Director: Lewis Seller
Cast: Tom Mix, Carmelita Geraghty, William B. Davidson, Jerry Madden
Have I Seen it Before: Never. Not entirely sure I’ve seen it at this point.
Did I Like It: I’m sure most genres worked for the silent screen in their day. But I’m supremely confident that, save for a few exceptions, only comedy and horror—those two genres which insist on the viewer having a visceral, involuntary reaction to a film—have any staying power in the here and now.
Therefore, this film is already working at a disadvantage. True, Mix has an impressive fearlessness when it comes to stunts, but that only is brought to any kind of fruition in the final moments of the final act, when Mix surfs the scant remaining splinters of a stagecoach to a final victory against the bandits trying to fix the race. Everything else feels very basic, right down to the main character being forced to adopt an imp of a child who spends most of the runtime outwitting everyone around him like an early-day Jay North, or more accurately a store-brand Jackie Coogan. It feels like Charlie Chaplin would have sent a cease and desist letter if the film would have been a bigger hit, and if every picture of the era didn’t feel the need to partner him up with a little rascal (small “l”, small “r”).
Then there’s the matter of the film’s presentation. I’d be hard pressed to speak ill about a silent movie presented with a full organ accompaniment, especially when some lumbar company bought all the tickets, but let’s confront some unfortunate truths. First, we may not need to see any animated representations of people of Chinese descent from before… Well, anything before Mulan (1998) is going to have to be handled on a case-by-case basis. Also, there’s probably a reason that Felix the Cat disappeared into the mists of time*.
Second, it’s hard to get too much of a handle on the movie at all, as the only available version of the film has degraded so much from the original nitrate stock, that there are a number of shots which are nothing more than bright white light with a few scant shadows. I complain about the film’s average-ness here, but I don’t think mostly disappearing is a fair fate for any movie.
*There may have been an uncomfortable cartoon before the feature.