Underplayed Gems

Daredevil Jack (1920)

Daredevil Jack poster
Original title
The Adventures of Daredevil Jack
Directed by
W. S. Van Dyke
Genre
action film, silent film, mystery film, serial film
Country
United States
Runtime
20 min
Rating
10.0 of 10 from 1 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

More films like this

How it feels

A heavyweight boxing champion stars as the hero of a silent serial. Each week he goes on a new adventure to defeat a villain played by a famous actor of the time.

fast-pacedold-fashionedlightheartedepisodicaction-packedheroicnostalgicplayful

What happens

Daredevil Jack is a 1920 American silent 15-chapter action film serial directed by W. S. Van Dyke and starring heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey and featuring Lon Chaney as a villain. The chapters were shown weekly between February and May 1920. The serial's working titles were Daredevil Durant or Dead or Alive. An incomplete copy of the film is housed in the UCLA Film and Television Archive. The supporting cast features Lon Chaney, Edgar Kennedy, John George and Bull Montana. This was the first of 23 films, many of them short subjects, in which the iconic boxer Dempsey appeared, usually as the top-billed leading man. Dempsey claimed Lon Chaney applied his makeup in the film, and said he had "a feather-like touch" compared to the other makeup men he worked with. The serial is today mostly lost, with some incomplete segments (mainly chapters 1, 2 and 4) stored at University of California, Los Angeles. Lon Chaney does not appear in the existing footage, which is unfortunate as this was Lon Chaney's only appearance in a serial. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

This page is from Underplayed Gems. Not quite it? You can browse by genre, country and year, or take this one into the 3D catalogue and ask the Catbot for something closer.