The Phantom Buccaneer (1916) User Reviews

Will permit no napping by the spectator

[deickemeyer · 22 October 2014]

The Phantom Buccaneer has a story that will permit no napping by the spectator, as the action is fast and furious at times, and at no time can it be called tame. At certain points, however, one has difficulty in following the story clearly, owing to the introduction of characters that are unfamiliar, and while the mind is engaged in the effort to establish their identity things are happening that demand one's complete attention. Hence the obfuscation referred to. Richard C. Travers will win a warm welcome in this adventurous photo-melodrama. He has as many lives as the proverbial cat, judging from his numerous escapes from sudden death in the assumption of the role by Jack Burton, of the villain Stuart Northcote. Mr. Travers appears in both roles, apparently at the same time, by an ingenious use of double exposure, and the spectator cannot fail to note that these characters, while alike in face and figure, are very different in manner and in facial expression. In other words the spirit of each man always retains its separate identity, while the bodily appearance is apparently the same always. Mr. Travers has evidently lost none of his dashing scrapping powers, and this despite his mishaps from swiftly moving trains and other deadly playthings encountered in his career. The melee aboard the yacht, where Jack Burton and his associates rescue Mercia Solano from an attempted abduction, gives full proof of that. In his love scenes with Mercia, Jack Burton is tenderness itself. Gertrude Glover's Mercia is a winsome little creature. When a shy, retiring young woman binds herself by oath with a gang of cutthroats to avenge the death of her murdered father, we do not expect any extraordinary exploits on her part. But the real story brings surprises. Mercia turns out to be fearless and determined, and both these qualities, strange to say. are shown in her endeavor to save the man who is supposed to have been the prompting agent in the murder of her father. The photography is up to the Essanay standard. - The Moving Picture World, January 6, 1917