'Blue Blazes' Rawden

Blue Blazes Rawden (1918)

** (out of 4)

A rather bizarre remake of Hart's very own HELL'S HINGES has the Western location changed to the mountains and his cowboy changed to a lumberjack. In the film Hart plays Blue Blazes Rawden, a tough lumberjack who ends up killing a man (Robert McKim) over an Indian girl (Maude George). Things take a tricky turn when the dead man's mother and brother come to see him and Hart starts to feel guilty. He decides to tell the family that their son was a great man and he warns those around him not to let them know the truth about who killed him. I was really surprised to see how much plot this thing stole from HELL'S HINGES and it's so much so that you can easily call this a remake. There's even a card game here where Hart gets taken advantage of and has his weapon stole in the same fashion as what was used in THE SILENT MAN. As you can tell, there's really nothing here too original and changing the setting to the mountains really doesn't work either as most of the time everything is so over the top that you can't help but laugh. This includes Hart's performance in a way. He's certain strong enough for the part but there are a couple scenes that he goes so far over the top that I found myself laughing. This here adds some minor charm but I doubt this was the effect the filmmakers were going for. There are a couple good fight sequences and a few nice visuals but none of this is able to overshadow the flaws. I'm really not sure why Hart's screenplay followed the previous films so closely but it was a mistake and it doesn't help that HELL'S HINGES was so incredibly good because there's just no way this film could live up to it.