October 21: His Brother's Keeper (1921)

 

His Brother's Keeper was principally a crime film with strong horror elements from 1921. It is yet another lost film with enough extant information and materials to know most of the action of the entire film. The plot was an odd combination of corporate fraud mixed with mesmerizism/hypnoisis.  The following description from on October 1921 print ad taken out in a Poughkeepsie newspaper gives a good description of how this, an early thriller, was marketed:

Can one man compel another, by the force of mental suggestion to murder a third man? It is upon this question that N. Brewster Morse has constructed that greatest drama since the days of "Trilby" and "The Corsican Brothers." [from the Poughkeepsie Eagle-News]

Principally the main plot behind the motivation to commit the murder is a bit beside the point. The point is that somehow a mere mortal man has the power to compel another innocent person to murder a man for him. Hypnotism was a popular "supernatural" trope in films of the time; it had strong connections to spiritualism, but it was also just as connected to the new science of psychology. It was both weird and wonderful; new, but possibly...just possibly, very old. It would also go on to be a popular vehicle in mad scientist films for the 1930's, 40's and 50's; so we find that concept in its infancy in films like this. Even today, we have vampire films and series that use hypnosis as a power that the creatures inherently possess in some form. What was truly frightening about His Brother's Keeper is that the mesmerized murderer is arrested; the audience knew that meant capital punishment. Pretty horrifying stuff. Of course, this is Hollywood, and we can't have the bad guy getting away with it. We have an investigation undertaken by a character named (I kid you not!) John Bonham and the culprit is exposed. As for justice, the film has him then promptly, and conveniently, doing away with himself.  Other than a complete plot description and a poster, there are no other materials on this film for now.