Flames of Passion

This logging camp melodrama looks like it was either edited from a serial or perhaps a couple of reels from the start are missing. It stars George Larkin, who got his boost a decade earlier doing stunt-filled serials, and whose credits would extend to more than a one hundred thirty movies through 1931 -- and then he vanished from the screen and popular culture. He was probably getting too old to do the sort of stunts that required an undercranked camera to make him look good.

Although the plot is very melodramatic and the acting and titles are much the same way, the viewer may be pleased by the beautiful camera-work offered by H.C. Cook, a man who had three credits as cinematographer in 1923. That's the total of his IMDb credits.. The fight sequence on the logs in the river are excellent and even his more commonplace two-shots are good. The print I viewed is on the Grapevine DVD and is nicely colored. Although the story is rather silly, the pictures make this worth looking at once.