The Valley of the Giants

This film is remembered, if at all, as the one on which Wallace Reid was injured and given heroin. The addiction and the brutal schedule Paramount kept its top male star to killed him by 1923. Thanks to a kickstarter production by Ed Lorusso, I was able to see this formerly missing film today, and found it a fine story with a dynamite score by David Drazin.

Wallace Reid returns with an engineering degree to the town where his father, Charles Ogle, has been the top logger for forty years, and his mother is buried. Things have changed. Competitor Ralph Lewis owns the other half of the forest, the local rail line, and is squeezing a nearly blind Ogle into bankruptcy. He also has a gang of malicious thugs ready to maim and kill for ready cash, including Jack Hoxie and Noah Beery. Lewis also has a niece, Grace Darmond, who is loyal to him, but who grew up with Reid; they agree to be friends.

The movie is well directed by James Cruze, and the print is in very good shape, although the modern viewer may find the simplicity of the camera set-ups under Frank Urson a little dull. There are a couple of highlight sequences. In the former, Lewis, Miss Darmond, and associates are on a runaway caboose, and it's up to Reid to rescue them. In the latter, the final confrontation between the forces of Lewis' thugs and Reid's work gang during a night time shoot builds up to a tremendous fight.

The film is helped along by some fine location shooting in northern California and Oregon. The result is a handsome, engaging movie that should make fans of silent films very happy.