“Avenging Conscience/ Thou Shalt Not Kill, 1914″
Holy cow! This film was crazy for great images and weirdness. Before I realized it, I had made over 20 gifs for it and could have made at least 50 more, but why not just point you to the full movie instead, which you can watch here.
The film is a blending of Poe’s “Tell Tale Heart” and “Anabelle Lee”, starring Blanche Sweet as ‘Anabelle/the sweetheart’, and Henry B. Waltham as ‘the nephew’.
The nephew loves the girl, but his uncle stands in the way to his happiness, so the nephew strangles him and hides his body in the fireplace. After that, things get weird, as the uncle starts haunting the young man and doing ‘creepy fingers’ at him when he’s trying to sleep <shivers>. He freaks out and goes to a sanitarium to relax. When he gets back, he goes to visit his girl (after he has built a barricaded, heavily armed, bunker with a trapdoor escape passage , of course.) It seems, though that being with the girl triggers his hallucinations of his uncle coming to get him. All this leaves poor Annabelle confused and, of course, very sad when the young man goes running over hill and dale to get away.
Anyways, when he gets back to his home, Jesus himself comes to tell him what the problem is using a glowing tablet to make it perfectly clear. The nephew is full of bitter remorse and begs for forgivenness, prostrating himself before the glowing Jesus vision. Now after that, one would think, the young man would be contrite and confess his sins when the detective shows up to question him.
Nope.. sorry glowing tablet carrying Jesus, but the young man denies everything and as he keeps denying, what little of his mind breaks and he sees the most amazing hallucinations of beast-people and then a skeleton ties him to a chair and hugs him. Still no confession... the young man struggles with his ghost uncle and finally confesss and bolts to his bunker and starts shooting at the deputies. Meanwhile, Anabelle hears of the hullabahoo and goes rushing to the bunker. When she gets there, the young man who had run out of bullets, hung himself just as the lawmen break into the barn. Despondent, she goes to the nearby cliff and jumps, falling onto the rocks below.
...now one would think the story would end now, but it keeps going. I won’t say what happened next. but i will show you the end of the film...what the...??!!
Anyways, go watch it on youtube or elswhere. It’s so worth it.
