J. Farrell MacDonald reaches retirement age for the fire department. When a friend of his is killed in a fire, however, he comes out of retirement to find the pyromaniac who has been setting the deadly blazes.
It's a barebones procedural from Monogram, in which the culprit is known within the first ten minutes as he crosses paths with MacDonald's family; the clues, however, don't come together until the very end. In the meantime there is stock footage of fires, and the principals: Farrell, of course, Mary Gordon as his wife, daughter Polly Ann Young (looking just like her better-known sister, Loretta) and Warren Hull as his future son-in-law. There's nothing much in this movie that can be said to be particularly good except for the pleasure of looking at these performers.
MacDonald had entered the movies in 1911, and had quickly proven a winner. He directed Oz movies for L. Frank Baum and achieved stardom that he sustained until the coming of sound. He slipped to supporting roles, but continued acting, racking up almost 300 features, until his death in 1952 at age 77.
