Essential Cult Cinema Mirroring the Impact of Leathernecking: Cult Guide

Dir: Maurice Elvey

A lady marries a horse trainer but withholds herself until her crippled brother is cured.

Dir: Edward F. Cline

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of Cupid's Day Off perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Heretofore running a shoe store has been considered a quiet, respectable business, but Ben and his partner make the interior of their emporium of fashionable footwear look like the finish to a feature number at a smart cabaret. They also put new life and the joy of winning into a gambling joint, until they are discovered cheating. This so shocks the proprietor and his regular customers that they lose their faith in human nature and send for the police. And so the merry game is kept up.

Dir: Edward F. Cline

It's all there - the deserted mother with her child in her arms, followed all around by a fiendish wicked snow storm, the heroine lashed to the rails by the scoundrelly villain, the young woman fastened to the buzz saw of a lumber mill and about to be reduced to mincemeat. And hist. The wicked villain with a mustache and cigarette - the noble hero and the persecuted heroine. There are two drunks sitting in one of the boxes of the theater, who get so excited that they insist upon helping out the action of the melodrama. In the middle of the play, the head scene shifter gets jealous of his wife, who is the leading woman of the show, and drags her from the stage. Nothing, if not resourceful, Ben rushes down into the audience and kidnaps a beautiful young woman to play the leading woman's role. Then comes a startling climax, when the snow storm is shut down by a queer accident. And an equally tragic catastrophe jazzes up the ocean when a storm and a submarine play at cross purposes.

Dir: Edward F. Cline

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of East Lynne with Variations perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Two inventive farmhands compete for the hand of the same girl.

Dir: Charley Chase

A young married couple volunteer to take charge of several orphans after the asylum has burned down. Of course they find their hands full with their troublesome charges.

Dir: Edward F. Cline

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

A young golfer is mugged by an escaped convict and finds himself in a prison where he foils a jailbreak.

Dir: Reggie Morris

A fascinating piece of cinema that shares thematic elements.

Dir: Maurice Campbell

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

Carver Endicott, a young sophisticate, is rejected by his fiancée for being too foppish and dull. When she feigns an interest in his father, Carver attempts to disgrace his family name by working as a farmhand and later as a busboy in a hotel. However, the newspapers only praise him for his self-sacrificing principles; and finding that he cannot bring shame to the family through menial labor, he takes up with a notorious actress. But when this maneuver also fails, he returns to his former fiancée, who has no further complaint about his being an inexperienced dullard.

Dir: Edward F. Cline

A fascinating piece of cinema that shares thematic elements.

Dir: Victor Heerman

In the gold fields of the Canadian Northwest, a man is falsely accused of a crime and determines that a lookalike is responsible.