Ten Nights in a Bar Room

I wasn't aware going into this film that it was based on a very popular 1854 temperance novel that was adapted into films no less than eleven times - seven times before Prohibition (1897, 1901, 1903, 1909, 1910, 1911, 1913, good grief), three times during it (1921, 1926, and 1931), and even once for TV by the BBC decades later (1953). This version from 1926 was made by Colored Players Film Corporation, a production company that was a rival to Oscar Micheaux's, and stars Charles Gilpin and Lawrence Chenault. It's pretty well made with solid performances, but the heavily moralizing in the story, condemning the local pub as a den of iniquity and getting in a little divine retribution was quite distasteful to me. The storytelling is also mediocre, with a slow pace and various subplots just getting in the way. It's too bad because this seemed to be a race film with a bigger budget than most, and the dramatic action scenes of the bar being engulfed in flames and the boats out on the river are suitably gripping. I enjoyed watching those while having a drink, naturally.