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Select two cult films to compare side by side.
Three Black Eyes Synopsis
Four wealthy young men--Larry Van Cortlandt, Castleton, "Fatty" Harriman, and Payne--become intoxicated in a cabaret where munitions maker Stanhope Shelton is giving a party for his daughter Natalie. Larry is attracted to Natalie, but he is ejected with his friends before he can secure an introduction. Plainclothes detective Hogan vows to capture Larry, who seeks asylum on his yacht with his friends. After the crew quits, Larry and his friends handle the boat. The next morning Castleton and Payne place a "for hire" sign on the boat and the Sheltons engage it. Larry teaches Natalie to steer and runs into several boats in the process. Four people in the Shelton party turn out to be burglars and rob the other guests. Meanwhile, two other crooks rob the Shelton mansion. Larry manages to capture all the crooks at the Shelton home, and he wins over both Natalie and her father.
The Blindness of Love Synopsis
Joseph Wilton is a thrifty German and an expert piano maker, who through his industry has built up a small factory and acquired considerable money. His whole life and further ambitions are centered on his son, Bob, whom he has entered in a big university. His only daughter, Molly, has taken the place of her mother in the home, since Mrs. Wilton's death. Bob is carried away by college life, and begins to feel embarrassed over his father's humble life and surroundings. He falls under the influence of Herbert Graham, a suave society leech and college mate, who inveigles him into drinking, gambling and a life of profligacy. Bob is induced to draw on his father for large amounts, on the excuse that he needs the money for expenses at college. The blindness of the father's love for his son is emphasized when he insists on attending a football game, where his son is the hero of the hour. Bob practically denies his father in the presence of his friends on the campus. Soon afterward Bob's continued escapades cause him to be expelled from college. Graham induces Bob to take him home with him, hoping to get an opportunity to swindle his father. They arrive and explain that they have been granted several extra weeks for the Christmas holidays. Graham induces the elder Wilton to finance a small bank for himself and Bob. They are popular and succeed from the start. But Graham indulges in many wild-cat speculations, and the bank is ruined. In a run on the bank both narrowly escape bodily injury, Graham commits suicide. Bob decides to face the disaster, but after hearing Aubrey Maynard, the father of Grace Maynard to whom he is engaged, denounce him in the presence of his own father, he decides to leave, as he has borrowed money from Grace when the bank was first in trouble, and her father threatens him with imprisonment as a swindler. He leaves her a note, saying he will return when he has made a man of himself, and can make good his obligations. Molly, his sister, is in love with George Lennan, and their advice to the elder Wilton to halt Bob in his early profligacy has resulted in the aged piano manufacturer ordering Molly from home. After Bob's departure, Wilton, who has lost his entire fortune in his son's failure, in an effort to make good with his son's creditors, takes up his abode in the slums, eking out an existence by tuning pianos. In a distant city, Bob starts life over and steadily rises to a position of trust and importance. He is promoted to be general manager of the New York office of the big concern in which he has made his success. Upon his return to New York, his sister Molly, who has married Lennan, has started to search for her father. She succeeds in locating him the very day that Bob returns. There is a happy reunion, including Bob's fiancée and a little four-year-old grandson, the child of Molly, whom the older Wilton sees for the first time.
"Three Black Eyes" holds a slight edge in general audience appreciation, but "The Blindness of Love" offers its own unique cult appeal.
Suggested Watch:
Three Black Eyes