The Hindoo Charm (1913) User Reviews

The situation is fresh and has a punch

[deickemeyer · 22 November 2017]

A picture taken in the Orient by the travelers. It is likely to be popular, for there is much good in it; the situation is fresh and has a punch. Maurice Costello plays an English official in India who, to get a mother for his two little girls, marries again (Clara Kimball Young plays the new wife). The stepmother neglects the children. She had awakened the resentment of a fakir, played perfectly by James Young, and this "devil priest" makes gruesome use of the children's longing for the love of their new mother; he tells the youngest of them to put some liquid he gives her into tea to make her love them and it is done. The children keep the picture from being wholly convincing, and Mr. Costello, in running, after the catastrophe skips as though he were glad, but this is not logical. It is well staged. Eugene Mullen is the author and Maurice Costello produced it. - The Moving Picture World, October 4, 1913

Rare One Reeler

[Mozjoukine · 4 October 2012]

Functional would be the best way to describe this one reel melodrama. The vengeful Hindoo/u (the James Young, director of "Hearts in Exile"?) got up in boot polish and a turban, plans on avenging himself on Maurice Costello's family, somewhere East of Suez.

Chief interest is in seeing the distinguished cast early in their careers. Hard to reconcile the two children (Helen keeps on standing in front of the taller Dolores, blocking our view) with the glamorous stars of the 1920s Michael Curtiz movies.

Compositions are often awkward and the playing is unremarkable, outside of Young's unrelenting hamming. Hard enough to see any of these one reelers - so let's not be greedy!