Drama Triple Feature - Volume 8 (1925)

A collection of classic drama films from yesteryear are combined in this program. The triple feature includes:

THE LOST WORLD: Harry Hoyt directed the first film version of the dinosaur-inhabited land that time forgot, featuring wonderful early stop-motion animation by Willis O'Brien. The silent film, based on a story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, features Lewis Stone and the great Wallace Beery as Professor Challenger, as the intrepid explorers who travel to a remote jungle of Brazil to prove the Professor's theories that some prehistoric life might yet still remain. When the company is attacked by an apelike human, they begin to believe, but they have yet to meet the terror and wonder of the supposedly lost Allosaurus, Stegosaurus and Pterodactyl, sixty-five million years past their expiration date!

THE EAGLE: Rudolph Valentino stars as Vladimir Dubrovsky, a young Russian Cossack officer who rejects the czarina's (Louise Dresser) amorous attention and is promptly branded a deserter in this silent tale of love and revenge. On the eve of his dismissal he learns of his father's ruin; his father had sent a letter pleading for the czarina's aid against Kyrilla (James Marcus), a gluttonous and treacherous neighbor who has stolen the family's estate. Sentenced to death with a reward on his head for shunning the lusty czarina, Vladimir escapes into the countryside and becomes the Black Eagle, a dashing masked vigilante who seeks to avenge the death of his father. As he nears his goal, his mission is complicated when he falls in love with Mascha Troekouroff (Vilma Banky), Kyrilla's daughter. In order to infiltrate Mascha's house and seek his ultimate revenge on her father, he dons another disguise, forsaking his mask for the identity of Maurice Le Tournier, Mascha's debonaire French tutor. What follows is a witty combination of parlor romance and farce as Vladimir attempts to win Mascha's affections while plotting Kyrilla's destruction. Rudolph Valentino delivers a charismatic and seductive performance in this full-scale romantic adventure that shines with early Hollywood's technical advancements and stylish production values. This exciting silent film is based on DUBROVSKY by Alexander Pushkin.

THE LODGER: One of Alfred Hitchcock's moodiest and most brilliant silent films, THE LODGER explores many themes that would reappear obsessively in Hitchcock's later works, including his delight in the ghoulish, the man-accused-of-a-crime-he-did-not-commit" theme, and his understanding of the general public's thirst for sex and violence. A family suspects their mysterious lodger is a serial killer with a penchant for blonde girls--and that their daughter might be his next victim. Hitchcock once again focused on a modern-day Jack the Ripper in FRENZY (1972).