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The Highbinders
(1915) United States of America
B&W : Two reels
Directed by Tod Browning
Cast: Signe Aüen (Seena Owen) [Ah Woo], Eugene Pallette [Hop Woo], Walter Long [Pat Gallagher], Tom Wilson [Jack Donovan], Billie West [Maggie Gallagher]
Majestic Motion Picture Company production; distributed by Mutual Film Corporation. / Released 18 April 1915. / Standard 35mm spherical 1.33:1 format.
Drama: Crime.
Synopsis: [?] [From The Moving Picture World]? Maggie, daughter of Pat Gallagher, a brutal saloonkeeper, to escape being forced into marriage with a bully and protege of her father’s, takes refuge in a shop in Chinatown, just around the corner from her father’s resort. The Chinese merchant, who has given her shelter, at last persuades her to marry him. Thus she exchanges a miserable existence for another even more repugnant. Years later finds Hop Woo, the merchant, selling his daughter by his white wife into slavery. Ah Woo’s brother, overhearing his father bartering with the highbinder, who is a member of the powerful Hip-Yi-Tong society, runs for help to Jack Donovan, an attractive young Irishman, who keeps a gambling hall on the borders of Chinatown. The brother shoots and kills the slave dealer. Hop Woo is suspected of the crime and visited with the blood atonement by the Infuriated Hip-Yi-Tong. Ah Woo is carried away a prisoner. Her brother and Donovan, who loves the beautiful Chinese-American girl, rescues her from the Third Circle, the lowest of the underground passageways in Chinatown and later, Donovan shoots dead the hounding highbinders. Maggie, the mother, meanwhile has committed suicide. The young Irishman sells his establishment and buys a ranch, where he takes his bride, Ah Woo, and her brother.
Reviews: [The Moving Picture World, 1 May 1915. page ?] A two-reel drama set in the Chinese quarter of what is, evidently, a western city. The production, which has been staged by Tod Browning is, to say the least, unique. A great many genuine Chinamen have taken part in the picture, which treats of the marriage of an unfortunately placed young woman to a Chinaman who was kind to her. The story skips several years and the daughter of the couple is kidnapped for her beauty by a gang of Chinamen, after they have killed her father. The production is thrilling and too rich in startling incidents to enumerate them here. It can also lay claim to having been artistically made. / [Motion Picture News, 1 May 1915, page ?] As a straight melodrama of the old school this is a particularly fine bit of work. It consists of one thrill after another, and should make a big hit.
Survival status: (unknown)
Current rights holder: Public domain [USA].
Keywords: Chinese - Irish - USA: California: San Francisco
Listing updated: 23 October 2022.
References: Skal-Browning p. 261 : Website-IMDb.
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