Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Trapped by the Mormons (1922)

British producer H.B. Parkinson directed this mystical and demonizing portrait of Mormons that stars Lewis Willoughby (who?) as the mesmerizing, conniving Mormon leader, with Olive Sloan, Cecil Morton York and Evelyn Brent in an early, supporting role.

This DVD edition of the rare Trapped by the Mormons (1922) features a color and sepia-toned full-frame video transfer from a 16mm reduction print, which is contrasty with lost highlight details and deep shadows. The details in faces are often on the edge of being lost in a blob of white. The transfer does show signs of analog videotape anomalies; above and below the brightest picture highlights are dark edges (usually these appear to the right of highlights in analog videotape), which are most apparent in the intertitles.

The film is accompanied by a music score performed on Wurlitzer theater organ by Blaine Gale, recorded live at Peery’s Egyptian Theater in Ogden, Utah. The audience’s partially LDS constitution laughs easily at the unintentionally comic characterizations of Mormons in the film.

Overall, not a bad-looking disc, but there is always room for visual quality improvement.

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