Author Archive: Retro

Fired railroad worker attempts to derail an express train on the engineer’s last trip. The first talkie made in England, the first half of the film is silent, second half is sound.

Bizarre camera work highlights this eerie psychological drama about a mysterious count who discovers that his wife is involved with several men.

Weak-willed Reverend is killed trying to clean up the lawless town of Hell’s Hinges, making bad guy Hart go straight to avenge the murder. Produced by Thomas H. Ince. Dir. Andrew L. Stone.

Toni Le Brun, a beautiful Viennese singer, becomes the ward of the wardrobe mistress of a Monte Carlo nightclub. Her benefactor, however, is actually a baroness incognito. Toni falls in love with the handsome Richard, but as they prepare to marry, she comes to believe he is only after the wealth accompanying her new noble status. But truth, like true love, will not be kept secret long. Directed by Lewis Milestone (“All Quiet on the Western Front”, “Of Mice and Men”), Art Direction by William Cameron Menzies (“Gone With The Wind”). Dir. Lewis Milestone.

Using a false accusation of unlawful land-squatting, Bill Edwards (Al Ferguson(1)’) goes to the County Seat and has Sheriff Brown to swear out a warrant against sheep-herders Marie Valerian (Neva Gerber) and her father (Silver Tip Baker. The Sheriff sends a Deputy, “Thundering” Thompson (Cheyenne Bill_, back to serve the warrant. Thompson learns that Edwards is only trying to force the Valerians to sell their sheep to him at a cheap price, and comes back without serving the warrant. This enrages Edwards who enlists the aid of a local cattleman and his hands to drive off the sheep. Thompson sets out to keep this from happening.

A girl is kidnapped and held captive in an ancient Egyptian temple. She is rescued and flees to England, but soon finds that her mysterious captor is still haunting her.

Kalem’s serial The Hazards of Helen has been the source of controversy over the years, though mainly such controversy has attended as to whether or not it is truly a serial. With 119 episodes averaging 15 minutes apiece and an implied total running time of nearly a day — though not all episodes survive — The Hazards of Helen would rightfully take its claim as the longest movie serial of the silent period, and possibly of all time. The complication is that “Helen” did not use the device of a cliff-hanger ending; rather each episode was a self- contained story, more in line of what is considered a film series rather than a serial. However, in just about every other way it conformed to the format: Helen was the telegraph operator at Lone Point, a remote railroad switching station at which she operated seemingly as its only employee. For some reason Helen seemed to have [...]

A stage-struck young woman becomes an heiress and hopes to fulfill her fantasies.

Earliest version of the classic Haggard fantasy about a lost race and the beautiful, immortal queen, “She Who Must Be Obeyed”. Dir. Roger Corman.