User reviews

Western saloon and gambling hall proprietors William S. Hart (as "Keno" Bates) and Herschel Mayall (as "Wind River") are robbed, at gunpoint, by Gordon Mullen (as Jim Maitland), after he loses his last cent gambling with Mr. Hart. Hart and Mr. Mayall track Mr. Mullen down, and Hart shoots him dead. On Mullen's body, Hart finds a note announcing the arrival of the deceased's sister, Margaret Thompson (as Doris Maitland). Meeting her stagecoach, Hart feels responsible for the innocent and attractive Ms. Thompson; he tells her Mullen was more honorably "killed in a mine accident." Moreover, Keno turns his cabin over to Thompson, saying it belonged to her brother. Romance blossoms; then, jealous saloon dancer Louise Glaum (as Anita) threatens to expose "Keno Bates, Liar".

Reissued as "The Last Card", this Thomas H. Ince production features a "catfight" between Hart's rivaling women. Regular character player Mayall has a featured role. The shooting of Mullen features some good camera-work; and, he's a more complex than the usual "villain", since Hart (presumably) hustled the man's money from him. And, Thompson has an amazingly bad aim, unless she intended to only wound her target.

***** Keno Bates, Liar (8/27/15) William S. Hart ~ William S. Hart, Herschel Mayall, Margaret Thompson

Keno Bates, Liar (1915)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Mildly entertaining Western has William S. Hart playing a saloon owner who gets held up by a young woman who Hart will eventually shoot and kill in self defense. Hart goes through his belongings and discovers a note from his sister who is coming to live with him. Hart, feeling guilty for killing him, decides to tell the sister (Doris Maitland) that her brother was a good man and that he left her a cabin and money. Soon Hart and the sister are in love but someone tells her the truth about who killed in brother. Once again we get a fairly good Western but a pretty routine and rather poor screenplay really keeps it from being a lot better. Even by 1915 standards the story is pretty routine and there's just not enough meat to keep the 26-minute running time moving well enough. The entire story is pretty predictable from start to finish and the ending is certainly incredibly laughable. Hart once again turns in a good performance as that tall structure of a body makes for a good hero and that square face is so unique that you can't help follow whatever he does. Gordon Mullen does a nice job as Hart's partner and Maitland is pretty good as well as the love interest. It's worth noting that there's a close up shot of a bloody bullet wound, which I don't recall seeing in an earlier movie. That's not to say this was the first time it had been seen but I do believe it's the first I've seen from a movie of this era.

In this early William S. Hart two-reel Western, "Keno Bates, Liar," Hart doesn't play the usual good badman character, but is, rather, good throughout the picture--by the standards of Westerns, that is. He's a saloon proprietor; he doesn't just drink there. And, when he kills a man, it's in self-defense--a thief he'd chased down. According to Andrew Brodie Smith ("Shooting Cowboys and Indians"), Hart's character here and in other films where he plays a saloon proprietor were based on the Jack Rance character in David Belasco's play "Girl of the Golden West." The two characters more typical to the Hart Western are seen here in the women, one good and one bad. The bad woman is a prostitute type who aggressively tries to seduce Hart. The good woman here is a bit different than in some of Hart's other films, as she's not instrumental to the hero's regeneration; instead, she fights the bad woman and shoots Hart when she misbelieves he's bad. Otherwise, this is a basic Hart Western, which, however, means it's better than contemporaries. A similar plot line was rehashed for Hart's 1918 feature film "Blue Blazes Rawden."

There haven't been very many early Westerns available on home video, but of the three Bison productions and some Tom Mix ones I've seen, Hart's films have superior production values and better continuity editing, including scene dissection and use of medium shots. What they lack in the advanced film technique seen in Cecil B. DeMille's "The Virginian" (1914) or some of D.W. Griffith's later Westerns, such as "The Battle of Elderbush Gulch" (1913), they make up for in presenting a strong protagonist with Hart. There's one especially good shot in "Keno Bates, Liar," which was surely inspired by a similar view in Griffith's "The Musketeers of Pig Alley" (1912): it's a stationary shot where Hart approaches for a close-up as he passes by the camera.