A Gothic Mary Pickford vehicle that could fairly be derided as being over-the-top, full of clichés, corny, melodramatic as hell, and predictable.
And yet Pickford is so charming, and some of the visual story telling so good, that it's far more watchable than it seems to have any right to be.
Pickford is a teenager playing mother to a group of orphans held captive in a southern farm in the middle of the swamps by an evil land owner and his wife who make the worst characters in Dickens look like saints. There are some real moments of tension, and you can see how much it laid the groundwork for the great "Night of the Hunter" years later. And the twist ending is a nice surprise.
And yet Pickford is so charming, and some of the visual story telling so good, that it's far more watchable than it seems to have any right to be.
Pickford is a teenager playing mother to a group of orphans held captive in a southern farm in the middle of the swamps by an evil land owner and his wife who make the worst characters in Dickens look like saints. There are some real moments of tension, and you can see how much it laid the groundwork for the great "Night of the Hunter" years later. And the twist ending is a nice surprise.