91% (2) The Wind 95 min, [Drama, Romance, Western] [Victor Sjöström] [23 Nov 1928]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 83%, Rotten Tomatoes: 100%, External Reviews
Awards: 1 win.
Actors: Dorothy Cumming, Lars Hanson, Lillian Gish, Montagu Love
Writer: Frances Marion (scenario), Dorothy Scarborough (from the novel by)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: Innocent and naive Letty Mason moves from her Virginia home to Sweet Water on the western prairies to live on the ranch of her cousin Beverly, his wife Cora and their three children. Letty quickly learns how inhospitable the environment in Sweet Water is, the most obvious item being the incessant wind. But equally inhospitable are the unrefined way the people in Sweet Water live to which she is unaccustomed, and Cora, who believes Letty has come to steal Beverly away from her. As such, Cora orders Letty out of her and Bev's house. With no money, Letty is forced to accept one of the marriage proposal she receives, the lesser evil being that from Bev and Cora's ranching neighbor, Lige Hightower, a man who she does not love. Despite a less than harmonious start, Letty, in part due to her isolation as she is more often than not forced to stay inside due to the wind, begins to have affection for Lige, who wants to do right by her, and who promises to send her back to Virginia when he is financial able. But a visitor who takes refuge in their house away from the wind may threaten Letty's ultimate happiness.
Rotten Tomatoes: A country girl goes to live as with her very unpleasant Texas family, where she's forced to deal with a bad marriage, a villainous ex-lover, murder -- and the maddening, never-ceasing desert wind. Deliberately paced, highly symbolic melodrama shot on location in the Mojave Desert.
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74% (2) The Son of the Sheik 68 min, PASSED, [Adventure, Drama, Romance] [George Fitzmaurice] [05 Sep 1926]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 74%, Rotten Tomatoes: 75%, External Reviews
Awards: 1 win.
Actors: George Fawcett, Montagu Love, Rudolph Valentino, Vilma Bánky
Writer: Edith Maude Hull (based on the novel by), Frances Marion (screen adaptation), Fred De Gresac (screen adaptation), George Marion Jr. (titles)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: Men and women, fathers and children. Ahmed, son of Diana and Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan, falls in love with Yasmin, a dancing girl who fronts her father's gang of mountebanks. Among the cutthroats is Ghobah, a villainous Moor to whom Yasmin is promised. In ruins near Touggourt, the city where Yasmin dances, she and Ahmed meet secretly until one night when her father and the gang capture the son of the sheik, torture him, and hold him for ransom. Will Ahmed believe that Yasmin set him up for capture? Even if true love finds a way through webs of deceit, what will the vigorous and imposing sheik say about his son consorting with a dancing girl?
Rotten Tomatoes: The Son of the Sheik, Rudolph Valentino's last film, may well be his best. A sequel to (and vast improvement upon) Valentino's 1922 blockbuster The Sheik, the 1926 film casts the legendary Latin Lover in the dual role of the now-older Sheik and his son Ahmed. The latter falls in love with bejeweled dancing girl Yasmin (Vilma Banky), the daughter of a scurrilous thief, who in turn is in cahoots with Ghabah (Montagu Love), "whose crimes outnumber the desert sands." Captured, held for ransom and tortured by Ghabah, Ahmed escapes, seething with revenge. Believing that Yasmin has betrayed him, he kidnaps the girl, spirits her away to his desert tent, and rapes her (not shown, of course, but brilliantly suggested by a series of wide-eyed, soft-focus close ups). Bitterly chastised by his father, Ahmed begins feeling pangs of remorse for his treatment of Yasmin, even more so when he learns that she is innocent of all wrongdoing. He follows Yasmin to her father's den of thieves, where he vanquishes all the bad guys, saving the unspeakable Ghabah for last. Son of the Sheik was partially filmed on location in the deserts of Yuma, Arizona, under intolerable conditions that caused virtually the entire cast and crew to fall seriously ill. The finished film manages to convey a tongue-in-cheek, larger-than-life approach to its melodramatic material without ever actually making fun of that material or condescending to Valentino's legions of fans. Rudolph Valentino had made Son of the Sheik in hopes of boosting his slightly flagging career; while it succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams, Valentino, alas, had died just before the film was released. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
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78% (1) The Noose 65 min, [Drama] [John Francis Dillon] [29 Jan 1928]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 78%, External Reviews
Actors: Jay Eaton, Montagu Love, Richard Barthelmess, Robert Emmett O'Connor
Writer: Garrett Graham (titles), Willard Mack (play), James T. O'Donohoe (adaptation), H.H. Van Loan (play), H.H. Van Loan (story)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: A crook's ex-wife marries the state's governor, and the crook sees an opportunity to make some money by threatening to expose his wife's past if the governor doesn't pay him off. The ...
Rotten Tomatoes: In this suspenseful silent crime drama, a hijacker proves his loyalty to his mother by killing his biological father, a blackmailing gangster who has been threatening to destroy the mother's happy marriage to the governor.
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66% (1) Bulldog Drummond 90 min, [Drama, Mystery, Thriller] [F. Richard Jones] [02 May 1929]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 66%, External Reviews
Awards: Nominated for 2 Oscars. Another 1 win.
Actors: Claud Allister, Lawrence Grant, Montagu Love, Ronald Colman
Writer: Herman C. McNeile (based on the international stage success by), Sidney Howard (adapted for the talking screen by)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: Hugh 'Bulldog' Drummond is a British WWI veteran who longs for some excitement after he returns to the humdrum existence of civilian life. He gets what he's looking for when a girl requests his help in freeing her uncle from a nursing home. She believes the home is just a front and that her uncle is really being held captive while the culprits try to extort his fortune from him.
Rotten Tomatoes: Ex-war officer "Bulldog" Drummond, now a soldier of fortune, involves himself with a wealthy young woman whose father is a prisoner at a suspicious sanitarium. This well-made early talkie was the first of a very popular series directed by comedy expert F. Richard Jones.
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61% (1) The Mysterious Island 95 min, Passed, [Adventure, Romance, Sci-Fi] [Lucien Hubbard, Benjamin Christensen, Maurice Tourneur] [05 Oct 1929]Ratings & Reviews: IMDb Reviews: 61%, External Reviews
Actors: Jacqueline Gadsdon, Lionel Barrymore, Lloyd Hughes, Montagu Love
Writer: Jules Verne (from the book by), Lucien Hubbard (screen play)
External Links: Wikipedia Rotten Tomatoes IMDb Language: English Country: USA
Plot: On a volcanic island near the kingdom of Hetvia rules Count Dakkar, a benevolent leader and scientist who has eliminated class distinction among the island's inhabitants. Dakkar, his daughter Sonia and her fiance, engineer Nicolai Roget have designed a submarine which Roget pilots on its initial voyage just before the island is overrun by Baron Falon, despotic ruler of Hetvia. Falon sets out after Roget in a second submarine and the two craft, diving to the ocean's floor, discover a strange land populated by dragons, giant squid and an eerie undiscovered humanoid race.
Rotten Tomatoes: A visionary, submarine-traveling scientist, master of a futuristic underground domain, is manipulated by a criminal nobleman into utilizing his inventions for war but ultimately triumphs with the help of a race of bizarre aquatic humanoids. Loosely adapted from the Jules Verne novel featuring sequences with sound and in early Technicolor.
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