
Film 106 in the Hazards of Helen series
The Lineman
Spug

Film 106 in the Hazards of Helen series
1916-11-18
0
A farmer frames a petty officer for theft and confesses after falling over a cliff.
0.0When a taxi carrying socialite Ruth Darrow drives into the middle of a gun battle between hijacker Kid Gloves and a trio of bootleggers, Ruth is injured. She is taken to a nearby apartment, and The Kid helps to care for her. John Stone, Ruth's fiance and a bootlegger with a respectable front, finds them together and blackmails The Kid into marrying the girl.
0.0A woman with a taste for expensive clothing has four nightmares. An impoverished disabled girl sells her hair, a trapper finds he has an unfaithful wife, the wife of a dying weaver finds she cannot work the loom, and a model harassed by her boss is driven to murder.
0.0A lonely wife becomes obsessed with furs and keeps bad company in an effort to obtain more.
0.0A cowpuncher by the name of Whistling Dan is adopted by a rancher, Joe Cumberland (James O. Barrows). His daughter, Kate is immediately attracted to Dan, but Cumberland discourages the union since he thinks the young man is too wild for her.
0.0After an argument with his father, in which he is accused of stealing, Bill Carmody leaves home. His girlfriend Ethel is mad at him because of his carousing. So he heads out West, but he gets in a railroad accident and saves the life of Appleton, who owns a lumber mill. To reward Bill, Appleton gives him a job, and it doesn't take him long to discern that Buck Moncrossen, the camp boss, is crooked.
0.0Restored by the George Eastman House in 2001, this 1928 serial was considered a “last hurrah” for the silent-era serial, and brought together some of the biggest names of the era: director J.P. McGowan, actors Francis Ford and Joe Bonomo (a carnival strongman-turned-actor), producer Trem Carr (who would later help found Monogram Pictures), and a slew of silent-era supporting icons such as Ruth Hiatt, Grace Cunard, and more. Chapter names like “The Clutching Claw,” “The Devil’s Dice, “Galloping Fury,” and “The Invisible Hand” offer all one needs to know of the film’s concerns: to promise and deliver as much action and suspense as possible, and move our intrepid hero and heroine from one perilous situation to another. One of the biggest stars of the early silent era and a successful serials director in his own right, Francis Ford was the brother of director John Ford.
0.0Young Jim takes over from his father, political boss Jim Gordon Sr. As ruthless and unfeeling as his dad, Young Jim blocks the efforts by a crusading newspaper to bring about reforms in the city's tenement district. But he comes to regret his intransigence when his father is ruined financially.
0.0Millionaire meat packer Peter Cameron, greedy for more money and power, maneuvers an alliance between his daughter Rose and George Gray, the son of Cameron's business rival Max Gray, in order to increase his control of the food industry. George, a lawyer, opposes the trust, and as a result is professionally ruined by Cameron, disinherited by his father, and jilted by his fiancée. Out on his own, George gets a job at a mill and starts at the bottom. When an epidemic breaks out among his fellow laborers due to their eating spoiled meat from the trust, George secures evidence of criminal practices which ultimately brings about the conviction of Cameron and the trust. In championing the rights of the downtrodden, George wins back Rose and reforms Cameron.
0.0Barbara Rand is blinded when she leaps through a window to escape an assailant. Her sister, Natalie, reluctantly abandons her fiancé, Ned Gardiner, and marries Oliver Landis, who can provide the money needed for Barbara's operation. Unaware that Oliver was Barbara's attacker, Natalie blames his business partner, Howard Pollard, who was with Barbara on the night she was injured. Natalie holds Howard at gunpoint, but when her husband arrives, he promises to deal with the villain making sure Howard falls to his death. Upon Barbara’s release from the hospital, Oliver tries to blind her once. Natalie threatens him with a pistol, but Oliver wrests it away from her. He then realizes that he can no longer hide his guilt from Natalie or the police and shoots himself. Barbara has been avenged, and Natalie is free to marry Ned.
0.0Romantic political drama set in Mexico that costarred Dorothy Gish and Wallace Reid.
5.0The Thompson-Thorpe automobile was once a great car but dissension between the owners led to the break-up of the company, and Thompson and Thorpe have each started their own car-manufacturing company. Not knowing his true identity, Earle Thorpe Jr. has been hired by Henry Thompson to drive his new car in an upcoming race. Unknown to Thompson has two crooked mechanic/engineers on his payroll who plan to make their own car, using Thompson's plans, and win the big race themselves. Etta, Thompson’s daughter, and Earle team up to re-unite Thompson and Thorpe Sr. by taking the best features of both cars and combine them into one super car.
Duplicitous Patricia Chase schemes to break up the new marriage of Margery and Wallace Graham because she yearns for Wallace despite her marriage to another. She nearly succeeds but the revelation of a secret thwarts her at the last moment and she gets her just desserts shortly after.
0.0A deputy marshal rounds up the bad guys and gets the girl.
0.0When Rosamond, a convent girl, discovers that her mother is Baby Brabant, a notorious queen of Petworth's gambling house, her ideals are shattered and she denounces her mother's life.
0.0A woman hears of a murder plot through a whispered voice on the telephone.
0.0Jacqueline Floriot is driven from her home by her husband Louis, a deputy attorney of Paris, because of his unjust suspicions regarding her relations with another man. Floriot forbids Jacqueline to see her baby boy, who is dangerously ill, and when informed that the boy believes her dead, she attempts suicide.