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Recommendations
Archivist John
Senior Editor
If you found yourself captivated by the cult status of The Price of Tyranny (1915), the profound questions raised in 1915 still require cinematic answers today. Experience the France influence in these recommendations that echo The Price of Tyranny.
The Price of Tyranny remains a monumental achievement to provide a definitive example of Unknown Director's stylistic genius.
Archibald J. Wright, the owner of the Burlingbrook Cottonmills, has an ungovernable temper. His son Edward, in defiance of his father's wishes, takes a day off from work to go hunting with his friends. After lunch a "friendly" game of cards is started, and Edward has to sign an I.O.U. for $10,000. He confesses his debt to his father, who works himself into a towering rage, and decides to send his son to a factory in India, where he will have to toil with the natives for a livelihood. For six months Edward labors wearily in the torrid Indian climate, and the only balm for his wounded spirit lies in the gentle glances of a young Hindoo maid. Their infatuation is noticed and word reaches his father of the intended marriage. He prohibits the union under penalty of disinheritance. Harold, Wright's nephew, has craftily insinuated himself in his uncle's good graces and has succeeded Edward in the factory. Wright's spirit, softening with his advancing years, he yearns for his banished son and has his agent in India make inquiries for him. He learns that Edward and his wife had lived an ideal life the first four years of their marriage and had been blessed with a girl baby. Business reverses, however, had forced Edward to leave India, and he was last seen and heard of as an itinerant photographer in Greece. In reality Edward's troubles have come so heavily on him that he is finally overwhelmed and dies. His final message to his wife, enclosing a note to his father, tells her to go to Burlingbrook, and if his father seems softened to make her identity known; otherwise not. She starts with her child, but the road is trying, and after securing shelter in a wayside hovel her grief, together with the hopeless outlook for the future, cause her also to pine away. Maud, left alone, is forced to sell her donkey to satisfy the debt she and her mother incurred. However, her youth and hope help her out, and she sets to work and earns her passage to the States. Arrived at Burlingbrook, she secures employment in Wright's cotton mills through a girl she meets. Her knowledge of Italian stands her in good stead when old Archibald Wright receives a foreign letter concerning his son and has no one to read it to him. His solicitude for his son, her father, touches her deeply, but she forbears to speak, because of the presence of the nephew, Harold, whom she suspects of duplicity. The letter contains the information that his son was last seen in Chiesa, Italy. Wright telegraphs to the Mayor of Chiesa, who responds that his son died there two months before. The shock of this news makes necessary an immediate operation on the old man's eyes, over which a cataract has been closing for some time past. The operation is successful. When his sight is restored he desires to see the child who was so attentive to him in his sorrow. When she is brought into his office she is sadly startled by a picture of her father on the wall. She cannot repress a gentle and pathetic caress to the portrait, and on being questioned by the old man, declares her parentage. She also gives him the note sent him by his son, in which he is forgiven his past cruelties and entrusted with the care of his daughter-in-law and her child. The father is deeply affected by the disclosure, but is made doubly miserable at the news that the mother is also dead. He pays an awful price for his "rod of iron," but sees a chance for a sinner's repentance in the care of his new-found granddaughter.
Based on the unique cult status of The Price of Tyranny, our vault has identified these titles as the most compelling follow-up experiences for fans of cult cinema:
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This fascinating region was set apart as a Government Reservation, to be known as Yellowstone Park, in 1S72. The park proper is about 62 miles long, from north to south, and 54 miles wide. While the tourist may reach the park entrance by rail, it has been decreed by Uncle Sam that beyond the Great Lava Arch Gateway the iron horse shall not trespass. So here leaving the pathway of steel we take our place on one of the six-horse coaches that run from Gardiner up to Mammoth Hot Springs. Coaching, Troops, Morris Basin, Great Fountain, Pack mules, Riverside Geyser, Old Faithful, Deer and Bear, Upper Falls, Canyon, Field Glasses. Standing on a balcony at Artist's Point we take up the field glass to have a tele-photo panorama of these weird walls with their clinging pine trees. We look down the Great Gorge. On either side walls of exquisite color rise with here and there pinnacle-like great church spires. Above our heads fly eagles who build their nests and raise their young on the top of these lofty peaks. The scene is a powerful one and beyond words, but the Great Falls add force and quality of action which tempers and dignities the whole scene. This enormous volume of water that looks like a curtain of lace, tumbles over a cliff of volcanic rock 310 feet. Here the traveler finds himself spellbound, held by the pure beauty of the scene. In turning away he pauses to marvel at the wonders of nature and the beauties of our great national playground.
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A fascinating piece of cinema that shares thematic elements.
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It is the early days of California. Father Sebastian, trudging his way on foot from the Mission, his attention is attracted to the wall of an infant coming from the crest of a ridge. He finds the body of a Spanish woman. Sitting beside its dead mother, a tiny baby greets the Padre's gaze. Lifting the infant tenderly in his arms, the Father resumes his journey, accompanied by an Indian woman, to whom he has entrusted the care of the orphaned child. Years pass by and we see the infant grown to manhood strong, handsome and a true worshiper; the bright eyes of a pretty Spanish maiden turn the head of our Jose, causing him to forget his duty. How, after the Padre has warned him of the danger, he disregards the advice of the Father and leaves in the night with his inamorata; how, in their ignorance of the trails, they wander out into the terrible desert and almost die from thirst and the burning heat; how they are found by some American prospectors and nursed back to life; how Jose lays in a delirium of fever and Papinta returns to another, and the long search of the patient Padre for his adopted son, which is rewarded at last by finding him. The settings are real and beautiful, the locations being chosen from in and about San Gabriel Mission, the sea coast, the Sierra Madre Mountains and the great desert of southern California.
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Nothing got the Aussie adrenalin flowing in the early 1900's than some serious gold-fields drama.
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A fascinating piece of cinema that shares thematic elements.
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A fascinating piece of cinema that shares thematic elements.
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A fascinating piece of cinema that shares thematic elements.
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The life of Jesus Christ. The film is believed to possibly be a US re-release of Alice Guy's The Birth, the Life and the Death of Christ (1906).
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Billed as the "Fight of the Century", reigning champion Jack Johnson takes on former champion James J. Jeffries in a gruelling 15-round beatdown.
View DetailsAnalysis relative to The Price of Tyranny
| Film Title | Atmosphere | Complexity | Similarity |
|---|---|---|---|
| A Trip to the Wonderland of America | Tense | Abstract | 97% Match |
| May Day Parade | Gothic | Abstract | 88% Match |
| The Girl from Outback | Ethereal | Layered | 89% Match |
| The Padre | Surreal | Layered | 90% Match |
| Attack on the Gold Escort | Gothic | Linear | 88% Match |
This guide was algorithmically generated using the cinematic metadata of Unknown Director's archive. Last updated: 5/5/2026.
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