Essential Cult Cinema Mirroring the Impact of A Branded Soul: Cult Guide

Dir: Bertram Bracken

In a prologue, blind poet John Milton dictates Paradise Lost to his daughters. Serama, the consort of Lucifer, is driven from Paradise by the Archangel Michael, who commands Conscience to enter human souls to judge and punish them. In the main story, society girl Ruth Somers, a reincarnation of Serama, prepares to marry Cecil Brooke, the wealthiest man of her set. Her guardian, Dr. Norton, an incarnation of Lucifer, constantly accompanies her. Ruth is summoned to the Court of Conscience, where the witnesses, Lust, Avarice, Hate, Revenge and Vanity, testify about Ruth's history of seducing and abandoning men. This behavior resulted in the suicide of Madge, the lover of Ned Langley, whom Ruth enthralled and promised to marry, and also the deaths of two rivals for her love. Ruth is ordered back to earth to learn her sentence. When Ned interrupts the wedding, Ruth scorns him and he shoots himself. After Brooke leaves her, the Court dooms Ruth to live with the torment of remembrance. Ruth sends Norton away, then kneels and repents.

Dir: Bertram Bracken

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of For Liberty perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Marcia Glendon an expatriate, has lived in Berlin for years. Courted by both German General Von Lentz and American spy Frank Graham, Marcia attempts to aid her country when war breaks out by capitalizing on the general's attraction to her. Misunderstanding her actions, Frank repudiates Marcia as a traitor. Subsequently, the spy is caught, and Marcia purchases his freedom by offering herself to the general. Frank is freed and transports the German secret plans across the German border to the American lines. He returns immediately leading an American regiment just in time to save Marcia's honor.

Dir: Bertram Bracken

Cashier Clay Randolph is taken by Richard Dunlap, a swindling gambler, into embezzling $5,000. When Richard loses the money, Clay assumes the responsibility for the crime to protect his former sweetheart, Mary Singleton, who has married Richard. Mary's father, Col. Robert Singleton, gives Clay a copy of Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health to help him start a new life, but the young man ignores the book and leaves for New York, where he becomes a gentleman thief. Mary and Richard soon leave the South and join him. When Steele, a millionaire, tries to implicate Mary in the supposed theft of a diamond necklace, Clay retrieves the jewels and returns them to the safe. Reciting from Science and Health , Mary telepathically warns Clay not to rob Steele's safe, and later Richard is killed while committing the crime Clay had planned. To redeem himself, Clay enlists in the army to fight in World War I, promising Mary that he will return.

Dir: Bertram Bracken

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of And a Still Small Voice perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Dr. Guy Hartwell, a young and wealthy Louisiana physician, was a man of strange personality. Five years previous to the opening of the story he married and bestowed sincere love upon his wife. In return she basely played him false and shortly afterward died. From that moment he was a changed man. Embittered against the world, mankind and even distrusting God, the silent and melancholy man lived on. With the doctor lived his widowed sister and her daughter, whom everyone considered as the heir of the physician's wealth. In the same city lived Beulah Benton, who was sent from the orphan asylum out into the world to earn her living as a servant girl, while her little sister Lillian found a home as the foster daughter of a rich lady. At the orphanage Beulah learned to love Eugene, another inmate, but he, too, was adopted by a wealthy family and sent abroad to be educated. He promised upon his return to make Beulah his wife. Beulah yearned to see her sister, but Lillian's foster parents forbade the two to meet. This affected Beulah deeply, but the crushing blow was about to descend. Lillian fell ill, and in spite of every effort of Dr. Hartwell the younger sister died. Beulah, seeing the crepe on the door, forced herself in and for the first time met the doctor. The kindness of his nature was reawakened by the grief-stricken girl, and he took her to his home, attended her through a serious illness, then placed her in school. But Beulah found her new surroundings far from pleasant. While the doctor as yet refused to trust any woman, he treated her with marked respect and consideration, but his sister fearing that the adopted girl would become the heir instead of her own daughter, lost no opportunity to humiliate Beulah. It was more than she could bear, and at last the girl sadly left the doctor's house and returned to the orphanage, but the doctor, however, brought her home again and provided other quarters for his sister and her daughter, both of whom were wholly dependent upon him for support. The years passed and Beulah's lover, Eugene, returned from Europe, a dissipated wretch, his love for the orphan girl forgotten and his hand pledged to the frivolous niece of Dr. Hartwell's false wife. The physician warned the foolish youth to give her up, pleading with him to remain true to his promise to Beulah, but without avail. It was now that Hartwell realized that he himself loved her and declared his affection. Beulah expressed her great gratitude, but still grieving over her false lover told him that she could not return his affections. Hartwell went North and Beulah became a school teacher. An epidemic broke out and people were perishing by the score. Doctor Hartwell returned to the stricken city. The doctor and Beulah met and side by side they fought the ravages of the disease. Clara Saunders a friend of Beulah's fell in love with Hartwell but becomes a victim of the plague, and with her departing breath joined the hands of the two, and bade them be happy. Through comradeship with Beulah, the doctor's faith in God and Man was restored, and his life made still brighter by her voluntary confession of her love for him. Their marriage followed, and Beulah and her husband fearlessly faced the future.

