Go-Get-'Em, Haines

A maverick reporter becomes embroiled in a murder mystery when he follows a disgraced financier onto a cruise liner. Although he would go on to make another 61 screen appearances, this low-budget programmer was the last in which William Boyd would appear as anyone other than Hopalong Cassidy. There's a good gag in which he tricks each of two friends into believing the other is deaf, but otherwise this is pretty dull stuff.

This film has one of the very very rare roles where William Boyd wasn't Hopalong Cassidy once he started in that role. Here Boyd plays a reporter who is told to get the scoop on a millionaire who's utility company is tanking, taking with it the fortunes of many small time investors. Arriving at the rich man's house he sees someone that looks like his man sneaking out a back door. Giving chase he follows him to the docks and on to a ship heading for Europe. Soon things become complicated as murders on board on on land occur.

This is a nifty fast moving thriller. Boyd wanders through the film as if he owns the place and its clear why he was a big star. its also clear that had he been able to do something other than Hopalong he might have been even bigger (would that have been possible?). The mystery itself is a bit convoluted and I'm not sure the film plays fair (I blindly guessed the killer before we had even met all of the suspects) but its no matter since whats of interest here is the interplay between Boyd and the rest of the cast and the ship board setting. If there is any weakness its the musical number that takes place as part of a shipboard entertainment, it's not that its bad, it just that its filler. Worth a look.

This is from back when movies were more about script and story line, when movies were movies. Classic romantic little guy against rich big guy and the girl in the middle. Haines is a reporter who believes that's powerful rich guy is not on the up and up, illegally profiting off others. Very cute movie and decent quality given its age.

William Boyd took a break from Hopalong Cassidy to do this B movie mystery for Republic Pictures in which he plays an investigative reporter hot on the trail of a Samuel Insull like utility magnate who is fleeing and absconding with a whole lot of his investor's money.

The culprit Lee Shumway takes a passenger liner bound for Europe and Boyd follows him on board and sails with him. During an amateur theatrical production on shipboard someone slips real bullets into a gun and Shumway is shot dead. There are a host of suspects as a whole lot of people lost money investing with the dead magnate.

Go Get 'Em Haines which sounds like a rousing sports drama instead of a murder mystery is a nicely paced mystery which we have to give some allowances for as it is the product of a B film studio. Herbert J. Yates didn't exactly bust the budget for this one, but Boyd does nicely in the role.

Alas though for his career and for better or worse he was Hopalong Cassidy and the public wasn't going to accept at this point as anything else.

Long before he became famous as the cowboy 'Hopalong Cassidy', William Boyd was a star during the late silent and early talkie periods. By about 1936, his prospects had diminished a bit and by the mid-30s he was mostly making B-movies for smaller studios--in this case Winchester. Now this does not mean they were bad films--just lower budgeted ones that had relatively simple plots because the films were barely an hour long. Of all the B genres, the murder mystery movies were among the most popular. Now "Go Get 'Em, Haines" does not begin as a murder mystery. The reporter, Haines (Boyd) is following a tycoon aboard a cruise ship looking for a story but soon a murder occurs and who better to solve it other than our handsome hero (well, actually, the POLICE would be a good bet...but you rarely see them called in initially in such films).

Overall, "Go Get 'Em, Haines" is about what you'd expect--a mildly entertaining film where the leading man does a very good job. This isn't surprising, as Cassidy had already made quite a few films and had a nice, natural manner in his acting. Not a great film by any stretch, but not bad and a decent time-passer.

By the way, I complain a lot about the prints on Alpha Video's DVDs. However, I must admit that this one is pretty good--clean and worth seeing.