A deranged killer escapes into the Canadian woods. He tries to fool the locals by pretending he is a well known mystery writer, but the local Mountie starts to get suspicious. Noticing the resemblance between himself and noted author Steven Norris, wanted gangster Dan Geary kidnaps Norris and assumes his identity. His charade is successful for a while but when his new stenographer reads some of his latest writing to Mountie McGregor, McGregor become suspicious. Silly and moronic Mountie film here, this features a bad guy who escapes the law by going into Canadian forests and impersonating a famous author vacationing there (thanks to the absurd ΒΌ page article in the paper saying just that), he connects with some bad guys there, which of course, are zee French trappers, and pretty soon, he's enjoying this impersonation and wooing the RCMP commander's daughter, much to the chagrin of our hero, who realizes something isn't right about the author, who he's met before. Soon, Our antagonist's cover is in peril.. will it be our hero discovering his true identity? Or will the actions of the people around him cause him to blow his cover? All of this sounds somewhat interesting, but really it's not, it's somewhat too talky, the hero isn't at all someone you would really root for, and it all seems sloppily put together.<br/><br/>And oh, there are no phantoms. None. Nada. Zilch. I fully agree with everything Michael Morrison says in his review. In fact, I don't really need to write a review myself. Please look it up right here on IMDb. I'll just fill in a bit of time here, so that IMDb will publish this review. The only useful observation I could make is that I would never, never, never watch anything on you-tube, because as Michael Morrison points out, the prints are often far from satisfactory. <br/><br/>Fortunately , a very good print of "The Phantom Patrol" is included as an extra on the "Brand of the Devil" disc which is available on the Alpha DVD from Oldies.com. The only negative observation I would make about the movie and the print is that the conclusion of the final reel seems a trifle rushed. We know what's going to happen but it would have been nice to actually see the love birds wrap the movie up in grand fashion on the screen. A clever observation from the real writer would have been welcome too.<br/><br/>"The Phantom Patrol" is included as a bonus with "Brand of the Devil". Do yourself a favor and watch it now. As a rule you can't go wrong with any Charles Hutchison movie and "The Phantom Patrol" is no exception.
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321 weeks ago