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Review by
Dennis Schwartz
Previously filmed in 1918 with William Farnum. There's a later version
in 1931 with George O'Brien. Tom Mix is very well-suited for this action
role, though the others were also excellent. It's a solid standard action-packed
Western that features a fast-draw cowboy after some mean-spirited outlaws,
a number of different type of villains, a cattle stampede and an avalanche.
The silent film is based on a melodramatic Zane Grey novel written in 1911,
and is directed with verve by Lynn Reynolds, Tom Mix's favorite director,
and scripted by Edfrid A. Bingham. It was lushly filmed on locations at
scenic Lone Pine, California. |
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Tom Mix is easterner Jim Carson who becomes cowboy Jim Lassiter
when he learns from the dying Frank Erne that his wife Millie (Beatrice
Burnham), Lassiter's sister, and their young daughter Bess were
kidnapped by crooked attorney Lew Walters (Warner Oland, future
Charlie Chan) and his henchmen Herd, Slack and Metzger. Lassiter
dedicates himself to hunting them down. After many years on the
trail, he locates Walter's three hirelings in an end of the desert
trail frontier saloon and kills them in a gun duel. He learns from
one of the dying men that Millie is being held in the Cottonwood
ranch owned by Miss Jane Withersteen (Mabel Ballin). But soon learns
from Jane that Millie died when she couldn't bear it anymore that
Bess was taken from her, and she made Jane swear that anyone looking
for revenge should not know the new identity of Lew Walters.
Lassiter
takes the job of foreman at Jane's ranch and teams up with honest
cowhand Bern Venters to stave off crooked neighbor rancher Tull
from rustling Jane's cattle and causing a stampede. During a raid
on the ranch they thwarted Venters wounds a masked rider who turns
out to be Bess--now a teenager. She was given to outlaw Oldring
by crooked Judge Dyer (who is really Lew Walters), who didn't want
to pay for her upkeep. Oldring is the elderly leader of the gang
known as the Riders of the Purple Sage, and becomes a father to
Bess. When Venters learns this, it clears the way for the two to
get married. |
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Tull acts to get even with Jane for stopping his rustling activities
by getting Judge Dyer to rule that the orphan girl Fay, whom Jane
is raising, is to be handed over to another couple for adoption.
Jane breaks her promise to Millie and tells an angered Lassiter
who Dyer is. Lassiter marches into Dyer's courtroom and shoots
him dead when he tries to draw. Outside the court Tull's men chase
Lassiter, Jane and Fay over a secret mountain pass, and in order
to save Jane's life Lassiter sends a boulder crashing down the
mountain causing an avalanche that kills Tull and his men but prevents
the three from ever leaving the fertile valley. The place is viewed
as paradise, away from all the ugliness and strife of the Southwest
in the 1880s, as the family of three vows to live in peace and
happiness here for ever after. |
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