Hell's Hinges
| Hell's Hinges | |
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Theatrical poster to Hell's Hinges
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| Directed by |
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| Produced by | Thomas H. Ince |
| Written by | C. Gardner Sullivan |
| Starring |
William S. Hart Clara Williams |
| Music by | Victor Schertzinger (uncredited) |
| Cinematography | Joseph H. August |
| Distributed by | Triangle Distributing Corporation |
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Release date
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Running time
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64 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language |
Silent film English intertitles |
Hell's Hinges is a 1916 American Western silent film starring William S. Hart and Clara Williams. Directed by Charles Swickard, William S. Hart and Clifford Smith, and produced by Thomas H. Ince, the screenplay was written by C. Gardner Sullivan.
Hell's Hinges has been selected for preservation in the National Film Registry, and is considered by some to be one of the finest silent Westerns.
Hell's Hinges tells the story of a weak-willed minister, Rev. Bob Henley (played by Standing), who comes to a wild and debauched frontier town with his sister, Faith (played by Williams). The owner of the saloon, Silk Miller (played by Hollingsworth), and his accomplices sense trouble and encourage the local rowdies to disrupt the attempts to evangelize the community. Hard-bitten gunman Blaze Tracy (played by Hart), the most dangerous man around, is, however, won over by the sincerity of Faith. He intervenes to expel the rowdies from the newly built church.
Silk adopts a new approach. He encourages the dance-hall girl, Dolly (played by Glaum), to seduce Rev. Henley. She gets him drunk, and he spends the night in her room. The following morning the whole town learns of his fall from grace. Blaze rides out to find a doctor for the now near-demented minister.
The disgraced minister, having rapidly descended into alcoholism, is goaded into helping the rowdy element to burn down the church. The church-goers try to defend the church, and a gunfight erupts in which the minister is killed and the church set ablaze. Blaze returns too late to stop the destruction. In revenge, Blaze kills Silk and burns down the whole town, beginning with the saloon. He and Faith leave to start a new life.
The production companies were Kay-Bee Pictures and New-York Motion Picture.
When Hell's Hinges was released, the reception of the film among New York critics was so positive that the producer bought space in newspapers around the country to reprint the reviews. The following are excerpts from those reviews:
Grace Kingsley of the Los Angeles Times gave the actors high marks. She credited Hart with doing his "usual excellent work" and found Glaum to be "a really fascinating vampire." Kingsley paid special note to Standing's performance as the reverend, calling it "one of the most subtle, but at the same time of the most sincere bits of film acting of his entire career," a performance exhibiting "intelligence and imagination ... in the very highest degree." Kingsley found the film to be "marvelously well done" but took exception to the would-be folksy western dialect in the title cards:
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