Rip Roaring Riley (1935)
Director:
Elmer Clifton
Writers:
Homer King Gordon (original story and screenplay), George Jeske (additional dialogue)
Stars:
Lloyd Hughes, Marion Burns, Grant Withers
Set up essentially to produce cheap westerns, low-budget Puritan Pictures occasionally ground out a contemporary actioner like Rip Roaring Riley. Lloyd Hughes stars as Riley, a two-fisted G-Man who is dispatched to faraway Diamond Island. Riley's mission is to capture the sinister Major Grey (Grant Withers) who is busily manufacturing poison-gas bombs. Our hero must also rescue the inventor of the noxious gas, Professor Baker (John Cowell), and Baker's shapely daughter Ann (Marion Burns). Former silent comedians Eddie Gribbon and Kit Guard provide laughs as a pair of two-bit thugs who spend the bulk of the film outsmarting themselves.