Dir: Bertram Bracken

Harry Larrabee, a young playwright, lives in the same studio apartment house with Carolyn Vaughn, a painter of miniatures, with whom he falls in love. "The Wolf," a famous criminal, supposed to be dead, returns and communicates with his wife, a friend of Carolyn's. He forces his wife and her brother to aid him in a plot to rob Carolyn of her valuable jewels. Harry, by one of his famous "inspirations," discovers that a crime is being committed, rescues Carolyn and bears her away in a taxicab. He is himself suspected of the crime, but, undisturbed by the web of circumstance by which he is entangled, his wonderful inspirations give him the key to the conspiracy which led up to the crime. In an unusual and powerful finale the guilty parties fight among themselves and justice triumphs in an exciting climax.

Dir: Bertram Bracken

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of Beulah perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Jean Dubois, who has discovered a gold mine in the Canadian Northwest, seeks revenge on the man who ruined his sister. Jean befriends "Faro" Telford, a gambler who sends for a gang of crooks to take over the mine. Jean's wife runs off with a member of the gang, and Jean, heartbroken, is about to leave the village when "Goldie," a gang member, reveals that it was gang leader Dan Cregan who wronged Jean's sister. Jean is about to murder the crook when lightning strikes a tree, causing it to fall and crush Cregan. Jean's wife returns to him and the two begin anew.

Dir: Bertram Bracken

To escape the title-hunting suitors with whom her mother and aunt have surrounded her, Barbara Chichester disguises herself as a gypsy, and after buying a gypsy wagon, roams the countryside "in search of Arcady." Meanwhile, the Earl of Chamboyne, beset by title-hunting women, has attired himself in the outfit of an itinerant peddler and set off for the country. After a gypsy tells Barbara that she will marry a traveling man, she meets the Earl when they both seek refuge from a sudden storm in an abandoned hunting lodge. They have a series of adventures together, and fall in love before they reveal their true identities to each other.

Dir: Bertram Bracken

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of The Inspirations of Harry Larrabee perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

A fascinating piece of cinema that shares thematic elements.

Dir: Bertram Bracken

Dave Scott, a wealthy mine owner, is killed. His daughter, Marie, goes to her father's old friend Richard Clark, knowing that he will take care of her interests. Clark and his grown son, Ted, become attached to Marie. Innocent in manner, she sees no necessity for concealing her preference for the elder Clark. In time, Ted's attachment culminates in a proposal, which is rejected. Ted accuses his father of standing in his way and the father makes Marie promise that she will accept Ted. A few minutes before the time set for the ceremony, a note from Ted explains that he realizes the love that exists between Marie and his father, and rather than exact the sacrifice, he has left his father's home, leaving them free to marry.

Dir: Bertram Bracken

Walking aimlessly in the desert, crazed by thirst and hunger, Lucy Mannister and Gaston Sinclair are overtaken by her husband George, who has pursued them around the world. Threatening to shoot them, George extracts a confession from Sinclair, once George's friend, that a group of George's Wall Street associates had conspired to ruin him. They made it appear to Lucy that George was having an affair with the notorious Sylvia De La Mere. After Lucy saw Sylvia embrace George, she despaired and left with Sinclair, who said he loved her. George lets them live, and he returns to New York, where, with the help of Sylvia, who now loves him, George terrorizes the group. One by one he leads them, and then Sylvia, to either financial ruin, disgrace, or death. When George learns that Lucy is no longer traveling with Sinclair, and that she has never even kissed him, he locates her, forgives her, and takes her back.