this, seeing airplanes, telephones, cars and death rays just make the story seem like a jumbled mess.I think if the film had been rewritten without all the cowboy references and having McCoy wearing normal clothes when he investigated the plane crashes, the film might have been worth seeing. Or, conversely, if they'd just made a western, it might have been a decent film. But this amalgam was just a silly mess....and might just make your brain hurt! Bad acting and a limp plot didn't help any!

When a woman finds out that a plane which has crashed in the forests in Shiloh, she immediately pulls out another clipping about her father inventing a new ray (but not a new Bob) and immediately, not really too sure how, puts the two together that they're related. And she's right! Bag guys have kidnapped her father so that the ray machine (which makes a LOT of noise) can bring planes carrying loot down from the sky (you know this is happening when the plane sound effects go off and on). FORTUNATELY, Tim Mccoy, still wearing the biggest cowboy hat ever known to man, is also going to Shiloh to check things out! Will they figure out the mystery of why planes are going down in the area before the plane full of G.I.'s to help Mccoy in the mystery is affected by the ray? (why would they take a plane in the first place?), will Dad and Daughter reunite? Will Mccoy ever aim his gun? Tune in to find out. Well, you don't have to. It's not much of a movie, lots of implausibilities. Fortunately, Mccoy is always a hoot, and the hybrid of Western / Sci Fi is always interesting.