The story begins with a thief trying to sneak into an expensive-looking urban house to steal valuables. As he is about to leave, he is caught by an old man. The old man offers the thief his freedom for an exchange: He has to help the man die and be buried with his wife, who had passed away years ago. The old man is so deeply in love with his wife that he had put her remains in a plaster statue and has been sleeping with the statue ever since. The thief refuses at once, but as he witnesses the old man’s love for his wife, he starts to change his mind.
Vowing vengeance on Edward Marriott, whom he believes to have dishonored his mother, The Shadow is a highwayman who robs only Marriott. The Shadow attracts the interest of Dorothy Harden, Marriott's fiancee, and finally he captures her. The action includes the kidnapping, by The Shadow's rival, Ben, of Dorothy; The Shadow's capture and escape; and his rescue of Dorothy. All is happily resolved when Dorothy declares her love for The Shadow and Marriott proves to be innocent of injuring The Shadow's mother.
In the wake of his father's murder, Riley seeks vengeance on an underbelly thug known as the Confidence Man, a gambler who never loses. Riley challenges his father's killer to a round of Russian Roulette.
Lucy Raven's Demolition of a Wall (Album 1) is the second film in her trilogy of "Westerns." In American cinema, the Western has traditionally celebrated the expansionist myth that the region is somehow primal or untouched. Raven, by contrast, engages with a West that–while still dramatic in its natural beauty–has been industrialized, militarized, and colonized. She filmed this work at an explosives range in New Mexico that is typically employed as a test site by the US Departments of Defense and Energy and private munitions companies. Notably, it is close to Los Alamos, a national laboratory known for its role in the development of the nuclear bomb. Using a variety of cameras and imaging techniques, Raven captures the trajectory of the pressure-blast shockwaves that move through the atmosphere in the wake of an explosion. [Overview courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art]
Dean extrapolated landscape images from 1920s Ford advertisements, leaving out the cars to focus on their representations of place and nature. She made the animation using a digital version of a multiplane camera technique employed in early Disney films to create an immersive and 3D illusion by separating two-dimensional images. This technique was itself inspired by Ford’s assembly line; Dean uses it to explore historical depictions of the American dream, exaggerating the subject matter’s fantastical style. [Overview courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art]
Ray Whitley and his Six-Bar Cowboys Band are working for a rancher named Pop, who has a weakness for goldmines. He trades his ranch for a worthless mine, but Ray and his boys, with the aid of a chorus girl named Mitzi, manage to get his ranch deed back.
Dave and Phillip Hull, twins, are totally different in character. Dave is steady, slow to hate and true in love. Phillip, the gay and popular gambler, is perhaps more lovable on the surface, but shifty and flare-tempered underneath. Dave loves little Meg, daughter of Hardy, a cattle rustler. Dave does not know that the father is a cattle rustler, however.
Jake is hunted by a renegade sheriff and her blood thirsty gang of thugs who are after the gold that Jake supposedly is hiding. It's the best goddamn western you'll ever see!
