The Mystery of the Leaping Fish (USA, 1916) 25 min B&W DIR: John Emerson, Christy Cabanne. SCR: Anita Loos (intertitles). STY: Tod Browning. DOP: John W. Leezer. CAST: Douglas Fairbanks, Bessie Love, Alma Rubens.
This silent short has popped around in the past few years in a bid for Reefer Madness-style camp status, as the video box proclaims it to be the first film ever made concerning cocaine. I saw this for sale in Woolworth’s back in the when it was still rare to purchase videos at consumer level, but there was no way in Hell I was going to pay fifteen bucks for a twenty-minute video. However, thanks to the Age of VHS Clearance Sales, it now seems perfectly reasonable to purchase it for three dollars in the secondary market.
This amusing effort features Douglas Fairbanks Sr. as a detective who investigates the strange goings-on at a beach resort. Apparently, some evil stuff is being smuggled via these floating plastic fish things that people ride on in the water. Along the way he gets to save silent screen star Bessie Love from the bad guys. The cocaine angle is not in the exposé, but rather Doug’s own habit (his character’s name is “Coke Ennyday”!)– he injects himself with the stuff every few minutes of screen time, and pantomimes the effects of the drug once he barely removes the needle! As the “plot” unravels, it gets more and more ridiculous (look at the ways in which Doug hides from the bad guys– apparently they cannot hear because it is a silent movie, or they have no peripheral vision). Alas, this story (written by Tod Browning!) turns out to be a pitch offered up by the real Douglas Fairbanks to some incredulous producers– it seems he also wants to be a screenwriter, too. This mildly amusing short is topical, but time has not been kind to it.
Originally published in Vol. #1, Issue #9, 2003
Greg Woods
Greg Woods has been a film enthusiast since his teens, and began his writing "career" at the same time- prolific in capsule reviews of everything he had watched, first on index cards, then those hardcover dollar store black journals, then an old Mac IIsi. He founded The Eclectic Screening Room in 2001, as a portal to share his film love with the world, and find some like-minded enthusiasts along the way. In addition to having worked in the film industry for over two decades, he has been a co-programmer of films at Trash Palace, and a programmer/co-founder of the Toronto Film Noir Syndicate. He has also written for Broken Pencil, CU-Confidential, Micro-Film, and is currently working on his first novel. His secret desire is for someone to interview him for a podcast or a DVD extra.