Acting
This 15 chapter serial is considered to be "the last of the adult serials". Produced in Wilkes-Barre, PA., it has crisp editing, fast action, and carefully lit and composed interiors and lush pictorial exteriors. This is a serial of great complexity with the director, the photographer and title-maker always in absolute control. The extraordinary rhythmic momentum of the film is never lost despite the films complex plot turns. This is the best of the surviving serials from the silent era.
Patches, a beautiful girl, lives with her foster-mother Liza Biggs, who dresses her in rags. She is surprised to see Judas, the overseer, give Liza a locket. Jack Merry arrives to purchase cotton from Colonel Silverthorne, a Southern gentleman of the old school, who looks after his dead brother's estate for his niece and nephew, Juliet and Lee.
Ellinor, who was unofficially adopted as an orphan by 'Old Peter,' who maintained a lighthouse on a virtually deserted beach, has grown up wild and nearly silent. As she blossoms into full womanhood, she longs to know more about the world. One day a mutinous sailor swims to shore and declares that they are married, after tossing a pair of rings into the sea. He soon flees, but promises to return for her. Wealthy widower George Hudson, the richest man in the nearby port village, also falls for the fascinating, attractive young woman. He convinces her to go to a finishing school for a year and then marry him. They both find that the sea still holds a powerful pull on the soul. Which is stronger: love or the sea's magic spell?
A young man gives life to a statue with disastrous results. Early adaptation of Frankenstein with the names changed.
