This is the first silent film Mountie review on Phantom Empires,  I'm pleased to report.  There are apparently quite a number of these,  but sadly,  most of the Mountie-themed silents are now lost.  Such a crime.  When I think of how many silent films are lost in general,  it creates a hard knot in my guts that lasts for days.  The greatest artistic loss in modern history, in my opinion.  I'm profusely glad, and extremely grateful for the silents that survive for us all to enjoy and learn from.

NOMADS OF THE NORTH is a 1920 adaptation,  produced and with a script written by the man himself,  of James Oliver Curwood's fan-tastic novel of the same name.  For them that are unaware,  Curwood is to the Mountie novel what Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett are to the Private Eye tale;  his stories evoke the frozen north quite as well as anything that Jack London ever put to paper,  but without the accompanying fame.  Tragic.  Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, Flaming Forest, Honor of the Big Snows, & Valley of the Silent Men are some of his other excellent Mountie titles.  I particularly enjoy the first on that list.  Full of adventure and action, which is what we all enjoy,  wot?

This is a wonderful film,  and a clean, decent adaptation of the novel (with minor omissions and changes).  It deals with a commercial town in the wild north called Fort O'God (yep, O'God),  run by the stern Duncan McDougall,  the factor of the Hudson's Bay Company..."a tiger of the old regime, still ruling his primitive domain with a hand of iron and a heart of stone".  McDougall's son,  the slimy Bucky McDougall, "A serpent polished with the veneer of years spent in Montreal, the deadliest and most treacherous of all the McDougal race",  is in love with the lovely local flower Nanette Roland (played by Betty Blythe),  who is unavailable,  waiting for her lover, Raoul Challoner (played by the miraculous Lon Chaney) to return from the wild...but is a year overdue.  With a little unethical convincing,  though, Nanette is convinced to marry Bucky, and in a moment of ironic chance,  the long-gone Raoul makes his appearance at the wedding.  Bucky is outraged,  fearing the loss of his long-awaited prize, and in the ensuing fight,  his seedy underling Marat is mistakenly killed by Raoul, which sends him on the run.

It becomes the duty of the stalwart Corporal Michael O'Connor of the R.N.W.M. Police (played by Lewis S. Stone, who is most well known to me as Judge Hardy in the Andy Hardy films) to hunt Raoul down and to bring him to judgement!

This was an amazingly pleasant adventure.  The acting really opened up that wonderful feeling of narrative space common to most of the best silents,  and even between the inter-titles the story stayed even and fresh.  The story was clear from beginning to end,  which isn't always certain from silents from this early date.  James Oliver Curwood's involvement was,  I'm sure,  the reason for this;  a master of a strong streamlined plot.  Typical of early silents,  it had that wonderfully stagey melodramatic flair (which always reminds me of  THE PERILS OF PAULINE, for some reason),  with all those (sometimes amusingly) unambiguous and simple facial expressions that make the emotions of each character quite certain.

I recommend this for silent film fans.  Though it might not be the best to begin your silent film journey with this one,  it's good enough that you'll still enjoy it with no background in the silent art.  The Mountie content is plentiful, too.  Lewis S. Stone really projects all the fairness and devotion that one has come to expect from the classic Mountie myth.

I'd also like to point out that the race roles in the film, while possibly not passing the Malcolm X test,  were seriously sympathetic for the time;  the black cook was actually quite strong (his little Caucasian buddy was the clown here),  and the Chinese were (excepting Wing Toy) mostly played by (gasp!) actual Asians!  Imagine the most powerful character in a 1927 film being Chinese, and being played by a Chinese actor...that's pretty great.

To me, this was the perfect choice with which to celebrate William Boyd's birthday.

Harry Houdini.  It seems that everyone knows that name;  it evokes images of mystery and magic,  of locks, and chains, and daring.  It has always been a magical name for me.  I've been a Houdini fan since childhood,  and honestly,  in the beginning, at least,  I can't remember why.  I must have seen one of those incredible posters,  or maybe one of the many shorts about his fantastic escapes.  In any case,  he's always been a hero of mine, and I'm not alone.  

Houdini, for the one or two people on Earth who might be unaware,  was a master escape artist.  He was chained and put in iron boxes,  handcuffed and thrown off bridges into rivers, and sealed inside water-filled glass canisters ~upside down~,  and always managed to escape.  He was challenged by police stations to escape the most modern cuffs,  and, perhaps most famous of all, was put into straight jackets,  each time only to escape,  with that trademark Houdini grin...that was seemingly half-grimace.

He was just about the most popular entertainer on Earth at the peak of his career,  and it was inevitable that at some point that a figure of his gravitas would break into the new medium of film.  Houdini made five pictures between 1919 and 1923,  and Haldane of the Secret Service was the last of these.  Produced and directed by the man himself,  Houdini played the stern Heath Haldane, a "sworn servant of the Dept. of justice". The setting is Chinatown ("A place not visited by sightseeing parties"), and Haldane is on the trail of the mysterious Chinese supervillain Dr. Yu, and the brutal gang of counterfeiters who murdered his father, "silent Saunders" Haldane. *

"Silent Saunders",  as described by the main gangster (the slimy Joe Ivors), was the "slickest bull that ever took our trail", and was murdered to get him out of the way. A critical mistake for the Chinatown gang!  From there our Magician/Agent/hero gets numerous chances to use his fantastic escape skills in various exciting scenarios (and even a little Ju-jutsu!),  until the final, shocking conclusion...in which we are offered a chilling surprise.  Like all of Houdini's movies,  I enjoyed Haldane quite a bit.  It's the most plot-heavy of the five,  with a strong dime novel feel throughout.

Honestly, I wish it had also been released in that format!

Apparently the Houdini films didn't take the world by storm on their release.  Perhaps the world wasn't ready to see him on screen,  or perhaps, in an era with so many amazing films,  his were unremarkable relative to the rest of his career.  Personally,  I think if you take them on their own merits,  guided by the uniqueness of their existence as Houdini memorabilia, they have a fun magic all their own.  I recommend Haldane of the Secret Service for fans of silent films, dime novels, and the legendary magician.