Essential Cult Cinema Drawn from the Same DNA as Beyond the Rainbow...

Dir: Christy Cabanne

In the midst of an emotional depression, a man hires a murderer to kill him. But the despair soon passes, and the man must now escape the killer he's hired to end his life.

Dir: Christy Cabanne

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

Theatrical manager Isaac Shuman has a reputation for taking advantage of young girls who want to become stars on Broadway. Reporter Tom Warder investigates these stories and exposes Shuman in his newspaper. Shuman threatens to kill Warder, then leaves town. He returns several years later and hatches a scheme to frame Tom and have him sent to prison. He succeeds, but Tom hatches his own plan to get his revenge.

Dir: Christy Cabanne

The National Red Cross Pageant (1917) was an American war pageant that was performed in order to sell war bonds, support the National Red Cross, and promote a positive opinion about American involvement in World War I. This pageant was a production put on in support of funding for America's participation in World War I, also known as the Great War. It was also an all-star revue silent film, now considered a lost film.

Dir: Christy Cabanne

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of National Red Cross Pageant perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

The life and career of Pancho Villa from young man to revolutionary leader is chronicled.

Dir: Christy Cabanne

While with the French Foreign Legion in Algeria, Lt. Dubois seduces the lovely Zora, leaving her with a child and his medal for bravery. Sheik Achmed generously befriends Zora, and when she is killed in an accident he raises her son, El Rabb, as his own, and soon El Rabb and Achmed's biological son Bel Khan become best friends. Years later Lt. Dubois, now a general, is dispatched to Algeria to crush a revolt led by El Rabb and Bel Khan--and he doesn't know that El Rabb is his son--who wears his father's medal around his neck.

Dir: Christy Cabanne

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

Mary Alden and her brothers Matthew and George have extremely different political views. Matthew is a committed pacifist, and is constantly giving speeches against war. George is notified that his draft number, 258, has been called and to report for induction, but he refuses. Mary, on the other hand, is intensely patriotic and comes up with a plan to shame him into reporting for induction. Meanwhile, Matthew is being set up for a patsy by a gang of German secret agents led by Van Bierman who are planning to blow up an airplane factory.

Dir: Christy Cabanne

Phillips Christy, a strait-laced amateur sociologist from a wealthy family, subscribes to the theory that people are shaped by their environments. When he fall in love with Diane, a showgirl from the Follies, he sees a chance to prove that his theory is correct: he will marry her and mold her to be "cultured" and "sophisticated." However, fate intervenes to put a crimp in his plans.

Dir: Christy Cabanne

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

Philip de Mornay, a courtier in the French royal court of the 18th century, falls in love with Daphne La Tour, the daughter of a nobleman. Knowing that her family would never approve of their marriage, he takes her and hides her in a brothel, but is soon captured by pirates. Soldiers looking for women to bring with them to a settlement across the ocean in Louisiana raid the brothel and take the girls, including Daphne. Later on the trip to the new world their ship is attacked by pirates--and she discovers that her lover Philip is on board the pirate ship.

Dir: Christy Cabanne

Gerald, the somewhat frail son of a wealthy New York family, is bested at the beach by Bill, a strapping young cowboy from Arizona. His fiancée Mary, ashamed of his "yellow streak", leaves him and goes by train to visit some friends in Arizona, with Bill in tow. Gerald follows them, and he and Mary wind up captured by Yaqui Indians and Gerald must prove to Mary that he is not the "weakling" she thinks he is by coming up with a plan for them to escape their captors.

Dir: Christy Cabanne

Shy, timid banker Florian Amidon is assaulted, robbed, and knocked out while on vacation. When he wakes up he discovers that he's in the booming oil town of Bakerstown, has no memory of how he got there--and that there's a five-year gap in his life from the time he was robbed until that moment. He and his friend Judge Blodgett enlist the services of clairvoyant Madame Leclaire to help Florian find out what happened to him. What she discovers changes his life forever.