Notes from my live introduction to a centenary screening of the film at the Festival of Fantastic Films in Manchester, 10 a.m. Saturday October 29th 2022
We’ve got quite a treat for you this morning – a film that is one hundred years old, but might not have been seen or even noticed by fans of British fantastic cinema. What’s more, it is partially set in Manchester, although I don’t think it was actually filmed here. The movie is HB Parkinson’s TRAPPED BY THE MORMONS from 1922, and I can promise you something rather special. It’s amazing how those of us who dig deep are still finding treasures from British horror and fantasy cinema’s rich past, and I’m indebted to Stephen Bissette, the great American comics artists and major movie fan and researcher, for introducing me to the slightly dubious and possibly mildly racist joys of the anti-Mormon film.
Because yes, TRAPPED BY THE MORMONS is far from a one-off! It was part of a whole string of movies produced all around the world during the 1910s and early 20s, many of them with the same plot, the plot you are about to see. The first documented film of this type was made in Denmark in 1911, director August Blom’s A VICTIM OF THE MORMONS. Valdemar Pilsander, a big star in Denmark, was cast as the Mormon priest, helping the movie to become a box office success, although The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints did raise vocal exception to the film’s release. Ole Olsen’s film company Nordisk Studios had made a number of dramas including THE WHITE SLAVE GIRL, THE WHITE SLAVE TRADE, and THE WHITE SLAVE TRADE’S LAST VICTIM during the first decade of the 20th century, and Blom took on the theme and upped the ante by directly connecting White slavery to Mormonism, not surprisingly causing outrage among Mormons themselves. But I guess that box-office talks, and before pre-First World War era audiences knew it, the screens were bombarded with more of this sort of thing – Pathe Freres in France offered both MARRIAGE OR DEATH and the wonderfully titled MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE, the American Film Manufacturing Company made THE MORMON, and Selig in Chicago produced THE DANTES. You can watch A VICTIM OF THE MORMONS via a direct lik at that film’s wikipedia page. Wikipedia also reports that the Latter Day Saints Church in Salt Lake City holds a copy in its archives!
Henry Broughton Parkinson was born in 1884 and lived until 1970. One of the key early British filmmakers of the early feature-length production era, he produced 85 movies between 1918 and 1930, and directed over 30 films between 1920 and 1927. In 1922 alone, he filmed MACBETH, and made not one but two anti-Mormon features! MARRIED TO A MORMON was a five reeler made for Astra Films, starring Evelyn Brent, an American actress who appeared in a few films in the States in the late 1910s. Evelyn came to London on holiday after World War One, and met a US playwright named Oliver Cromwell, who convinced her to take a part on the London stage in a play entitled THE RUINED LADY. She stayed here for four years and made several movies, starring in HB Parkinson’s MARRIED TO A MORMON and then playing almost exactly the same part in the film you are about to see. On return to America, Evelyn’s career really took off and her attractive, sultry looks caught on and helped her find plenty of work, including three silent films directed by Josef von Sternberg.
Of course, 1922 was a pretty big year for horror movies, not that the term was being used at that early stage, but dark fantasies proliferated, among them the celebrated Benjamin Christensen mondo satanico prototype HAXAN, and the sadly seemingly lost but amazing-sounding TRIFLING WOMEN directed by Rex Ingram – featuring a female necromancer and a dangerous ape monster, TRIFLING WOMEN sounds like it ought to supplant LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT as the lost 20s silent that we really need to track down. And let’s not forget Murnau’s NOSFERATU: EINE SYMPHONIE DES GRAUENS. Murnau’s take on Dracula may have had a particular influence on the anti-Mormon movies, as they often feature a charismatic, Dracula or Svengali like figure with mesmeric powers, and indeed you are going to see that embodied by Louis Willoughby, as the terrifying Isoldi Keene, right here right now.
Modern American politics has, amongst all of its other weirdness and incident, featured debate about anti-Mormonism in recent times, with the prominent likes of Rick Santorum and even President Biden referencing and condemning the use of religion-targeted bigotry in political campaigning, although that’s perhaps a bit rich coming from the mouth of former senator Santorum. And the anti-Mormon film hasn’t died out – I’m not certain about contemporary dramas, but there seem to be plenty of church-expose type documentaries doing the rounds, many of them screened via Netflix. Titles like THE GODMAKERS from 1982, SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH from 2007, and BELIEVER, screened at Sundance in early 2018, are among the best known – BELIEVER caused controversy and swift denials from the church of Latter Day Saints in tackling the notion that homosexuality was discouraged by Mormons and that the LGBT community were not welcomed.
So yes, while you enjoy your 100-year-old early morning treat today with TRAPPED BY THE MORMONS, remember that this is a theme that never goes away. I look forward to hearing what you all make of this one.
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