Tyrant Fear

Life in the raw is shown in "Tyrant Fear," a five-part Paramount picture written by R. Cecil Smith and directed by R. William Neill under the supervision of Thomas H. Ince. Dorothy Dalton is the star. Much of the action takes place in a Northwest gambling hell and dance hall, and the unlovely side of humanity is shown with stark realism. Primitive passions that are supposed to belong only to the caveman are the foundation of most of the scenes, arid there is the usual rough-and-tumble fight. Men bargain for a woman as if she were a beast of burden, and the woman fights her way out of the mire fate has thrown her into, and drags the man she loves with her. Cowed by the matter-of-fact way in which her father forces her to marry a brute of a trapper and her husband turns her over to the keeper of the dance hall, the woman drifts with the tide until she meets the man who awakens her real nature. The story is sordid, but has possibilities of strong drama. In its present form it does not convince, and its direction is not clean-cut. There is no lack of movement, but the situations are often merely theatric. The Nativity scenes are entirely out of place; the atmosphere of lust that pervades the story is not refined by the introduction of this sacred subject. Dorothy Dalton defines the two phases of Allaine Grandet's character distinctly, and puts real power into her big situations. Thurston Hall as Harley Dane, Melbourne MacDowell as James Dermot, William Conklin as Jules Latour, Lou Salter as Theodore De Coppee, and Carmen Phillips as Marie Courtot make the most of their opportunities. John Stumar, the photographer, has taken a number of striking long shots of winter exteriors. – The Moving Picture World, May 4, 1918