When Bert Lyons (Hoot Gibson), returns to the Grainger spread from the "outside world," he learns his former employer is dead and the ranch in the possession of Stan Calvert (Joseph Harris), a notorious narcotics smuggler, and Blackie Lopez (Noble Johnson), a rustler who has his eyes on Molly Grainger (Gertrude Olmstead), Lyons' sweetheart. Bert tricks the outlaws as they are plotting his death and rescues Molly when she is kidnapped by Blackie.


The first thing that strikes you about The Loaded Door is how it sneaks a social-problem film inside the weather-beaten chaps of a B-western. Released in March 1922, this six-reel whirlwind from Universal is nominally another Hoot Gibson vehicle—yet beneath its dusty chassis hums a surprisingly modern dread: opiates c...

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Comparing the cinematic DNA and archive impact of two defining moments in cult history.

Harry A. Pollard

Harry A. Pollard
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" The first thing that strikes you about The Loaded Door is how it sneaks a social-problem film inside the weather-beaten chaps of a B-western. Released in March 1922, this six-reel whirlwind from Universal is nominally another Hoot Gibson vehicle—yet beneath its dusty chassis hums a surprisingly modern dread: opiates crossing the Rio Grande in cattle hides, frontier capitalism rotting from within, and a hero who solves very little by simply outdrawing the villain. Gibson, usually typed as the a..."

Gertrude Olmstead
George Hively, Ralph Cummins
United States


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