Realart/Paramount, 1920. Director: James Cruze. Scenario: Walter Woods, based on a story by Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey. Camera: William Marshall. Cast: Harry Houdini, Lila Lee, Jack Brammall, Wilton Taylor, Eugene Pallette, Rosemary Theby, Edward Brady, Fred Turner.
Movie stars are a varied breed, and stardom has been visited on some surprisingly unlikely candidates over the years. A case in point is escape artist Harry Houdini, who built a sensational show-business career on his ability to free himself from chains, handcuffs, ropes, or some combination of all these restraints, often compounding the odds against him by performing his stunts inside a locked enclosure or underwater—or both. His uncanny escapes caught the imagination of audiences everywhere, and an exotic aura surrounded his name in popular culture. It was perhaps inevitable that he would find his way into the movies.
As remarkable as Houdini’s talents were, however, acting wasn’t one of them. His movies were the stuff of Saturday matinees: short on heavy dramatics, long on action and exciting adventure. And, just twice, they were produced by a major Hollywood studio: Paramount Pictures. I’ve commented on his first Paramount film in an earlier edition of this column. This month I’m looking at the second, Terror Island. (To my knowledge, this film survives only in an incomplete version, missing two of its seven reels. The missing reels in question represent the midpoint of the film, so that the beginning and ending are intact, and the missing action in between is filled in by explanatory titles in the latter-day restoration.)
Even in its partial form, Terror Island is an exciting experience for the film enthusiast, for more reasons than one. Strictly on historical terms, it’s an invaluable record of a major public figure of the early twentieth century, performing in a custom-designed vehicle that reflects something of his contemporary culture. But we can also appreciate it at face value: a boy’s adventure story, spinning a tale of Houdini as the inventor of a small submarine, pressed into helping recover a long-lost treasure from a sunken ship in the South Seas. It’s an implausible story, but it’s no more far-fetched than the other adventures juvenile audiences were seeing every week at the movies—and here the hero was unique, not a cowboy or action movie star, but a celebrity who was known for actually performing his dangerous escape stunts.
What makes Terror Island doubly engaging is that this adventurous yarn is not a cheap Poverty Row potboiler but a polished, well-crafted motion picture, produced with the resources of a major Hollywood studio. (The intertitles bear the imprint of Realart Pictures, a prestige subsidiary operating under the banner of Paramount.) The inventor’s submarine introduces a modest element of science fiction, with such trappings as an “electric periscope,” essentially a video screen that affords the sub’s occupants a clear view of the skullduggery taking place above the water’s surface. The film’s director is none other than James Cruze, already a veteran of several years with Paramount, but still years away from his breakout success as the director of The Covered Wagon. The leading lady, Lila Lee, was likewise already a star in her own right, and would continue her busy acting career throughout the silent era and well into the 1930s. Here she appears as Houdini’s romantic interest and, given the star’s notorious shyness with women, is obliged to carry much of the romance herself. 
Another notable member of the cast is Eugene Pallette as one of the gang of larger-than-life villains. Film enthusiasts who know Pallette primarily as a gravelly-voiced comic supporting player in later sound films may be surprised at the sheer quantity and range of his roles in the silents.
The adventures in Terror Island take the story’s principals to a cannibal island (filmed on location at Catalina), where Houdini and the others are captured and (temporarily) imprisoned by the natives. This was not an uncommon device in adventure stories at the time, but it wouldn’t play well with audiences today, and may be one reason the film is not better known in our own time. Interestingly, one of the intertitles quotes at length from Frederick O’Brien’s anti-colonialist White Shadows in the South Seas, which would itself be adapted into a classic film years later. In any case, this unfortunate lapse—and the two missing reels—may have the effect of denying modern viewers what is otherwise a thoroughly enjoyable romp: a red-blooded adventure story, pictured with topnotch production values, and preserving a performance by a celebrated but improbable movie star.
