Caminhos Ocultos

Freshly released ex-con Tom Santschi wants to tread the strait path, but his companions are fellow crook Arthur Rankin and pickpocket Ned Sparks. When they -- mostly Santschi -- save farm girl Gloria Grey, her mother, widowed Mary Carr, takes them in at her impoverished farm. Sparks finds a spring and comes up with a plan to make them rich by adding ingredients to make it seem a health drink. Suckers will clamor for it, and when the money is available, they'll all be rich -- particularly Sparks when he runs off with the cash.

It's a decent programmer intended for rural audiences, with some interesting actors and a nicely complicated script by Ida May Park and her frequent collaborator, director Joseph De Grasse. The production is more efficient than interesting, but seeing Sparks at this stage of his career is interesting, and Mrs. Carr is always welcome, even with her role a bit tiresome. She had gone into the movies in the latter half of the 1910s, and had a great success in 1920's OVER THE HILL TO THE POORHOUSE, which typed her as mothers for the rest of her career. She died in 1973 at the age of 99.