The Film Daily (1918)

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Sunday, October 6, 1918 tM^ DAILY "Rip-an'-Tear" Western Meller. Has Action But Is Very Crude Anita King in "WHATEVER THE COST" Plaza=Hodkinson DIRECTOR Robert Ensminger AUTHOR Capt. Leslie T. Peacocke CAMERAMAN George Rizard AS A WHOLE "Rip='en=tear" meller of the "ten= twent'=thirt' " calibre. STORY "Doity woik in the gulch" stuff with Shero on a still hunt for her father's murderer. DIRECTION Varied decidedly. Some bits effec= tively handled; others painfully crude. Showed lack of supervision. PHOTOGRAPHY Good in spots but generally very careless. Shot some sets without diffusers and let sun spots creep in where diffusers were used. LIGHTINGS One good silhouette bit; otherwise ordinary. CAMERA WORK Routine straight stuff STAR Makes a better juvenile than an ingenue. Got over very well as boy. SUPPORT Satisfactory but frequently "acted" EXTERIORS Acceptable INTERIORS Generally impressed as "sets" DETAIL Varied from good to awful CHARACTER OF STORY A wild mixture; should hardly offend. LENGTH OF PRODUCTION About 4,800 feet IT LOOKS ms though the author, in writing this, had spent a <l;iy or more in several theatres looking over productions of a varying nature and had cooked up a composite scenario combining all of the action bits of each. This is the wild combination of a moonshine story, a Mexican border smuggling plot and a dancehall western presenting a girl dressed up in boy's clothes and staged on a rocky coast "somewhere in the west." It looks like parts of this were suggested by "The Flame of the Yukon" and they even have a "Black Jack" character running in the dance hall. The chief fault with this, not considering the story, was the tact that while some incidents and situations were commendably handled, with detail carefully planted; al other times the director allowed things to run wild ami permitted' glaring errors and slips with the result that the production as a whole left a very mediocre impression. The incident where they brought on a scuffle in order to plant the loss of Hero's gun. which was later picked up by the willun and was the cause of Hero being suspected of the murder of Shero's father in later action. was rather wrell handled. Of coui^se. the gun was left near the scene of the murder and we had Shero, who had been dressed in boy's clothes up to this point in the picture, donning "vampire" clothes and getting a job in the dance-hall in order to find her father's murderer. The scene where Shero discovers that the revolver found near the scene of the murder belongs to Hero was also logically brought in but we had so many other incidents that were carelessly handled that the good scenes were discounted by the bad ones. The dance-hall set was' shot without diffusers which east the strong shadows of the top of the set on the floor, as well as the overhead braces to which the lamps were fastened. Other scenes in which diffusers were used showed sun spots in many instances. This is certainly careless and inexcusable. There was one incident in this that will get a yell from any gang. Shero is shown rescuing a suy from drowning and after he has gone down for the third time and she finally succeeds in dragging his body up onto the rocks, she puts water on his brow to bring him out of it. For something that wasn't supposed to be funny, this was one of the funniest things I've ever seen pulled in a film. Miss King registered remarkably well in the boy character, so well, in fact, that you could hardly accept her as the Shero after she had changed clothes. In the cast were: Bruce Smith, Charles Dudley, Stanley Pembroke, Gordon Sackville, Patrick Calhoun and Corinne Grant.