A range boss learns to imitate the hiss of a rattlesnake for humorous purposes, but has occasion to employ this accomplishment with more dramatic effect when seeking to rescue the heroine from some bandits..

The first time you hear it—really hear it—The Rattler's Hiss is already over. The house lights in your skull come up, the piano cadence dissolves, yet that tremor persists, a dry rattle caught between clapboard and cartilage. George Hively’s 1918 one-reel marvel doesn’t merely depict a ranch foreman who learns to cou...


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

B. Reeves Eason

B. Reeves Eason
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" The first time you hear it—really hear it—The Rattler's Hiss is already over. The house lights in your skull come up, the piano cadence dissolves, yet that tremor persists, a dry rattle caught between clapboard and cartilage. George Hively’s 1918 one-reel marvel doesn’t merely depict a ranch foreman who learns to counterfeit snake venom in audible form; it stages the moment when frontier humor metastasizes into frontier justice, when laughter’s echo hardens into the percussion of retribution. ..."
George Hively
United States


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