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Reviews
Border River (1919)
Worth watching, for locations, indie prod, Evelyn Brent role
I picked up an old show-at-home (circa 1940s) 16mm print of this film, and have transferred it, scored it and uploaded it to YouTube. This film can be viewed online at http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=69D7AC682F4A0E1C
It's nice to see the film with its original titles; the main cards are stylized text superimposed over woodland shots. There is a lot of great location work in this independent production. The survival rate on Edgar Jones' many short films is not great, and same goes for early roles of Evelyn Brent who plays the love interest. The film is a Canadian Mountie tale of bootleggers and love. The acting and direction is pretty decent as well.
Haldane of the Secret Service (1923)
Straight-ahead international crime melodrama
Houdini seems to be making a bid for himself as leading man of moving pictures, as there isn't a pair of handcuffs in the film's six reels. At one point he is surround by the bad guy's henchmen and knocked unconscious and then - after their leader says "You know what to do with him!" -- thrown in the river...but is not bound in chains, stuffed in a sack, locked in a trunk etc. The film's sets and costumes are great, and the location footage in NYC, London and Paris are nice to see. The story and plot is contained in main dialog inter-titles, and feels like one of those silent films that was a stage play first, with a lot of scenes of people standing around doing exposition via inter-titles. At best this film is an interesting curiosity, and the surviving print looks great and is complete.