Bob Steele plays a Royal Canadian Mounted Police Trooper in Derwin Abraham's outdoors epic "Northwest Trail" with Joan Woodbury cast as the damsel-in-distress. Actually, according to the goofs section at IMDb, the RCMP never officially had the rank of trooper. Instead, our hero should have been referred to as a constable. Unlike most of Bob Steele's B-movie westerns, "Northwest Trail" was lensed in color. Some familiar faces crop up in this oater, among them John Litel as a grim-faced Mountie and John Hamilton as the heroine's uncle. Charles Middleton who played Ming the Merciless in the "Flash Gordon" serials is on hand as a Frenchman. Poodles Hanneford. Steele and Woodbury have an interesting relationship that goes from adversial to romantic. Anyway, our stalwart hero Trooper Matt O'Brien is told to escort a haughty but hare-brained female, Katherine Owens (Joan Woodbury of "Paper Bullets") through rugged countryside so she can join her father. As it turns out, Ms. Owens has a suitcase packed with $20-thousand dollars. This money is the payroll for her father's . Trooper O'Brien stumbled onto Ms. Owens as he was riding out of the timberlands. She was asleep in her convertible until he arrived and awoke her. She asks for a tow, but the nearest gas station is a day's worth of travel away. O'Brien examines her automobile engine and uses her screw driver to adjust the carburetor of her vehicle because of the high altitude. Suddenly, Owens discovers that her car will crank. They bid each other goodbye and O'Brien is happy to be done with the snooty female. No sooner has O'Brien ridden into the nearest Mountie post than he runs into Ms. Owens again. She is talking to O'Brien's superior, Inspector McGrath (Ian Keith), when O'Brien walks in on them. Owens is heading to Morgan's Post, but she cannot reach it via automobile. During their journey, O'Brien and Owens have to bed down for the night. O'Brien advises that Owens sleep with her feet next to the fire. After the coyotes begin to serenade them, Owens relocated to the side of the fire near O'Brien. The following day a rider steals one of Owens' suitcase, but the doesn't get very far before two other men shoot him and take the suitcase. O'Brien pursues them, but they split up and O'Brien loses them. Meanwhile. Owens' horse goes lame, and she refuses to ride double with the Mountie until they come to a river. Reluctantly, Owens agrees to ride double and they ride into the ranch of Poodles Hanneford (Poodles Hanneford of "The Golden Horde") and his daughter, Jill (Gracie Hanneford), where Poodles is teaching Jill how to ride bareback. Poodles had complained in a letter to Inspector MacGarth about the stream at his place drying up and unseen assailants shooting at him when he tried to investigate. O'Brien leaves the lame horse with Poodles and Poodles loans them a horse. When they ride into Morgan's Post, Katherine relays the bad news to her uncle John (John Hamilton of "The Maltese Falcon") about losing the money. Pierre (Charles Middleton of "Flash Gordon") is just as upset with this revelation because Owens was supposed to buy timberland from him with part of the $20-thousand. The other part of the $2o-thousand was supposed to be used to pay off Owens' men.Whitey Yeager is one of the two men who shot the fellow who stole Owens' suitcase. His wife and he get into an argument. She throws a water pitcher at him and he tries to knife her. The ruckus goes from their bedroom to the barroom. O'Brien hears the fight and intervenes. Sergeant Means (John Litel of "They Died with Their Boots On") takes over the investigation and orders O'Brien back to camp. Means is none too happy with O'Brien's presence. After O'Brien leaves, he returns to see Poodles and they ride out to look into the dry creek. They are shot at and O'Brien captures Whitney after he takes a shot at him. Again, Means isn't happy to find about O'Brien's interference. No sooner has O'Brien ridden off with Poodles than Pierre opens fire on them and O'Brien arrests Pierre.Abrahams and scenarists Harvey Gates with additional dialogue contributions from L.J. Swabacher have fashioned a predictable but interesting modern-day western.

Northwest Trail features a lot of positives, actually: Bob Steele and Joan Woodbury, a decent plot, a fast pace...and, especially, some color photography that was probably quite gorgeous in 1945 when the print was fresh. Unfortunately, the colors have long-since faded, at least on the version I saw. But it had to be something of an investment for an independent B-movie company to produce anything in color at that time. And the "Canadian" scenery really did add to my enjoyment of an otherwise solid story.Fun to see John Litel as a Mountie whose actions must be described as "hm, suspicious." And the always-snarling Charles Middleton has a few good moments as a French-Canadian backwoods bad guy named "Pierre." (His name is how I know he's French.) Plenty of action here. And the interaction between Joan Woodbury and Bob Steele is satisfying--as one might expect, he's steady as a rock throughout the picture, while she's annoying as can be in their initial encounter but they gradually grow on each other....A lot to like in a mere hour.

It's not exactly Nelson Eddy and Jeannette McDonald from an earlier era, but this is Bob Steele and Joan Woodbury offering their take on a Mountie who gets his man - as well as his girl! This is B-movie stuff, although of pretty good quality. It has beautiful scenery and a decent enough mystery, as Steele, playing Trooper O'Brien (a guy who comes across as a dedicated but not perhaps the best Mountie around), has to escort Woodbury (who played Kate) through the British Columbia wilderness to the settlement where her American uncle is engaged in mining. Unfortunately, she gets robbed of $20000 she was carrying to her uncle (unknown to O'Brien) and the Trooper gets to play detective as he seeks to solve the mystery.This really isn't bad. It's unpredictable, and I didn't see the end coming. The B-movie veteran Steele was earnest in the role but perhaps a bit stiff at times; he was outshone by Woodbury, who was pretty good as Kate. In general, the performances were OK, but not the greatest - which is why this is a B-movie, after all. After an unpredictable resolution to the mystery, the actual ending of the movie was a bit too predictable. It would have been more jarring had Kate been part of the plot rather than simply ending up as O'Brien's love interest. Still, it's a short and relatively interesting movie that overcomes the flaws in some of the performances.

Bob Steele who occasionally diverted himself from westerns with some great character roles in A pictures, still stayed in the B slot with this Northern which is what you would call a Canadian based film. Northwest Trail had the benefit of some outdoor location scenery which put it a cut above the usual B films.Bob's a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who gets to do escort duty of a woman who doesn't bother to tell him she's carrying a $20,000.00 payroll for her father John Hamilton. Steele and Joan Woodbury do kind of grate on each other's nerves, but of course there are sparks underneath.If you think you've got the plot figured out than I can tell you you're wrong. There is skullduggery afoot here, but it's not anything you might initially suspect. Plus the fact the gang here commit a truly horrendous crime by RCMP standards. The real suspense in Northwest Trail is just figuring out who the good and bad guys are let alone what's afoot.I would rate Northwest Trail higher, but the writers copped out in the end in dealing with Woodbury's character. She should have gotten the Mary Astor treatment as in The Maltese Falcon.Silent star Madge Bellamy made her farewell appearance in a role as a battered wife. She's the one who eventually cooks the whole gang.Northwest Trail a nice independent production with much better values and story than one might expect.