Wid's Films and Film Folk (1916)

WID'S Thursday, June 1, 1916. INTERESTING SPECTACULAR STUFF HAS BIG ADVERTISING POSSIBILITIES 4 Emma Thomsen in THE END OF THE WORLD Great Northern—State Rights eater ©) FR Aiea eye oss. , 6. eit esses Foreign Film PSA VV Fd GC) Dupe cg in Ue... siete Quite Interesting ~ UO) ECV wee eae Ila San gos s+ Imaginary, It Holds MIOEGERECLLUIN i jeloys eats |. cneale eae 06 Very Good MUPEEP ECS ICAP ELY © cog eco ys. . see ys We tw oss Good Bape Cr FoI Cron, wistces biti iy’ + Some Very Effective MO MECAAWORK oss... (itbacih.. von: Good BIAS Reape each ec as fos + + sleeeelatd fen Good Figure EME Came te eee nes. nS s eMac vee 8 Good PX HRT ORS G0 s7.,0c: Well Chamen. eon Effective Be eC eS e Ae arin cs + +. SMMIEe foo/ cine wares -Good AYN De eS Rene nee: ae .-Rather Good SINCE LP ee Akers se cme ds 5. + Smad ° .Six Parts HIS offering is certainly different and: it has been well enough done to make it really interesting. It is an imaginary tale of what might happen if this earth were struck by a stray comet with all the little frills coincident with such a happening, such as flurries on the stock market, etc. There is a love story running through the offering, in fact two of them. One of these shows a pair of happy lovers who failed to ever go through the formality of marriage and this fact stirred the father of the girl so that he died and also enraged the one time lover of the girl so much that he became the villain and caused the “peepul” to arise and storm the home of the owner of the mines, who was the successful lover. The other love affair was that of the sister of the first mentioned girl and this sister loved a fisher man. They announced their engagement but we did not see them wed. At all events when the terrible catastrophe had passed, leaving destruction in its wake, we found the first pair of lovers and the villain dead in the mine and the second pair of lovers were reunited happily. This offering holds very nicely all the way; despite the foreign atmosphere, because there is always the anticipatory feeling that soon something s going to happen. About half way through the second reel we begin to get some idea about the coming of the fatal comet and from that time on he big scenes are, rather nicely worked up to with he final climax coming with a reel or two of very well done fire and flood stuff. A number of miniature exteriors were used in the explosion scenes followed by spectacular scenes but they were very well done and will surely register with conviction with most audiences. There were a number of decidedly beautiful marine scenes with clouds in the sky and some of these artistic bits help decidedly in raising the general tone of the production. Miss Thomsen as the girl who left home to be with her wealthy lover had a very good figure which she managed to display to advantage on several oc' casions and her dramatic work was satisfactory. The girl playing her sister was rather pretty and had a very cute dimple. The men were satisfactory but nothing wonderful. At times the foreign atmosphere seemed a bit odd but it really did not interfere greatly with the offering because the entire story depends upon the spectacular scenes and these were quite well done. In many of these spectacular scenes use was made of double exposure photography but this fact will not be discovered by the average audience. There is a splendid opportunity to play this film up heavily with advertising because of the name and it will get over when shown. I would use such thoughts as this: “What would you do if you were sure the world would end tomorrow?” There’ is a splendid chance-here to create a lot of discussion ‘about this film and so get some very valuable word of-mouth advertising. You might suggest that a catastrophe is coming by using a teaser campaign, which would run for a week before you show the film. Start out by using small ads all through the papers reading “Prepare for the End of the World.” Don’t in any way try to connect this with your theatre at first; in, fact keep away from all mention of your theatre for the first few days. Then use enough space to get the benefit of the advertising to announce that the “End of the World” will be shown in your theatre. I notice that the advertising matter suggests that they have al wreck at sea, this is not much better than most wrecks which are more smoke pots than anything else, so I would lay away from the ship wreck thing, but you can make a lot of fuss about the scenes showing the destruction of cities by fire with the flood which followed, although the flood scenes shown are rather tame. Some of the fire panics are right well handled and all through the film the action plants the comet thought very nicely This is surely worth booking unless you have an audience that is supercritical and even then I believe it will get by. Tell your friends about . Vee 1D’ = 621